In His Eyes...

Hi Friends,

Here is just a short update. Recently Brizzee and I have just taken a couple of walks. We haven't really done anything but spend time with each other. While walking I let her eat a couple old, dried up weeds (really, what is so tasty in a yucky weed? lol) and eat some grass.

When we were having nice weather I sat in the lawn with her (all that nice green grass, yippee! lol) and let her eat while I read in my History book...that was fun. Though I noticed that she was not standig still.

The whole time she was eating, she was moving around. It wasn't lazy bites, either. She was eating as if she hadn't eaten in years, and she's not starving. We feed them twice a day and she is kind of overweight, so she's not starving. SHe never relaxed. She kept her tail tightly clamped down, only swishing it at the flies. She never held still. And I wasn't doing anything except sitting there, not paying attention to her, and reading my book...

Mom and I were talking about this and I wonder if she eats becausse of safety? Instead of wanting to go to the gate or horses for comfort, what if she eats? Eating is the only thing that she "knows" how to do and can't do wrong...hmm? I've just been thinking about that and wonder if I've gone about everything wrong. Is she a RBI who tries to put in a bluff, but is really scared and eats not because she's a pig, but because it's her safety zone? Hmm. I have to play with that :) Like Linda says in the Liberty and Horse Behavhior "It's a fifty fifty chance!" lol.

Anyways, Brizzee's sores are healing up really well and you can't even see them real well anymore, so that is good. But other then moseying, we haven't done much...

Here is a poem that I wrote tonight. It just sort of came to me and I thought maybe I would share it and see what you guys think...

In His Eyes
By Miranda

In the green pasture
You stand with your horse

Between the branches
The wind howls
Thunder shakes the earth
Lightning streaks across the sky
Lighting the earth for all to see

In the flash of lightning
In your horses eye
You see
A reflection of yourself
The person you want to be
In his deep, dark, chocolate eyes

The branches quiet
The howling wind subsides
The thunder leaves
The lightning seeps into the black night

In your horses eyes
Is nothing but the deep, kind brown eyes
And you wonder
Was that your reflection you saw?
Or was it the horse
Showing you what he sees
Not as a human being
Nor a predator,
But his buddy
His partner
That he sees?

In the branches
The wind howls
The sky shakes with thunder
And lightning streaks across the black night sky
What is it
In his eyes
That you see?

Thanks for reading,

Randa & Brizzee

Colt's First Leading session

Here is a video of my mom playing with my Uncle's colt. We call him "Rustic Chrome" and he was about a month old when we got him. Now he is about 3 months and as you can see, he's changed a lot of colors. Anyways, this is the first time my mom has had the halter on him and played with leading him so he's kind of not sure about it. Anyways, I hope you all enjoy.

Thanks for reading,

Randa & Brizzee

Results...

Hi Everyone,

Well, we took Brizzee to the vet yesterday (Tuesday) and got good news. Her sores have started to heal up some with the cloudy and cool weather we've been having here lately so they weren't as black or looking nearly as bad at the Vet's yesterday. But we looked at some pictures and he believes that she doesn't have skin cancer (thank goodness!) but thinks she got a pretty bad sunburn so we will hav eto watch it really well now because he says it can easily turn into skin cancer with her real pink, fine skin. We have some sort of some medicine to put on her sores (it looks like whip cream, lol) and when the sun is out and hot we need to put sunscreen or black shoe polish on her. But I'm relieved that it was nothing serious and I feel much better about that :)

We've kept a fly sheet on her to keep the bugs off her sores and what not (it'd be nice to get one for all the horses but 12 fly sheets will be a lot of $$$, lol). When I came back home Friday evening I got her and played with her a little bit while the flysheet was on.

It was the first time we've played for a long time. I've been gone for a month and before that I haven't done much with Brizzee. I've sort of just neglected her and I feel really guilty about that now so we are going to change that :) I'm going to play with her all the time. It felt extremely good to play with her on Friday.

Here's a video of our play session:

You can go to www.youtube.com/naturalwriter to view more of my videos...

Thanks for reading,

Randa & Brizzee

Pictures!!

Here are some of the pictures that I promised. The pics of Brizzee are old, but I promise I'll get some more soon...

Brizzee

This is my Uncle's new red roan mare & her colt...

This is Half Pint, my pony. Sorry the pics are a lil blurry.

I'll post some more pics of Brizzee soon. We also played with her Fly sheet last night after I got back home last night. It felt good to play with her =)

Thanks for reading,

Randa & Brizzee

Update on Skin Cancer...

Hi Friends,

We are supposed to go down to the Clark Equine Clinic in Albion on Tuesday at 3:00. That is the soonest they could get Brizzee in, unfortunately. So I guess I will know on Tuesday (5 days from now) what is really going on with her. Whatever it is I hope it's not too bad and I hope they can fix it. People come to Clark Equine Clinic from all around the world. They are very well known and I trust them, so I hope they'll be able to help Brizzee. I'm sure they will. So I will give you all an update about what they say sometime after Tuesday.

As a side note I wanted to also let you all know that I have another horse :) Technically, it's a pony. She's smaller than I am and my mom bought her for $50.00 last year. She was going to go to my neice and nephew, but things with that changed. Mom gave her to me so now I have a horse and a pony. I'm too big to ride her, so I'm just playing with her on the ground and stuff for now. SHe's so cute. I call her Half Pint.

