Home Again, Home Again

What a homecoming...I just killed a rattlesnake in my yard!!! He almost got me!

Dirty bugger was coiled up in my water hoses and when I pulled them out to water my plants he got pissed off...right now.

We have been being awful careful this year. Two people have already been bitten. Both happened right outside their houses and at dusk. Guess where I was and what time it was?

Damn. You can bet my brain is dialed right back in. Sheez-we get bullsnakes and garter snakes around the house all the time, but haven't had a rattler since I was a kid. Doesn't mean I don't usually keep my eye open for them, just haven't EVER had one right at the house like that.

Tomorrow will be a full scale attack on cleaning up the last of the junk piled around, re-mowing and weedeating everything and hauling it all away. The hoses are going to be hung from a tree limb from now on too.

Gahhhh...I still have the heebie-jeebies!!

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So onto to other stuff...

I always hate leaving Colorado...My Honey and the beautiful scenery...and Starbucks are hard to have to leave behind.

But the ponies were pretty happy to see me. Even Moon missed me...I think-LOL.

The land we looked at was a "no go". The 12 acres did have an open-faced barn on it with a bunch of old panels as corrals, a falling down arena-that was at least worked up and a large wooden round pen. But the land itself left something to be desired. It was sort of in a slew and not irrigatable.

The pictures from the previous post are from our ride...280 miles...up around Douglas Pass to Rangely to Meeker and then back down to Rifle and back to Junction. We ran into everything but snow. Started out in tank-tops, had to put on long-sleeves and finally leather up...and then we baked in the leather from DeBeque Canyon back to the house. Gotta love the high country.:-)
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I headed home mostly because I'm entered in a rodeo this weekend. Guess we will get to see if Moon can place amongst the bigger boys. I needed to get at least a few days of just lots of walking and some trotting on him before Saturday. I was really hoping for a running position in the slack(the overflow from the rodeo performances), but noooooo I had to draw up in Saturday's Performance.

I'm kinda nervous about this already. Now I have to deal with the added anxiety of trying to put a run together in front of a grandstand full of people. G.R.E.A.T!

I'm going to take my mom with me. Either she will be good at helping get me mentally prepared or she will piss me off enough that I will get my game face on.

And now I have finished slugging down my Smirnoff Ice to calm my heebie-jeebies and I am off to bed. I'm sorry I haven't been around visiting much. This summer just seems so hectic and I am so behind on so many projects. If it stays hot, hot, hot....I'll be back to visiting, at least in the heat of the day.;-)

In The Wind

Have ya'll been wondering what happened to me?

I am here...

I hope everyone had a glorious, fun and safe Holiday weekend!

I don't want too...but I will have to head home soon.

Back to the ponies and the rodeos. The only reason I can make myself go back.:)

Keep your fingers crossed. We are looking at land today...one parcel has an arena and barn on it. Gotta have a place for the ponies before we can make the move.

Open Horse Show

This time around the weather was beautiful for the Valentine Horse Show.

Megan and I love going to this show. The people are wonderful to show with, the arena is nice and pretty much everyone rides big, nice, working-type horses. That is big ranch country down there.

I guarantee the Aged Halter Gelding Class is one of the toughest you will ever run across. At least in terms of working type geldings. You want to see what a good hind leg looks like on a real using horse? Want to see what good bone looks like? You will see it in spades in that class. No big, fat halter dinks standing on toothpick legs and dinky feet there! Megan showed Strawberry and I showed Moon in that class and got cut immediately. I told Megan, lesson learned...when we go to Valentine, she needs to show Rip in halter and I need to save my entry fee-LOL.

Megan had a good day with Strawberry. She took 3rd in Western Pleasure. She picked up a wrong lead and loped around a while before she realized it. I don't think she would have won the class anyway. There was a really nice bay gelding that won it and he deserved it.

She also took 3rd in the trail class...


The Senior Division(14-18y/o) is always the toughest at these shows. So I guess I think she did pretty well.

She used Rip in the Horsemanship, Reining, Barrels and Poles. I have video of the Horsemanship and Reining...blogger was fighting with me this morning...so I'll try to upload those again later.

Moon did okay too. We got second in the English Pleasure...


We got a third in the Ranch Horse Pleasure.

And 5th in the Horsemanship...
Moon blew the horsemanship pattern to hell and gone. My fault! He had been so decent before the lunch break, I didn't take him over and lope a few circles on him before this class! He was flipping in and out of his leads through the pattern and that head of his was getting higher and higher. He was really starting to think about the barrels. I don't expect him to do great in these classes, but they are good for trying to keep him from thinking the arena is only for blasting through a barrel pattern. He used to be a lot better, but as we have picked up speed in the barrel pattern, he has become less and less of a show-type horse.

I have a rather embarrassing video of our reining run, but I'll post it anyway.:) After I watched the video, I scratched him from the Pole Bending-he's NOT ever going to be a Pole horse anyway, because he just wasn't "right" in his reining run. He made mistakes that he just doesn't make and I was concerned he was hurting in his hind-end. I ran cold water over his legs and stifles and let him graze for a while.

Just before the barrels, I re tacked him and decided to see if he was "off". He seemed to be back to normal and I could not detect soreness anywhere, so I went ahead and ran him. I think he was just getting tired and stressed and just needed a little down time to regroup. But if he had not seemed fine, I would not have run him. There was no money involved and I would NEVER take a chance hurting or soring him just to make a run at a horse show.

He did win the barrel racing class. He was just tired enough that he did not give me trouble lining out for 1st. He picked up his lead and was in the correct frame, so I just let him fly to 1st. His pattern was pretty near perfect. Unfortunately, the camera batteries had died by then, so I don't have any video of that. He had a 17.9 second run. The next fastest run was 18.1. I do think Moon's time was slower than it could have been. He was tired from all the classes before. But that is not a bad thing. Being a little tired made him think twice about squirreling around coming in the gate.

That is the run I have been trying to get. Now I think he is ready to enter some association rodeos. He is running at the top of the pack and still has room for improvement. It's time to take him to the next level. I have checked the schedule for the Northwest Rodeo Cowboy Association rodeos and lined out 6 rodeos that I want to take him too. I know these arenas. They have good ground and I know Moon is running in the times that can place at them.

Hopefully Blogger will let me load videos tonight.:O