A quick note, we're at The Mane Event in Red Deer April 26-28 this year. Unfortunately the Pet Expo in Calgary is the same weekend (April 27-28) so we've got to decide if we can do both venues. If you can volunteer either in helping create the booths or in manning the booths, please contact either Mike at bearvalleyab@aol.com or Carmen at bear.valley.volunteer@gmail.com. Time is of the essence as we have already paid for the Mane Event booth but have not committed to a Pet Expo booth yet. This year the Pet Expo is at Spruce Meadows, which would be a really great venue for us!

Also please note our annual general meeting will be held Feb 9th here at the rescue; RSVP if you will be attending so we know how many people to expect.

I've had two things on my list for months now, and hopefully soon I'll actually get to them - adding a wish list to the website; and creating a 'foster horse follow-up form'. Oh, and also, we're looking at starting a fundraiser for an 'Anderson Glide', which would be a great thing to have for down horses that need to be moved. The price looks to be around $1800.

Our upcoming fundraising casino has been moved up from the first quarter of 2014 to the last quarter of 2013. The casino will be held in Red Deer. We will be advised of the actual dates in May. There will be accommodation provided for volunteers to stay overnight in Red Deer if required. We had a lot of fun at the previous casino, so let us know if you are interested in helping out!

Sue Chataway, one of our older foster horses (and former pmu mare) was euthanized at her foster home last week due to a sudden debilitating illness. Thank you Jenn and Mike for fostering her for a number of years. Shandra developed pneumonia in one lung, we believe from inhaling some fluid from a draining abscess in her nasal cavity or throat. She's on antibiotics now to treat it. She's not coughing or showing other symptoms other than pus coming out one nostril (and of course the congestion in one lung). The smell from the one nostril was pretty bad, but it's improving so hopefully that means the antibiotics are working. We think that Lucky had a minor stroke a couple of days ago. His tongue is tending to hang out the right side of his mouth and he's drooling quite a bit. He thankfully doesn't have any other visible symptoms and we're hoping with time he'll recover fully. He is able to eat his mash and doesn't have any trouble walking, was even still being his normal playful self this morning, goofing around with Old Red.

We delivered Mugsy to her new foster home last week, she's going to keep another old pony company. Tomorrow we'll be delivering Blizzard and Kiwi to their new foster home, along with Cassie who has been adopted to the same home. Today I dropped Twobits off at her new foster home just down the road. Max is adopted! He's such a cute little guy, I'm really happy he's going to have his own person. Poncho the donkey and Lexus the Thoroughbred mare have each been adopted by their respective foster homes. Smudge is back and up for adoption; he was fostered out for 2 1/2 years with the Christman family and it worked out wonderfully that we were able to deliver Mugsy and pick up Smudge on the same day, as they were within about 10 kms of each other. I haven't had a chance yet to spend much time with him but Smudge seems to be much quieter and better mannered than when he left. Trouble is also adopted! She'll be leaving for BC at the end of February.

Our farrier Pat was out for 3 days last week and we got lots of horses trimmed again. Thank you to everyone who was able to help on the farrier days. We also were able to deworm all but 2 of the weanlings. The last 2 (Girl and Atticus) will be done next week once they're halter-broke. Of course I had to do the poop inspection afterwards and see who's pooping out worms. Boy, some of them were pretty infested. I'm so glad we got them done. By the time we do them again in the spring they should all be halter-broke and easy as pie to do, just like the previous year's bunch.

Wow, I don't know where the time went, it's been a month since the last update. The on-line auction went well, thank you again to Kyndra for all her hard work in collecting items and getting it going. Thank you as well to Mary Ellen for helping to get some items together. Our sincere appreciation to everyone who donated and bid - we will net over $3000! We should receive the funds shortly and any shipping credits should be taken care of this week as well. Please contact either me or Kyndra if there are any issues that still need to be resolved. We do have a couple of items that did not get sold. I have listed them on the fundraising page if you'd like to snap them up now. If anything got missed please let me know.

Very sadly, we lost both Major and Patches recently, about 10 days apart, both just about the same way, namely they went down in the cold for unknown reasons. Major was already gone when we discovered him, which is always a shock and so saddening, and Patches we worked on for 12 hours to try to help her recover but without success and she was euthanized quietly. We have to be reconciled to the fact that we did the best we could and their lives were good while they were here with us.

PQ and Vega have gone to their new home - PQ was very pregnant so I'm glad she's gone somewhere were they can keep a closer eye on her and have her inside to foal. Paloma, Amadeus, Max and Captain are back from school. They all did really well while they were there! We delivered Malone to his new home - our vet adopted him! Lilly sliced her shoulder open. We had Dr. Erickson out to clean it up and stitch it up as best she could. There was surprisingly little swelling and it's healing up nicely, though the vet did have to do some more cleaning up of the dead tissue as it died back. Lilly was a good patient and didn't seem to mind the week she had to spend in the barn even though it was probably her first time being indoors. Aric's bloodwork to check his testosterone level was... inconclusive! Due to the time of year, his results don't really tell us for sure what his status is as it's borderline between a gelding and a non-breeding stallion. However because he seems to think he is a breeding stallion we're fairly certain his reading shows he's a gelding, if that makes sense. 

Thank you to Darcy & Karen Grudeski for the hay donation. 

A reminder to all our foster homes, further to the email I sent out (let me know if you didn't get it!), if you would like to receive a tax receipt for fostering we need to address it within the next week or so. I've sent out all the year end charitable receipts, so if you made a donation in 2012 and don't receive your receipt by late next week, please let me know.

We have a new application for volunteering - check out the 'how you can help' section of the website. Thank you Carmen for volunteering to be our volunteer coordinator! You can contact Carmen about volunteering at bear.valley.volunteer@gmail.com.