Welcome Sarah and Roy!

A few weeks ago I received an email from Dave's mother, asking how our May or June would be as far as receiving visitors. As we have essentially nothing planned other than working on the ranch for the foreseeable future, we said come any time. OK, they said - we'll be there next Friday!

Unfortunately I was sick as a dog nearly that whole week before they arrived. Actually, I might have pulled out of it except that after two days in bed I went ahead and traveled to the client in Albuquerque for the day because the trip couldn't be rescheduled. My 1 hour flight came in 4 hours late - really cutting into my effective time on site. Never the less I went home as scheduled... and arrived home much sicker than when I'd left. So two more days in bed - this time courtesy of codeine-enhanced cough syrup these days went much quicker than the first two. I was feeling pretty good by the time they arrived.

I'd warned Sarah and Roy that we'd be working much of when they were here. Saturday morning I went down to be a helper for the lesson as usual, and they came down to watch. Lessons went great that weekend, by the way. After that we went out for lunch and to look at refridgerators. We'd decided to buy Ginger a fridge for her birthday - we've been talking about it for awhile because the three of us are overfilling the one that we are sharing. We thought we'd get the fridge now and put it in the garage. As that was the day of Ginger's party, we were home by 4ish to feed the ponies and help set up.

The party was a huge success - not the least of reasons being that Jess did a great job of organizing, decorating, AND cleaning up, so there wasn't a lot for us to do.

Sunday turned out to be a really great day - we got a number of things done that we wouldn't normally have, and yet still had a relaxing time. It started with sleeping in until 9:00! Since we don't have lessons on Sunday until 1:00, we don't feed breakfast until about noon. So, Sarah, Roy and we had a beautiful brunch on the deck. Later Sarah helped me move hay down to the pastures, Dave and Roy worked on the old tractor and managed to get it running again. Our neighbor was running irrigation water to flush out the ditches - and at one point it overflowed behind the dog barn. So we cleared that dam, but then set about trying to syphon some of that water off to water our trees back there. (neighbor had told us to help ourselves to the water if we wanted any). Well, that was entertaining - took about 6 of us to stand around and get the hose syphoning.

After lessons were done on Sunday, we got Sarah up on Harley for a little lesson, while Dave and Ginger worked Shadow and Rio. Before putting them out, we grabbed a picture of all seven of our horses. All told, it was a long, satisfying day on the ranch.

Monday I went back to work, and came home to hear Sarah's tales of mucking out the barn for us. She said she liked it. And then she asked if it would be ok if they stayed an extra day... I said sure - and you're welcome to muck all of the stalls you want while you're here!

We OWN Shadow!

This is a terrible thing to admit, but we JUST GOT OWNERSHIP PAPERS on Shadow this past Monday. That was May 23rd. We brought Shadow and Rio home April 7th. It has been an incredible ordeal - for part of which we are to blame, but gosh - I never dreamed it could get to be this much of a hassle.

We have several other friends out looking to purchase horses currently, and we've gotten a number of horror stories from them too. One went so far as to put a deposit on a horse and was working to schedule a vet check, when she learned that another mutual aquaintance also had found a great horse that she had put a deposit down on. They got to talking - and discovered that they both had put a deposit on the same horse! Not only that, but the horse ended up being sold to yet another party! It is stories like these that make me determined not to pay any money until the papers have been transferred and vet check complete. But it is so HARD to stick to your guns sometimes. (unfortunately we heard these stories after having brought Shadow and Rio home, so we were stuck for the long haul.)

It all started when Dave and I went down to pick them up. The seller said she'd have the brand papers all ready for us. Well, we got bogged down over the fact that I had written up a bill of sale - since we'd given her a check several days prior to that and if I hadn't asked for some sort of receipt she wouldn't have even given us that. But her receipt wasn't adequate as far as I was concerned, so I wrote up a bill of sale describing the horses and 2 sentences about her "Return Policy". Well - that was an issue. She insisted on completely rewriting the return policy statement, with a page and a half of text, and proceeded to take nearly 30 minutes to do so. Furthermore, what she put in writing was NOT what she said verbally - and after we'd both signed it she said - oh, and I'll do better than what I wrote down, it's just for legal purposes I can't promise too much.

