Monthly Archives: March 2010

Our Sheep Are Baaack and Having Babies!

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Black-Faced Ewe With Twin Lambs

With everything going on with Sports Girl and her knee surgery and recovery, I haven’t mentioned that our sheep came back to the ranch sometime around the first of the year.

The ewes had spent the last three months of 2009 at my brother- and sister-in-law’s place a few miles away getting bred. And then in the last week or so, they started lambing. Three of our five ewes have had babies so far – and all three have had twins.

Unfortunately, we did lose one lamb just 24 hours after it was born. Cocoa, the mother, was the ewe who lost her first lamb after giving birth in a snow storm last spring; I don’t think she really wanted to deal with two lambs for her mothering experience as I don’t believe she was letting the second lamb nurse at all. By the time we realized this, it was too late to save the poor little thing. Just another sad fact of nature, I guess. My girls didn’t cry, although there was certainly a feeling of sadness hanging over all of us.

So we have five baby lambs frolicking around our sheep pens. And they are really cute. Busy Toddler got the biggest belly laugh out of watching the little lambs when she went down to help feed this afternoon with Handsome Hubby.

My father-in-law has been very busy calving for the past month, as well. The winter weather here hasn’t really been very friendly for newborn calves and sheep, but somehow things are going all right.

In my naïve, younger years, I always pictured tiny baby lambs and calves laying with their mothers on a bed of bright green grass with the sun shining brightly down on them. I suppose that scenario would be more realistic if these critters were born in May rather than February and early March, but that schedule doesn’t work well for us.

My father-in-law calves in February and March so he has more time for farming later in the spring; we have to lamb as early as possible so the babies will be as close to grown/finished as possible when it’s time to show them at the county fair. So our babies have been born amidst snow, sleet, rain, fog and mud. If the critters themselves weren’t so cute, it would be anything but a pretty sight.

We’re still watching the other two ewes, hoping to keep our lamb crop ratio as close to 200 percent as we can. And we’re hoping for warmer, drier weather.

Horse Lover Struggles To Get Time on Horse Back

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Horse Lover's passion revealed itself early. Here she is at 3 years of age using our Welsh Corgi as her trusty steed. Note the saddle blanket and lead line. I'm sure she would have had a halter around the dog's nose if she would have allowed it.

Sometimes I think Horse Lover was born into the wrong family. While we do live in the country, and we actually have two horses at our disposal, Horse Lover doesn’t get to ride them near as often as she would like.

Honestly, she hardly ever gets to ride at all. That’s because Handsome Hubby is gone a lot for work, and my horsemanship skills are seriously lacking. Horse Lover actually knows a lot more about horses than I do, but unfortunately horses are just too large and potentially dangerous for a pre-teen to ride without some experienced help and supervision.

Even if Handsome Hubby was around more, I don’t know if Horse Lover would get to ride any more often. Handsome Hubby grew up riding horseback while working cattle, not for leisure. He might not admit it, but he really doesn’t get the intricacies of showing horses in shows or even understand the importance of certain skills such as proper “posting” techniques.

But Handsome Hubby does respect the knowledge Horse Lover has accumulated through reading and watching. He might even admit that Horse Lover may already know more about horsemanship and equitation than he knows.

I’m Not Interested in Horse Back Riding

Meanwhile, I must confess that I really don’t want to add horsemanship to my list of lifetime skills. I feel bad about that sometimes, but I have absolutely no interest in riding horses. That probably makes me a bad parent, but at least I’m honest!

I do feel some pressure to take up horseback riding for my middle daughter’s sake, but I don’t know when I would do it. As the old saying goes, “There are only so many hours in the day,” and I believe I am already trying to cram too many things into those hours.

Thankfully, Horse Lover is somewhat cautious in her horseback riding approach. So we don’t have to worry about her going off and trying to ride horseback without help. Yet her apprehension does have its drawbacks as it keeps her from improving her skills very quickly.

Horse Lover would like to compete in our county 4-H horse show this summer, but she is scared to ride Sadie, our horse with show experience. The horse is well trained, but she likes to test her riders, and she is a bit rusty. Both Horse Lover and Sadie need some training help, but that presents another problem – we don’t have a horse trailer to transport the horse nor do we have the extra hundreds of dollars at our disposal to pay for these services.

Would It Be Easier If We Didn’t Even Have a Horse?

Sometimes I wonder if it would be easier on Horse Lover if we didn’t have a horse at all. Wouldn’t it be easier for her to handle NOT riding if she didn’t even have a horse to ride?

The winter weather has given Handsome Hubby and I a bit of a break from Horse Lover’s pleas for lessons and to ride. After all, even the most dedicated rider can’t get excited about riding in sub-zero temperatures with 40 mph winds and drifting snow. (Did I mention that we don’t have an indoor riding arena, either?)

What Horse Lover lacks in experience, she makes up for in desire. And while I admire her passion and diligence, Handsome Hubby and I may well go crazy when spring arrives and Horse Lover resumes her begging. I’m not sure which will be harder to bear – a long winter with cold, snowy weather or a long spring with a pre-teen daughter persisting to ride her horses. I should know the answer to that question in a few months …

Sports Girl Needs to Strengthen Quads to Protect Knee

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Monday was D-Day for Sports Girl – Doctor Day that is. She went back for her third follow-up exam following her MPFL reconstruction surgery back in mid December.

Except for being told she could immediately resume all her former activities without risk, the appointment couldn’t have gone better. The doctor did say that her left patella (kneecap) is now completely stable with less shifting than even her right. And the x-ray showed that the kneecap now sits straight on her joint rather than presenting with an outward tilt as it did before. The x-ray did, however, highlight the two metal screws she now has permanently implanted in her left kneecap, but these have left no lingering effects, thank goodness. If we hadn’t seen them on the x-ray, we might not have believed they were there!

Sports Girls’ quadriceps, however, are still obviously smaller on her left leg than her right in spite of undergoing more than 15 30-minute physical therapy sessions over the past two months and completing exercises on her own almost daily. Rebuilding and toning muscle takes time, and the doctor says resuming physical activity now would put her at risk for other injuries such as an ACL tear. He recommends another four weeks of physical therapy and exercises to further strengthen her leg and better protect her knee before she starts working out or competing in any sports.

The doctor wants to see her again on March 29 after she completes four more weeks of strength training, so running in spring track is off the table at least until then. And we are all OK with that, including Sports Girls. She’s been through too much already to risk any unplanned setback. It’s more important that she get back into shape over the summer, so she’s ready to play high school soccer come August and high school basketball after that starting in November.

It will be equally important, I think, for her to strengthen her right leg, as well as her left. While the doctor says he doesn’t personally know of anyone who has required the same MPFL surgery on both knees, he has known patients who’ve had subluxation or dislocation issues with both knees. So Sports Girls needs to prevent this from happening on her right knee as much as she needs to rebuild her left.

Besides doing her exercises, these days Sports Girl applies Mederma to her scars daily and looks forward to the day when she can run and play ball without even wearing a knee brace and with no fear of her kneecap sliding out of place. That day isn’t too far off …