Tuga is our first (and probably last!) reptile. His arrival is somewhat shrouded in mystery so we do not exactly where he came from. He species is a Desert Tortoise allowing Tuga to thrive in heat and harsh conditions, but with us he will simply enjoy lots of kale and dandelion greens!
Pacific Point Academy Fundraiser - Post
We are honored to host a fundraiser for our first Special Event for Pacific Point Academy & Learning Center! PPA is located in Santa Monica and structured to meet the needs of kids ages 6-16 who have unique learning profiles. They use a mindful approach and believe that a warm and creative environment is of the utmost importance for kids' learning and self-esteem. Our sponsor child Olenka attends PPA, and is very excited to show her classmates and teachers a peek into her horse world!
Alpaca Yarn
The 3 bags of alpaca fiber that we had hand spun a year ago by the people who shear our alpacas can be seen in the photo on the left. It was done on an old-fashioned spinning wheel and the yarn has a very natural feel to it.
The 21 bags of alpaca fiber that we shipped to A Simpler Time to be machine spun arrived today, and the yarn looks much more uniform and store bought. Both are nice in their own way, but the bottom line is boy is it a lot!
We inherited most of the bags of fiber when we adopted our three alpaca girls and have now finally made them usable. I'm not sure what we will be doing with it all, but it certainly looks like a lot of knitting and crocheting will be in our future!
Anyone care to teach me how to make this shawl?
Caliboardia - Click to Watch Video
Two seasons have now gone by and Levko and Lys, brothers to our sponsor girls Olenka and Kalyna, continue to improve in the world of boarding. They are skateboarding locally and both competing (and doing great!) at the national level in snowboarding as well as entering more and more surfing contests here at home.
Instagram feels to me like something for the new generation, but this old fogie just got her feet wet as it's a great tool to watch these boys develop and for supporting up and coming inspired youth in general.
So join me today in following Caliboardia on Instagram. Go Levko and Lys!
Olenka and Kalyna at WHF - Click to Watch Video
WHF is proud to sponsor Olenka and Kalyna as they continue on their riding path. Here's a glimpse into their sweet horsie world as they spend a lovely spring afternoon riding at our barn.
Chester! Click to Watch Video
Chester might quite possibly be the best tempered little pup we have ever had. Talk about sweet, gentle, playful, smart, handsome and attentive. He's got it all! Here's a peek at his first week. Too bad they don't stay small forever. (But thank Heavens for learning potty training too!)
Simi Casting - Click to Watch Video
Update: Our dear horse Simi came back from the hospital and the result of his MRI is that he has fluid in his navicular bones in his front hooves and bruises in his heel bulbs from low heels. So the treatment is to inject him with OsPhos, an osteoporosis drug, to help solidify the bone and stop any further changes from happening plus trim back Simi's toes and cast his hooves on wooden blocks and squishy pads to give him a comfortable cushion while his heels are growing out. Fingers crossed the treatments will work and he will become comfortable enough again to be ridden happily!
Our First Birthday Party! - Click to Watch Video
We hosted our first Birthday Party on Super Bowl Sunday for a lovely little girl who comes to ride our ponies named Isou.
She turned five this week and celebrated her big day with lots of animals, a bouncy house, crafts and fun!
We really enjoyed the whole experience and hope to provide this service to the community for many more years to come.
We are especially happy and proud to support our local youth by offering neighborhood kids the chance to work at the parties setting up the site, helping with the animals, and cleaning up after the fun comes to an end.
As for us, 100% of the proceeds collected goes straight to our Sponsor Kids.
So it's a win-win!
West Coast Equine Hospital
Our beautiful boy Simi came to us with slight lameness issues many years ago, but unfortunately it has now progressed to a level that can no longer go unattended. In fact, we have tried chiropractors, acupuncture, osteopathy, Chinese medicine and vet checks, but we finally decided to pull out the big guns and send him to West Coast Equine Hospital in Somis for an MRI of all four legs. He has to be put under general anesthesia for this procedure and then stay for another 24 hours until the results from the images are back. Hopefully, they find a treatable issue, but if it turns out otherwise, then he will officially be retired, be used for gentle walks and have the primary job of being top dog of the barn. It was also his first time in a trailer in five years, and Olenka, Kalyna and I had a good time helping him load, hitching up the trailer and driving off the property for the first time in a long time!
Chai and Chester
Chai is growing up and becoming friends with all of the animals she will one day hopefully help to protect! She is kind and loving but definitely feisty and energetic.
