The comings and goings! OY!

We have been sooo busy at the Smushie Ranch. 

The most exciting thing is that our foster horse, Sequoia found her forever home!  

A little about Sequoia.... The parents strive to keep our blog the most positive and uplifting as possible. But the life of a PMU horse is anything but, so as unpleasant as it is, we'll share.

Sequoia is a rescued PMU horse. PMU stands for 'pregnant mare's urine', which is used to make hormone replacement drugs. PMU mares are kept pregnant and forced to stand in pee lines for most of their lives. A mare normally stays pregnant for 11 months. Six to seven months out of their pregnancy, they are confined to small stalls and hooked up to pee lines. In the pee line, pouches are attached to their urethra to collect their urine. While attached, the PMU horses cannot turn around, lie down or even groom themselves. Some mares are forced to stand for the entire 6 to 7 months.

There is much more information, including what happens to the PMU mare's foal. You can Google it if you want more information. 

Sequoia came to live with us when she was rescued from such a facility. She a big giant draft horse, but gentle as a lamb.

Dad is 6'4", so it gives you an idea of how big sweet Sequoia is.

The parent's very good friend, who owns Shire horses came with her giant draft trailer to help take Sequoia to her new home. 

Judy was makin' sure momma wasn't taking pictures of her butt. That's a big NO NO!

Daddy walked Sequoia from her pasture to her ride home.

The parents get a chuckle out of Judy's license plate! BOL!!

Everyone came down to give Sequoia a proper send off. 

And off she goes to her new forever home where she'll be treated like a queen!

That's not all...

We also got another French Bulldog Rescue Network foster! Woot Woot.  

She's not up on the website yet, so we can say too much about her yet. Except.. she's darn cute!

Okay, we can show ya this much. 

The Smushies

Party Animal

It was the Queen's 6th birthday on Tuesday!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO OUR STELLA!!!

She did a little celebrating.. urp.

When are we doin' Smushie shots?

After some Smushie partying, we were all ready for some recuperation.

Hey, do you mind closing the curtains. It's a little bright in here.

Dad was out of town this week for some wine conference. Needless to say, the Smushie walkway has been on hold. As soon as he gets back, we're gonna crack the whip.

The Smushies

Handy Smushies

Over the weekend, we had a respite from the rain to do a little work on the ranch. More specifically, we did some work in the Smushie yard.

This is what part of our yard looks like thanks to Marshall using it as speedway. Notice the lack of grass?

The parents gave up trying to re-grow grass since it's such a heavily trafficked area. 

We never walk back and forth through here. Never. It's all Marshall's fault. 

At our request, the parents procured some bricks and went to work.

Pretty cool, huh?

It was a lot of hard work snoopervising the parents. 

Are you sure you're measuring accurately?

Gimme that, I'll show you how to do it.

Macaroni was making sure the new walkway is stuffie worthy...

The rain started up again before the parents could finish the Smushie walkway. As mush as we tried to convince them they wouldn't melt in the rain and to keep working, they weren't buying it. 

Hope to post completed pics soon!

The Smushies

Batten Down the Hatches!

We're finally getting some much needed rain from the storm that's been pounding the Northwest. 

Caleb the baby is wearing his warm, waterproof and psychedelic blanket...  Momma says it was on sale! 

Hey ladies, I'm totally confident in my sexuality to wear pink. 

Macaroni has learned that the storm is coming and he'll have to drop his Frenchie nuggets out in the rain.

But momma, you know my sphincter closes shut at the slightest hint of precipitation!

Marshall headed up with our furiend Melony to help round up the goats into their shelter. He was nice enough to spare a bit of room in the truck for Melony to drive...

Is it my fault she didn't spring for the crew cab?

Ben, one of our many friendly, free ranging roosters tucked all their hens into the coup. 

We've been so busy getting everyone ready for the storm, we're plum tuckered out.

SNORE...FART... SNORE... GRUNT... FART.. FART... SNORE...

Stay warm and dry everyone!

The Smushies

Mancha is going to Jail

That's right. Mancha is going off to jail.

He get's upset when the parents leave the house and this last time he wreaked havoc. He knocked over a lamp and broke it. He even jumped up on the table and ate a bunch of mail! 

Oh sure, he tried to blame us, but momma knows the truth. Really, just look at that face. His is the look of a stinker, is it not?

Momma says the dilemma is that when he came into FBRN rescue, he had been crated by his previous owners like 100 million hours a day and night, so he hates the crate. He howls and barks and tries to break out.

So, the parents are gonna get him this thing. It's like a puppy tent. .

It's big enough for Mancha, and for Macaroni to keep him company. 

Momma is gonna test it out for short periods of time, like when she's out feeding the horses and stuff. So we'll keep y'all posted on the little destructo and his new jail cell... er we mean the luxury Smushie condo! 

