“Pavona” is a registered Thoroughbred who lived on the neighboring ranch that we bought earlier this year. She is a former racehorse and won first place at Bay Meadows Racetrack in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2005. While she has been ridden, it has been a few years, so we are having her trained right now at Christa Petrillo Total Horsemanship in Winters, California. She is getting a tune-up, in preparation for her future life as a trail horse. This photo shows me riding Pavona for the very first time–which just happened to be on Friday the 13th, but I felt pretty lucky to ride such a great horse because she has a gentle disposition. Christa said she is a kid-friendly horse too, so one day my children may be riding her. By the way, Pavona is the name of a town in Central Italy. Apparently when she was racing, her owners were of Italian descent. My husband and I plan to visit Italy next year, so we hope to visit the Italian city.

We’re conducting our second controlled burn on our new ranch today, in order to improve the grazing land for our sheep. We are trying to get rid of the non-native goat grass and replace it with native grasses that are better for livestock.
Before we bought this ranch, there were around 100 horses roaming free on about 800 acres, and much of the grass that they grazed on was goat grass. When the previous owners decided to sell their land, they sent most of the horses to an auction. When we bought the ranch in March, there were about two-dozen horses left. We decided to keep a few horses and we noticed that one of the mares had abscesses on her gums. When we had the University of California, Davis veterinarians come over to examine the horses, they attributed the abscesses to the rough grass that the horse had been grazing on. The same thing can happen to the sheep, so the controlled burn will ultimately improve the feed that is available.
Our local fire department conducts the controlled burns. Before the fire is lit, my husband drives a big John Deere tractor and disks the fire breaks to contain the fire. Then a firefighter walks around and uses a drip-torch to light the fire, as shown in this picture. Several fire trucks are stationed around the fire to make sure it stays under control.

Horse trainer Ruben Villegas has been training our brown-spotted stallion. We just had his DNA typed at the UC Davis Veterinary Genetics Laboratory and he is a Spanish Mustang/Appaloosa. The two breeds have a shared ancestry in the United States. We are in the process of getting this beautiful stallion registered.

My mother’s gray Thoroughbred mare–a former racehorse–gave birth to a beautiful bay filly this morning. My husband discovered the baby at 5:30 a.m. and this photo was taken shortly thereafter. The filly appears to be healthy so we are very happy.

My husband and I recently bought a ranch near Winters, California to expand our sheep operation, and the previous owners left behind 23 horses, including stallions, pregnant mares and foals. This beautiful black-spotted stallion is one of the horses that we acquired. Today I submitted a DNA sample (tail hair) to the University of California, Davis Veterinary Genetics Laboratory in order to determine exactly what breed he is.