Round 'Tuit

It's officially fall here in the high desert...we got a couple of nights of hard frost and even though I covered a lot of my garden with whatever I could find...it's officially done. Tippy, the gardening kitty is heartbroke.

The good thing is...the mosquitoes and flies have retreated to almost nothing and the horses are happy, happy, happy.

I have been making some headway on the youngsters. The last time I started working with Beretta, she was fine with everything until I pulled the cinch tight...and then it was bucking bronc city. This time around...she has been fine...

It's amazing sometimes what a few months of maturity will do...but I still suspect that last spring she was having heat cycle problems and that is what was causing her to spazz out when I would tighten the cinch. Beretta is a hot, reactive, little thing...but no one else in her family is broncy...so such drastic bucking was totally out of character.

I was going to have this Sharon Camarillo saddle professionally cleaned up and sell it..but it fits Miss B perfectly (for now)...so I guess it will get professionally cleaned, reassembled and keep it.

Gunner has proceeded to be as calm and quiet as he was before and I have gotten a couple of rides on him now...

I have been saddling and ground working Shooter, have stepped up both sides and sat in the saddle, but I wouldn't qualify him as having had a 'ride' yet. It's not that he does anything wrong...In fact he is so easy going that I am kind of just hitting him with some work in passing. Gunner (and maybe Beretta) are only here for the next few weeks. I am focusing my time on them. Gunner will definitely be riding well enough by the time he goes back to SD. Beretta...well, I hope so. But I'm not going to rush her.

I also finally got around to taking Frosty to some team sortings.

Oh my...the first time...he stared so hard I thought his eyes were going to pop out of his head. It just kills me that, here is a horse that was raised on a ranch...around cows...and he is scared to death of them. All we got done at first was help move everything back and forth between the pens. The second night I managed to get Frosty to actually approach the herd. It took A LOT of encouraging to get him to ease in there and get those yearlings to move. Once they started moving though...he would lock on and track them out amazingly well.

There was one black, brangus, looking one that got into a stare down with Frosty though and it was hilarious. Everyone was laughing...Me too. That heifer locked eyes with Frosty and I thought he was going to lose it. Frosty's eyes were bugging out, his neck was arched and he was quivering and making all of these cutting horse moves back and forth in front of this little heifer...trying to get away mind you...NOT trying to work the cow. All that little heifer did was stand there and stare at him. I finally managed to get him to step into her and make her move. It was kind of a break-through for him. He finally grasped that HE was capable of making the cow move and after that there was some dramatic improvement. Me and another gal got all 10 head sorted in perfect order in a minute and thirty seconds.

If nothing else...Frosty is learning he can move his feet quickly. LOL...

Frosty is a big horse. But big doesn't and really shouldn't mean 'clunky'. Being clunky is Frosty's biggest problem. He has spent too much of his life overweight and underworked. Even when I did have him in pretty good shape earlier this year he struggled to lighten up and move his feet. Now that he actually has a reason to move those feet...he's really coming around.

Not to mention...I'm having a blast too. I was getting so tired of just riding to be riding...and getting really bored with just thinking about 'barrel racing'. Now I can work cows a couple of times a week...get Frosty going, give Moon something else to do and then I'll work Bugs into the mix too.