I'll post some more pics of Brizzee and Half Pint soon, I promise. And I will definitely let you all know what the Vet says about Brizzee :)

Thanks for reading,
Randa & Brizzee

Skin Cancer...

Hi Everybody,

First of all, let me apologize for being gone from here for SOOOOOOO long. Honestly, Brizzee and I haven't really played that much in the last few months. My Grandmother passed away in July and things have been pretty hectic here. The weather's been uncomfortably hot and we haven't done much of anything, really.

A couple of times this summer we've played a little bit in Level 2 and 3 and we've played with Freestyle a little bit, but other than that we haven't done much of anything and I feel completely guilty about that.

But I've realized in the last few weeks how completely I've ignored her. She's my best friend, my partner, and I haven't done my part to improve our relationship and to have a good and strong friendship.I've failed.

So from now on, that will change. Every week/day I will play with her, or at the very least spend time with her. And I hope to take a couple videos each month of what we're playing with and hopefully see the improvements in me as her friend rather than her "trainer", which is what I've been doing all along, I think...

Starting today, this month (October) things are going to change. I'm not going to ignore my horse anymore. I'm going to play with her and spend a lot more time with her and give updates at least once a month or more...unless something else goes wrong.

Right now I'm really worried about Brizzee though. I've lived with my dad all the month of September but this Friday I'll be moving back in with my mom where I can see Brizzee every day. But according to my mom Brizzee has bad spots all over her back end and beneath her tail. Normally Brizzee keeps her tail tightly clamped down, but according to my mom she's carrying her tail up all the time and she's been even crabbier to the horses. Mom thinks it's skin cancer and I'm very worried about my horse.

This has opened my eyes and made me realize how terrible of a friend I have been to my horse. I lost my brother in December, I lost my grandma in July, my mom had her left eye removed on March 31st and we made several trips to Salt Lake, Utah and back for her eye removal and then check ups and then to get her prosthetic eye. And the man we live with, Bob, had his knee surgery in July, and I've been busy helping him with that, also. I've been so busy with everything that I completely neglected my horse.

Now, Brizzee might have cancer. And I'm not there because I chose to move with my dad for a month or so to get away from everything and now my horse might possibly have skin cancer. My mom makes it sound really bad so I don't know what is going to happen. We are going to make her an appointment and get it checked out as soon as possible, and I pray that it's not skin cancer and she'll be okay...the thought of loosing my horse is terrifying.

I love my horse very much and I'm not going to neglect her anymore. She's my friend and she's been through so much. She finally was beginning to open up and let me in, she was finally beginning to trust me, and what did I do then? I got too busy in my life, in the human world, that I just completely neglected her. Sure, I fed her and watered her and petted her every now and then, but I didn't spend any time with her and that's wrong. I'm going to change. I'm going to play with her. Not because she's just a horse. Not because I want to Graduate Level 2, 3 and 4 in the Parelli program. Not because I want to do all the amazing things that everyone else does (which I hate to admit it but that's been my goal almost all along...I just didn't admit it to myself or anyoen else) but because my horse is my friend. My friend. And I am going to treat her like my friend and we are going to play, spend time with each other, and have fun just to be together. Nothing else matters except our relationship, our bond, and our friendship. And that is going to start right now, as soon as I get back home things are going to change...I just pray to God that Briz will be okay. She has to be...

Last night I went back and collected a few videos and pictures of some of the things Brizzee and I have done together--last year and in 2008. I hope that things will change a lot and the next videos I will have of Brizzee and I playing will be much better, as it will just be a video of a couple of ole' friends playing :) If you'd like to check out the videos please visit www.youtube.com/naturalwriter

Thank you for reading and I will definitely keep you updated about Brizzee and how things go at the Vet's next week.

Thanks for reading,
Randa & Brizzee

*Long* Time No See...

It's been a *long* time since I've been on here and I feel really bad about that. I've kind of neglected my blog. lol. But so much has been happening this summer (especially just recently).

For the last two weeks my mom and I have gone riding almost every evening. I hate to see but I haven't played with Brizzee very much this summer. I've been helping my mom so much with irrigating, swathing hay, and baling it that I haven't had much time. But for almost two weeks we've been playing with the horses and riding almost every evening.

We have a few new additions to our family, lol. My mom bought a BLM gelding Mustang around the last part of June. His name is Mohawk. He's a light bay and he's so sweet. Mom can already spray him with fly spray and groom him. She had the halter on him a few times but didn't lead him around or anything like that.

And just last Friday my Uncle bought a "pair" of horses that we brought here on Sat. There is two, a red roan mare and her 1 *month* old colt, also a red roan. He is thinking about naming them Tater Tot and Spudnick. I would name the mom Tornado and the colt Saffire, if it were up to me, but they're his horses so whatever.

That's really exciting. The mare has let us touch her and her colt a few times. Journey (our buckskin filly that is almost a year...I think) is doing really good. We've been playing with her at liberty a lot. She responds to pressure really well and she's turned into such a sweetheart. She's always the first horse to the gate and always the first one to greet you. It's really cute. I love her. Mom finally decided to call her Journey instead of Mikkah Journey, so I like that :)

Anyways, that's what's been happening lately. I hate it that we haven't done much with the horses lately, but that will change :)

Thanks for reading,
Randa.