Unfortunately it was at THIS point that I asked for the brand papers and she told me she didn't have them! (Brand papers are essentially your Title for a horse - without them you don't own it.) She said the inspector had been out the day before but didn't have time to give her the papers, that he would just mail them to me directly. This ended up being a complete lie. It takes 5 minutes to write up the papers - if all were in order there was no reason to put it off. Things were clearly not in order - and as a matter of fact she did not have papers on the horses herself. I know, I know - we really should have just left the horses there - except that we'd already given her the check and I know darn well we wouldn't get any money out of her at that time.

Well, it's been a huge deal, 6 and a half weeks, 30-40 calls on my part to the seller and her brand inspector (A) (because neither one of them EVER initiated a call with me), a visit from our local brand inspector (B) to see the horses, inspector A then had to track down inspector C where the seller got the horses from. Then inspector A wanted the seller to set up an appointment for him to give the papers to her so she could sign them and mail to us. He claimed he could not give them to us directly. But seller was unwilling to take the time to schedule an appointment - claiming that she'd given the inspector an agent authorization and thus he didn't need her signature. I don't know what came of it all, but in the end I got all three of us on a conference call, she agreed to send another agent authorization to the inspector and then he could give Shadow's paper directly to me. Oh, and somewhere in there she also decided to let me know that "usually we have adopters pay for the inspections, so you can pay the inspector to get the paper." Un huh - bite my tongue time. So last night on the way home from work I met up with him and got the paper for Shadow. The seller has the one for Rio. Has had it since April 19th. All she has to do is put it in the mail. And amazingly she still maintains that none of this hassle has anything to do with her - that this is normal in horse transactions, and she is getting a little tired of "bending over backwards" to be accommodating for me. Course, in the mean time she has moved, changed phone numbers, and is due to go into the hospital tomorrow to have a baby. Somehow, if she hasn't mailed it yet, I'm thinking it may not happen. At least I've found out that I can get an official copy from the office - just have to pay for it. But all told, might be antother cheap $20 to be done with it.

It was quite the bash

Ginger's birthday was Sunday, so her kids threw her a Surprise Birthday Party on Saturday at the ranch. Tricky thing about living on a large property - there is absolutely no way to hide the cars 'down the street' when people come over. Unless, you know, they park a few miles down the street. Or, at the neighbors. Tom and Theresa were very gracious and let us stash the cars over there, and Jess ran a shuttle back and forth.

During the week we were trying to feel Ginger out to see if she knew what was going on, but it didn't seem so. Earlier in the day I asked what she and Roger were doing for her birthday, and it was with some exasperation she said "I don't know! He's coming over to take me out... shopping or something." We chuckled, told her we'd take care of dinner feeding for the horses and wished her a good time.

I also had to chuckle over how we got Ginger to help clean the house for her own party... By a funny twist of fate Dave's parents decided to come visit this same weekend. So we'd been putting in the extra effort, mowing the lawn - twice! - etc to get the place in order, and it was convenient to say it was for the in-law's visit. Next thing I knew Ginger picked up the vaccuum and was going to town too. (We live on a ranch, it takes about 2 hours of us going in and out for the house to get noticeably dirty - after that we tend to just live with dirt for long periods of time.)

Anyways, it prooved to be a surprise. We had a great mix of people from different parts of her friends. We had a good time cheering and jeering to the DVD of photos that Roger had assembled from her baby pictures all the way through to our recent ranch adventures. Then we also watched some snippets of old home movies put on DVD - including of course the one of her horse in college who decided NOT to participate in the barrell racing event in which they were entered.

(again, apologies for the horrible pictures - my camera just can't cut action shots inside!)

Happy Birthday Ginger!