The Last Trip....

For awhile anyway.

I had to make my last trip back to SD this last week.

I cannot believe how much I miss my babies...

This little girl has changed a bunch in a couple of weeks. That throatlatch I was worried about being a bit on the thick side? Not any more. She has really taken off growing and everything is really coming together. Holy Moly...The stifle on this chiquita is outstanding. I told mom, this filly absolutely screams 'calf horse' to me. She takes off flying and when she wants to stop, she just sticks it in the ground. She definitely has future barrel horse potential.

**And no, she is not a pissy, unhappy little girl, she just flicked her ears back at the camera click.

Then there is this guy...

Yeesh...can we say future show horse?

When Shooter moves all I see is WP and HUS prospect. He is long, low, fluid poetry in motion.

LOL...and he has absolutely No Stop. When he takes off in a dash (If you could ever call it that), unlike Beretta, who slides to a stop and rolls back to change direction, Shooter takes off and to slow down has to make big loops. I really doubt he will ever be a barrel horse. There is just no natural rate in him whatsoever. Oh well, that's the breaks sometimes. Megan and I will have fun taking him to the show ring next year. I'm thinking it would be fun to have my first bozel horse. Wouldn't that narrow little head look pretty in a bozel?

Better

Well, Moon and I put together a better run today and finally drew a check.Second in the 4D. Not exactly a smoking run. But soooo much better than we have had the last coouple of trips out.

Whew!

Sorry, no video...I dunno what the heck Meg was doing....Off in lala land...She is blonde ya know...LOL.

My memory of the run stride by stride is failing me. I was so focused on keeping my eyes where they needed to be and making Moon honor his pockets, that about all I remember is seeing the ground around the barrels and looking up to the next one.

We had some tack changes and I actually think they worked out pretty well.

The last time I ran Moon, he popped the breast collar D-ring lumb off of the saddle I have been using on him. I couldn't get it fixed before this weekend, so I decided to use that little Blue Ribbon saddle I got off of Ebay.

Heck, I thought I loved running in that Hereford I picked up, but I think I like the Blue Ribbon better. I sat nice and tight. I had just a hair of slipping room in the Hereford. Nothing that was going to sling me around, but still.

I also switched from running Moon in a full gag to a twisted wire snaffle. It's a big twist. One I have used for years and years. The mouth piece on the gag was a smooth copper and Moon was laying on that pretty hard. So much for the idiot theory that a full gag is brutal. LOL

I didn't use a tiedown on my run today, but I will be adding that back in tomorrow. I could just feel Moon reaching forward on his front-end, looking for the tiedown to balance on. Without the tiedown he has nothing to balance on but the bit and he gets too far forward on his front-end. Can't lift a shoulder then.

Well, tomorrow is another day and another run. Hopefully when that time rolls around, I will feel like I can let Moon out another notch and he will still hold his position. He really hates only going half speed.

Myself, I didn't mind too much. Geez-it gave me time to actually think.

Making A Dent

This week has been about nothing but getting the rest of the junk cleaned up around the new place.

Thanks to a very hard-working young man who was in need of some extra $$...


We have made a HUGE dent in that.

The junk is out of the shop.

The junk is out of the little barn.

Most of the mowing is done.

In the last 2 days we have completely stuffed this industrial sized cage dumpster...
(Blogger is being a pain in the butt about loading pics tonight. I can only load one at a time and I am to tired to bother to load more...but I'm sure you all get the idea.;)

Half of my big storage shed is painted.

And I even managed to fit in getting some of the hoof trimming done on those horses that I brought back with me.

There hasn't been much time to ride.

But, sometimes that is okay. I think taking the time to slow down and look some things over has helped me to figure out some issues we have been having with a couple of the horses.

I'll expound on those in further detail soon...

Hope everyone is well out there in blogger-land. I just haven't had the time to get around and visit everyone much...and I'm too exausted to think of anything intelligent as far as comments when I have actually stopped by.

Hopefully now that we have the majority of the grunt work done, Meg and I can get back into our riding routine...and I'll have time to catch up on what ya'll have been doing so far this summer.