The Hedley's Give a Home To Fleetwood

Holly Hedley contacted Theresa Manzella about Fleetwood - following are the photos she sent and what she wrote about adopting Fleetwood - who now has a wonderful forever home with the Hedley family.

Hi Theresa, this is our Double C Ranch. We have four horses...Hogan and Rango--our very large pussycats. Then there are Gideon (the palomino) and Fudgy (the special needs horse from the Camas Prairie rescue).

We have three separate fenced pastures. Two are large side-by-side rectangles and the other is a large adjoining square. Those pastures are all pretty green grass, and we rotate them.

Then there are three separate fenced corrals--one is medium sized and grassy. Another is a medium square walk-through. And the third is our hippotherapy corral with tie offs and mounting platform.

We are off Hwy 200 in NW Montana (Sanders County) and it is quiet, other than kids playing. Speaking of which, we have our twin 8 year olds, which do the hippotherapy. And two boys that will be seniors in high school next year, who do not ride at all. All four are present around the horses. They like them, and willingly do feeding and cleaning.
I am fully involved with the community, serving as School Board Trustee, and spending much of my day at school; either assisting or troubleshooting issues with our special needs sons, or addressing administrative issues in an official capacity. I deliver Meals of Wheels on Mondays and coach our Special Olympics track and field team. In the summer I take on full-time teacher role to continue our son's therapies (speech, occupational, and hippotherapy) in the classroom we have at home.

My horses are my therapy and theirs. I love to brush, lead, and talk to them. I do not ride much because it is difficult to be in a position away from assisting the children for any length of time. I find brushing and leading to be things THEY can join me in. And it's teaching them how to care for others. The brush strokes are good for their physical therapy. Multiple benefits.I'll attach some photos of our ranch that I took today, along with some human photos taken previously. Enjoy!

Thank you to the Hedley family for sharing your loving home with Fleetwood.

May Meeting and Weed Info

Hey Willing Servants!

We had a great meeting last night with some new faces present and a lot of good ideas generated! Thank You to all who came!

We also had a really comprehensive presentation made my Melissa Maggio of the Ravalli County Weed District on Toxic Weeds to horses. IT WAS REALLY GOOD and I learned a lot! It seems there are a lot of nasty weeds in our valley masquerading as pretty wild flowers that threaten the health of our horses! THAT’S IT! The pretty wildflowers HAVE To GO! Be sure to read her notes at the very bottom. That’s where you’ll find the serious symptoms and effects listed. Yeiks!

To see or save Toxic Weed presentation as Power Point (save) or PDF (view) click here and look under the ARTICLES section.

Have you hugged your horse today? I’m headed there now!
Theresa Manzella

The FashionABLE Affaire!

Our heartfelt thanks to Crazy Horse Consignments for working so hard and long to put on this amazing event. It was beautifully put together and a great time. The cowboy auction (yessiree, there were handsome cowboys auctioned off!) was such fun and some lucky high bidding ladies will enjoy the trail ride, ranch labor or custom tack provided by these gentlemen! The door prizes were awesome and the vendors had some really beautiful items. We were so lucky to have Shane Clouse, a really well-known and talented musician, provide such enjoyable entertainment.

The Western Fashion Show was wonderful - the models young and old, male and female, did such a great job (although no doubt that the little ones were the most adorable) and the clothing was spectacular - from show clothes to carharts!

For those of us who came hungry there were delicious snacks - cheeses, dips, veggies, garlic toasted baguette, cake, cookies, chocolate dipped strawberries, wine ...
Jeff and Virginia Hudson were there to man the Willing Servants booth and Theresa gave an overview presentation to the audience about Willing Servants.

Here are a few photos from the day - we hope a good time was had by all.

Misty Finally Goes Home

Thanks to Jeff and Virginia Hudson, who picked Misty up in the Bitterroot Valley and hauled her down to West Yellowstone, Misty is finally in her new home with Ann Stovall and her mother.

Almost there ...

Finally home

Misty meets more of the family

After plenty of squealing ...

A meeting of minds!

Ann's horse loving mother is blind, and Misty is her new horse to love and care for. The family, which includes an adorable blind mini horse who keeps company with a mini mule and 5 dogs, lives on a peninsula of a lake where they get bison coming to the house in the bitter part of winter. Thank you to this family for sharing their home and love with 28 year old Misty.

Bailey Has a Friend!

From Kim Dorman who is doing such a nice job of caring for Bailey - just look at how much his condition has improved in one month.

Bailey had his first day with one of our horses. We put him out with Shine, my mom's 15.2 hand arab gelding. They LOVED each other immediately. Whatever Shine did Bailey would do. Bailey wanted to eat out of the same hay pile (even though there were 4 of them), drink at the same time, roll at the same time, etc. They spent 20 minutes chewing on each other.

We have been brushing him daily and the long nasty hair just keeps coming out in matted clumps. We are hoping Shine will work on him during the day.

Mascot Justice Bailey

Kim Dorman, who is currently providing Bailey's home and care, sent these recent pictures of our mascot, Justice Bailey. Isn't he a cutie?

Small Horse World

Two wonderful older geldings, Traveller and Dandy, were recently adopted into a loving home. One of the people who was reached in the email forwards from one horse person to another about these horses responded with this information.

"I am quite sure that the Mandy's Jim Dandy gelding is a gelding that Penny and I purchased at the sale in Powell in 1984. I rode him that summer as the range rider for a ranch here in Sheridan on their FS Allotment in the Gravellies Mountain out of Ennis. We did sell the gelding that fall to some friends of Char Steele that lived out of Stevensville. Glad to hear he is still alive and doing good. Was a nice travelling horse with a excellent disposition. He was broke to saddle by young lady at Powell. I don't remember her first name, but her Dad was a good friend by the name of Leonard Foxworthy, who has since passed away. If I remember correctly the young lady taught him to lay down. Pete"

It IS a small world - especially for horse people.