The Smushies

Say Hello to my Little Friend

If I sit here very quietly, I know one of my little friends will show up.

Well, hello there!

Come here little friend, I wanna check you out.

Now where are you going?

I thought we were friends?

Regardless of how 'cute' R.C. pretends to be, don't ever believe the EVIL cat. EVER!

The Smushies

As Seen on T.V. Sunday - The Eggies

We have lot's of eggs. Even in the cold of winter, the hens are a layin'...

The thing about free range chicken eggs is that their shells are really hard and difficult to peel once hard boiled. When you peel 'em, most of the egg white comes off with the shell. Making egg salad or deviled eggs is a bummer when you don't have much egg white.

So momma found this handy dandy 'As Seen on T.V.' gadget called the Eggies. Hmm, sounds promising.

You're supposed to crack open the egg into one of these plastic things. It's kinda messy because the opening to the top of the plastic container is rather small and momma isn't the most... coordinated shall we say.

Then, you put the little cap on the opening and hope that it all seals before you place it in the pot of water. 

Unfortunately, no matter how much momma tightened the top and the middle, a couple of them didn't seal very well and leaked egg white stuff into the water. No biggie, but kinda defeats the purpose of preserving the egg whites. So you let the little buggers boil for about 15 minutes. Then let 'em cool before you twist the plastic things open to reveal what's supposed to be the most beautifully hard boiled egg...

We'll let you be the judge, but either momma failed miserably or else this is just another gadget to throw in the junk drawer.

Momma said regardless of how nasty lookin' the eggs turned out, we're not getting 'em in our food. Apparently our farts are more than most humans can stand and adding egg to the equation would be deadly. Whatevers. We'll suffer with our bland, crappy dog food. You can see we're practically wasting away, right?

Also, today momma made a gigantic batch of beef stew. Are you wondering if we got some? Nope, didn't get any of that either...

What's a Smushie gotta do around here to get a hand out?

Ah, perhaps a pee mail to the parents will get through.

The Smushies

Baby it's cold Outside!

You won't find us far from the roaring fire while it's so chilly outside...

Hope everyone is stayin' warm this winter.

The Smushies

TGIF!

Whoo Hoo!  

It's Friday! 

Momma thought she'd use Friday's to introduce our chickens (who we love to boof at through the fence)...

This is our chicken named Phyllis Diller.  She's a Polish chicken and is loud loud loud!  She complains about everything, specially when she's squeezing out an egg. She also comes right up to the fence to taunt us with that crazy bouffant on top of her head. Once she even pecked Gunther right on the nose. As if!

Have a fabulous weekend. 

The Smushies

Hump Patrol

Being that it's Wednesday, hump day... 

We thought it'd be appropriate to talk about Long Ball Larry and Peggy Sue.

Long Ball Larry is 3 years old and is really very sweet for a bull. Longhorns in general are very docile and sweet cows....  He was hand raised from a baby and is used to people. We've had Larry for almost 6 months now and the parents really enjoy him.  Well, except for the fact that he's kind of an escape artist and on more than one occasion the parents have bolted out the front door because they noticed Larry out on a walk about while cruising past the living room window!

So, about a month ago, mom began looking for a girlfriend for Larry and came across Peggy Sue. She's only 2 years old and considered a heifer because she's never been humped and had a baby.  She's really playful and runs circles around Larry. She even runs up to the parents when they bring feed into the pasture, which scares the crap out of them because they wonder sometimes if she'll bowl them over. 

Long Ball Larry and Peggy Sue are definitely in love. They do a lot of cuddling and flirting...

 But the parents want a Longhorn baby so they wanna see some HUMPING! 

Last week, Peggy Sue finally went into heat so momma actually took her coffee and camera out to the lovers pasture to see if she could capture the magic event. She sat out there for hours!!  Instead, she observed Peggy Sue mount Long Ball Larry a bunch of times. And Larry did try to hump Peggy Sue, but momma said she didn't seem quite ready. *SIGH*...   

Maybe they wanted their privacy. Although, around here we aren't shy about our humping skills. Especially Gunther, aka Sir Humps-a-Lot. 

Momma is hopeful that in the 2-3 days Peggy Sue was in heat, at some point Long Ball Larry made his moves and they made a baby. Being that Peggy Sue is a Heifer, it might take a few cycles before she 'figures out what she's supposed to do'....  Momma marked on the calendar just so we could all keep track. If she doesn't go into heat again then we know there's a bun in the oven! 

Keep your paws crossed everyone!

The Smushies

Pee Ess....  Longhorn cattle are mainly kept as 'pasture ornaments' or to help manage larger herds of cattle because they're so calm. They aren't really used for food.  The parents consider all the animals on Smushie Ranch as pets. Even the chickens are pets, except their eggs, which we all enjoy.