Puppies and Horses

So I have had Geronimo for about 6 1/2 months now. He is 2 1/2 years old and the dorkiest horse I have met. He has such a funny and mellow personality most of the time, but is also the herd leader so he has to be the first one to look out for danger. This means that he is usually the first one to leave the barn if he thinks something might hurt them. While he is a bit jumpy, he is only mildly so. He doesn't have a major freak-out, and it is always easy to handle him. Yesterday Dad and I went out to work with the horses (on an extremely windy Taylor day) and poor Geronimo got traumatized. :) Dad was going to work with Lucy and in the end Geronimo got a bit spooked, which involved him bolting a bit. Even with his little bolt he was super easy to handle and just made me fall in love with him a little bit more. So while we were out in the wind Dad asked if I wanted to thrown the saddle on him, so after I bit I decided sure why not. So he went in and got my saddle and we put it on him. I don't know if it was Dad, the wind, or the combination of both but he was a bit more difficult than usual to put it on him. Then Dad goes, "Get up on him." Ha, in the wind and after you have him all sorts of traumatized? ... Okay. :) So I went inside and put on my boots, just in case he wound up on my toes while I was getting on him. So I came back out and did a little test mount. Totally fine, just a little tense on his part. So then I get up on him. A little bit of a startled step forward, but Dad had him and he was fine. :) So I rode him around for maybe 10-15 minutes. He was a little jumpy, but nothing bad. For the first time being on him ever, and as far as I know I am the first person to ever get on him, he was great. Dad told him he better get used to it, because it was going to be happening a lot more in the future. He was pouting a bit, his lower lip was sticking out and Dad was making fun of him, but he did great. I just love my dorky horse. Dad took a couple of pictures with his phone, but since we just had the halter on Geronmio, he had the lead rope so couldn't take great pictures. So yes that is me on my horse, even if you can't see my face!

 So, I never posted about this, just because first I didn't want to talk about it, and then I just haven't posted in forever. Back in October my 7 almost 8 year old Amadeus died. I have lost dogs before, but this time was the hardest. I had had him the longest and had the strongest bond with him. Usually it is about 6 months before I get a new puppy. Well after just a couple of months I realized I needed a new puppy, the hole he had left was a lot bigger than usual and I needed something to fill it up. I knew I wanted another German Shepherd so I started looking. I checked the classified ads and looked at breeders websites. I found two breeders that were in the valley that I emailed. One offered me a purebred puppy for about 1/3 the usual price. One of her females had gotten to two of the males and had one sable male puppy (which is what I decided I was going to get). After looking at the possible fathers and the mom online, I just didn't feel good about him. The other breeder had a litter to be born in about a week. I had been looking at her website several times since about December and decided to tell her I wanted to reserve a puppy. She told me that I was the fourth person to reserve a male, and she wasn't sure how many males the female would have as she usually had more female puppies than male puppies. Well on the 26th of January she emailed me and said that the mom had had 14 puppies, 9 males and 5 females!! I had my puppy. :) So the first weekend of April I will get to go pick up Glock and bring him home. I had to come up with a "G" name as this is the G litter.