In the beginning of March she will have another puppy friend with whom she can roughhouse. A little male English Labrador (a yellow beauty we are calling Chester) from Springwood Labradors will be coming home soon.
We love our Labs!
Alpaca Play Date - Post
Last weekend our neighbor came over to bring his Golden Retrievers and alpaca named Sage over for a play date. He is a professor at UCLA and uses his alpacas as therapy animals to visit the hospital as well as his students in class. After visiting us, he took them all to an animal friendly beach for a romp in the sand and sea. I just love his sense of adventure and good work. Only in Topanga!
Frédéric and Magali Part 2
I am back from the clinic, and am happy to say that it was a grand SUCCESS! They are an absolutely lovely couple. So warm, so caring, so full of horse wisdom and expertise that I can easily say I have never met anyone quite like them. They are technically very astute and correct, but their love, compassion and ability to listen to the horse is what makes them stand out from the crowd. Relaxation for the horse was paramount in every situation and was never overshadowed by our human desire to have horses learn something at our pace, which often translates to NOW! They both truly believe (and demonstrate) that a horse who learns through stress, is not a happy one and will never become the partner all horse people dream to have. Two of their books are available HERE if you are interested in reading more about this wonderful couple. I highly recommend them!
Frédéric Pignon and Magali Delgado - Post
I have the great privilege (and a loving husband who insists that I go!) to take a four day horsemanship clinic in Arizona this weekend with Frédéric Pignon and Magali Delgado. My husband attended one of their clinics at their farm in the south of France a few years ago and just loved them! He learned so much and also had the honor of seeing their amazing show EQI on opening night. With so much experience with their own horses as well as helping to create the international horse show Cavalia, their knowledge is extensive and their performances and way of being, simply beautiful. Nicholas loved the entire experience so much that he considers his time with them one of the highlights of his life! Now they are offering clinics in the US, so I am so excited to meet and learn from them too.....
Chai
Sadly, we lost our beautiful black Lab Chai this summer. She was 12 1/2 years young and we all miss her greatly. She had the sweetest temperament of any dog we've ever met. When Chai was only a year old I took her to play in a dog park and a woman stopped me and asked if by any chance my dog was from Oregon? She told me that her own dog was the sweetest Lab she had ever known and she came from an English Labrador breeder in Oregon who specialized in breeding very gentle dogs. She guessed Chai was from the same place judging by her calm personality at such a young age. And guess what? She was right! Best part of the story is that I recently contacted the breeder after Chai left us to see if they were still breeding these great dogs and found out that they are! A new, wonderful little Chai puppy will be coming to us from Thornwood Labradors on November 4th. We are so excited!
Hooves or Wheels
While summer offers a nice chance for families to come and visit the animals, our own kids are usually more excited to be off exploring something new! This summer the passion was scootering and skateboarding so we are now investing in a used half pipe which we hope to use for future WHF summer camps and something else for visiting kids to enjoy. It should be here in the first days of October 2017, so stay tuned!
Bread and Butter - Click to Watch Video
It's June and that means that turkeys across the country have hatched and are ready to find homes. We bought these two cuties this year, Bread and Butter. They will be huge very soon, but for now are small and cute enough to cuddle in the house once and awhile.
Here they are at one week old taking a nap in Luke's bed.
A Pond Called Home
Another month, another opportunity to learn something new. This time it was about the ducks. Although they were happy splashing around the plastic kiddie pool I bought them at CVS, it just didn't seem right that they spent the majority of their day sitting in pine shavings with the rabbits and chickens. Pine savings are dry, and every time I turned around it seemed the ducks were sitting in their water bowl, not just drinking from it. That's when it really dawned on me, that ducks are waterfowl...meaning they were designed for water, not land, not pine shavings nor kiddie pools, but lakes and ponds. So I made the decision to find them a pond in a gated community and then set them free, with the understanding that I would catch them and bring them home again if they seemed unhappy in their new environment. It took them one day to leave the safety of the bushes, but then after that, they never looked back! Now they swim around all day and look as happy as can be. They eat plants and snails and are essentially just being ducks. If we ever build a large enough pond, I will re-examine the idea of getting more. Until then.....it's great to see them free!
Mustang Maddy Facebook Entry
I mentioned a few weeks ago that one of the people who inspires me most is a young woman called Mustang Maddy. She is a horse trainer and gives instruction and offers all kinds of interesting tidbits on her Facebook page. We follow her monthly subscription (which has more information than her regular page) to learn the most we can.
