Define Irony...

Soooo...I started on Spooks earlier this year...put all of the conditioning, training and effort into him. I knew after a couple of runs that he was never going to be a 1D barrel horse. Not a snowball's chance in hades. But he was patterning nicely and he tries.

So I told Megan to run him in the youth division. From the first one, she started picking up 3D checks on him (three seconds off the fast youth time).

Megan flaked out on me again this summer, much to my dismay as in very short order she was leading the 3D in points on him and could have easily won a buckle for the little effort it required to go to the races and ride the horse...:(

Since Moon has been out of the last few runs, I decided that even though I didn't think Spooks had much in the speed department, that at least I had a horse that was capable of running a nice pattern, so I might as well haul him and run him. It would be good for me to stay in practice and maybe I could work on a few things.

Who knew the darned horse would draw a check regularly or collect so many points?

I've run him 3 times, which counted toward 5 races (2 were carry-over times), he's won $130 and garnered 8 points in one association and 6 in another association.

Now granted...he is running 4D times, which means he is at least 2 seconds slower than the fastest times, but between Megan and I running him this year, he only has 10 competition runs. I couldn't be more pleased with his consistency. He may never burn a hole in the wind, but he is sure enough a fun ride...



(Not so happy with the i-phone videos. They look crystal clear on the phone....not so much on the 'puter.)


Oh yea and Spooks is my 'lefty' horse, my video person forgot that. LOL. Because he had trouble with his left lead when I started riding him at the beginning of this year, I started patterning him to the left barrel first. He could auto change from his left to his right lead, but not from his right to his left lead. When he got good with his left lead, I tried to switch him to running to his right barrel first, but he wasn't getting it, so I reverted back to the left barrel first and will keep him that way now.