Happy New Year! We wish all of you and your loved ones a prosperous and healthy 2006. We know ours will be blessed in many ways, but it didn’t start out so great. Penny lost her foal. She miscarried and the vet doesn't know why - no sign of trauma or deformity or illness. But it could be anything, or just one of those unexplainable things. Penny is not uncomfortable, her vet exam was perfect with regard to heart, lungs, internal exam, ultrasound, etc - she eating well as usual and nothing seems different about her at all. Poor thing, though. This could possibly be what happened when Penny had her full-blown false pregnancy a few years ago. If she had miscarried out in the big pasture and acted perfectly normal, ate all her feed, very little discharge, etc, it’s possible we may not have noticed at the time. We feel very sad for Penny, and for the unborn foal, (a filly) and wonder if we should ever try again with her in spring. The vet immediately said "sure, she's very healthy and looks great, her exam is all normal" - but this is hard on her and on us, plus the expense of breeding and care all along to NOT get a foal. It's bad all the way around. We think we will bring her in shortly and maybe begin riding her on Tuesday nights with Fanny and the kids. Bill commented today and I agree that Penny seems “happiest” when she is working. Not all horses are like that; many (most) are very content to be pasture potatoes and do absolutely nothing but mosey around the pasture all day. But Penny was raised as a show mare, with lots of fussing and training and stimulation, so we decided that’s what we will do. *heavy sigh* There’s plenty of time to consider whether we will breed her again. Bummer.

We said a tearful goodbye to Tux this week. He made us proud by being a very brave and smart boy, hesitating for only a second before stepping up into the trailer - and it was a BIG step!! Tux’s new owners debated whether to wrap his legs for the trip, but in the end decided not to. Wrapping can be a good thing to help avoid scrapes and scratches in the trailer, and is usually done with horses that have been wrapped before. Tux is an easy boy to handle, but he’s never had wraps on his legs before and we all thought it best not to add stress by doing something unfamiliar. All in all, it went very smooth. We’ll miss you, Tux!