All the horses are back for the winter with the exception of Zaz and Bella, who we were going to pick up today but it's way too cold and snowy, so we'll be picking them up on Friday instead. It's supposed to be warmer by then but THEY have been saying that for days - the little suns on the weather page never get any closer! A huge thanks to Paul from Timberline Tours for stopping by and helping with the hauling of some of the horses coming home from pasture - you saved us several trips back and forth. We had to leave a few of them behind as they didn't want to be caught, but when we went back to pick them up they decided to cooperate. I'm really glad to have them all back, it's nice to be able to interact with them again every day and they settle down a lot from how they are when they're running loose on acres and acres of pasture.

Trump was gelded a couple of weeks ago. It went very well but the poor guy swelled up a lot. Right now he's in with Clare the cow and her calf, Clare injured her back and is needing some R&R so we separated her from the rest of the herd. I think Trump was really desperate for some companionship as he and the calf are now great friends. We also had Patches' and Lexus' teeth floated. They were actually not too bad, considering last year when Lexus was done she had a bad tooth that wouldn't come out.

We delivered Lexus to her new foster home, thank you Sylvia for taking her in. Lexus gets to be companion to Sylvia's retired dressage horse and she'll get to enjoy daily mash and love while she's at it. We took in 2 new horses - Neva, a little shetland pony who's already found a new home, and Cheyenne, a nice appaloosa mare, blind in one eye, who also looks like she's already got a new home pending. Harley and Candy also left for a new home. Amadeus, Flint and Remi have been adopted. Flint, Saffron, Mellow, Shadow, Sterling, Noah, and Sofie are the horses we sent to Olds College for the equine program. We were so proud of them, they all were on their best behaviour when we delivered them and they are great ambassadors for the Rescue. We'll be picking them up on November 8th. Hopefully we can get more of them in for the next session in November. Now that we've done it once and are familiar with the program and the type of horses they are looking for, we know which horses would be good choices to send. Also Duchess is back, her adoption did not work out. She'll be going back to Samantha with Elation Equine to continue her training.

Samia and Nina are back from Gregg Garvie's, they're so much quieter and can be handled now. Susanne has been working with the horses from the auction. Captain is pretty well halterbroke now, can be touched all over and is working on picking up his feet. Paloma, Sphinx and Salsa are getting pretty close to being halterbroke. I did some leading with Java and she's very smart. Susanne has also started working with Flicka. Shandra gave us a scare with a colic episode on Oct 15th. Fortunately, after having the vet out and doing all sorts of shots and tests and palpations, it was determined to just be gas colic and she's recovered completely. Millie has a small puncture on her upper front leg, and Scoops also did the exact same thing to his leg today. Phoebe cut her front pastern and upper inside front leg. There was a post on facebook from another rescue just today about why is it that it's always the most skittish or unhandled horses that injure themselves?! Lena and Max came down with some fungal ringworm-y thing a few weeks ago. Fortunately it hasn't spread to anyone else. We also had pinkeye going around. It's a tough one to treat when there are so many flies and they're spreading it from horse to horse. That's the ONE plus of the cold, the flies are pretty well gone so the pinkeye is gone as well. With all this cold and damp, Summer was very chilled this morning so we've moved her and Malone into the barn for a few days.

We started chiro/massage on Valentino and have seen some improvement already. Poor guy was SO nervous during the session, it took him a long time to settle down but eventually he started to relax and enjoy it. I don't think he's at all used to being fussed over and he seems to expect something bad will happen at any moment. Thank you Tralauney for working on him.

We are working with the new youngsters, would like to get at least a few of them halterbroke in the next few days, as there are 8 yearling/2-year-olds we have to select to send to Olds College next week for 4 weeks of handling. I think we will send Flint, Noah, Mellow, Sterling, and Shadow, and possibly Saffron, and 2 or 3 of the new ones - Amadeus, Captain, and maybe Sphinx. We might be able to send more in November as well.

Samia and Nina will be coming back in just over a week, after spending some time in training with Gregg Garvie. Can't wait to see how they've done!

Mike and I attended the Alberta SPCA conference last week, in Edmonton. It was a very interesting event, our 3rd time attending. They always have interesting speakers and cover a variety of topics. You'd think they'd run out of things to talk about that focus on animal shelter and rescue, but not so! The Alberta Veterinary Association has come out with guidelines for shelters and rescues, which I'm happy to say we seem to follow very well. You can find a copy of the guidelines on their website.Thanks to some really dedicated supporters and their hard work, we're happy to announce that we've been approved as one of the charitable organizations that Husky Energy's employees can support in their charitable giving through work. Another big one that I forgot to mention in the prior update - Thank you to Spruce Meadows for the donation of the leftover feed from this year's Masters tournament! We got about 20 bags of really, really nice feed mixes, the stuff the elite equine athletes get. I'm not a horse but boy, some of it smells so good I'd eat it too!