This was an entry she wrote a few days ago, and one posted today, that I found particularly encouraging, as it is a very vulnerable feeling to open up our barn and way of living to the critique of outside world.
She is so wise for her young years.
*****************************
May 28, 2017.
Be Real Not Perfect.
To be real is to be vulnerable..
To be vulnerable is to let your TRUE self be seen.
To be vulnerable is to have the COURAGE to be imperfect..
To be vulnerable is to be BEAUTIFUL.
It is so easy these days to filter and edit our lives on social media to a perfection that is unattainable. We choose which parts to show, and we show the parts that make us look best.
The perfect look, the perfect horse, the perfect car, the perfect boyfriend, the perfect job..
It’s the "perfect life."
Sure, this may make us feel better about ourselves as the likes rack up, but how shallow is that approval!? How can we base true meaning of our lives off that?
And more than that, what is its effect on others following our journey?
I had a young girl get her picture taken with me the other day, and after her mom showed it to us for the girl’s approval, she said something like “Ugh, I look so ugly.”
This broke my heart..
Why do we continue setting unrealistic standards for these girls?
They see perfectly installed hair extensions and say, my hair sucks. It’s too thin. It’s too short.
They see perfectly applied make-up and they say, I have terrible skin.
They see the perfect body, and they say, I’m fat.
They see you and they say, I’m ugly.
I’m not good enough. I’m not pretty enough.
I am not worthy of love.
Too many people— including those we look up to— sacrifice reality for perfection.
The reality is that your beauty doesn’t lie in hair extensions, make-up, the perfect body, etc..
True beauty lies in imperfections and the courage to show them openly to the world.
*****************************
June 4th, 2017
The 3 Ways to Ward off Negativity
I recently posted about what it is to be vulnerable. Continuing along with that theme I want to talk about handling the criticism you will face once you find the courage to "put yourself out there"..
You see, if you begin to gain positive attention and admiration after putting yourself out there, you will also need to be willing to deal with the bad-- the criticism, the keyboard warriors, the cyber bullies..
But it's hard.
Because you can read through 200 comments and if 199 of them are positive and 1/200 is negative, take a guess at which one you will really remember..
At least it's easy to fall into that trap! I can't begin to list out the names I've been called, the rumors that have been told, and the preconceived judgement that has been made about my life and my work.
It can be a struggle to nourish the sensitivity that led to your creative success while at the same time somewhat harden in order to ward off the negativity..
So how do you handle it?
I think there are three big things for me that hopefully will help you guys too.
1. Don't take it personally
What you don't realize is that everyone has their own stories-- their own motives, patterns, and history-- that may express itself in an attack on you that actually has nothing to do with you!
2. Let go of what you know to be false.
Words can't hurt you if you dismiss them as false. If someone told you that you had blue hair, but you know you have blonde hair, then that wouldn't necessarily make you feel bad about yourself would it? Rather, you would ride off their ignorance because you know their labels to be false.. Just as if someone attacks you as a liar, stupid, etc. and you know this to be false, their words lose their power. But when you are left questioning their claim's validity, and in turn your self worth, is when their words can gain power over you.
3. Don't live to please others.
You have to be living out your passion in an attempt to fulfill what you believe to be your life's purpose; if you are living to gain approval or popularity, you are destined for failure from the beginning because it is simply not possible to please everyone-a lesson we must all learn!
Mammoth - Click to Watch Video
A little over a year ago I posted a video of our young neighbor flying through the air on his snowboard. Another season has passed and he and his brother continue to get better and better! They continually inspire us to do our best at everything we try and we wish them nothing but the best in their future.
In this video Sean and Luke stood beneath the jump to watch their friend fly by overhead. Luke actually crouched down to make sure he wouldn't be in the way.
Priceless!
Baby Duckies! Click to Watch Video
The orange colored light is from the heat lamp as these babies don't have their oil feathers yet, so they need help staying warm and toasty!
Uh oh....spring is here and that means when I drive to the local Feed Bin to get supplies for the animals, they have all kinds of new babies there too. Today I went to the store for rabbit food and came home with.....DUCKLINGS! They were just too cute to pass up, and I am hoping that they can live with the bunnies and pigs without being too messy (crazy thought, I know). We will give them a little pond to splash in as soon as they are big enough and the pigs can frolic and make it muddy and yukky too. Oh boy!