Crunch time and greener pastures

Fair is almost here and E & Monte are not ready. There are so many skills they haven't practiced (forehand turns, haunch turns, backing, etc.) and what they have done was with Western, not English.

Another lesson with Ruben last night. They worked on cantering, stops and those turns I mentioned up there. He's starting to ask more of E, which is good. She has a habit of using direct reining rather than neck reining, plus she doesn't release soon enough when she asks for something. E gets frustrated trying to keep it all in her head. There are so many things you need to do at once when riding a horse! All of this will just take practice and time.

Sweat marks - proof of a hard workout

Curly is semi-sold. The young woman from Seattle did call and is very interested in him but doesn't have the full purchase price in hand. She asked if I would either lease him or accept payments. If she had been local I wouldn't have hesitated; it's easy to check up on your animal when he is close by. But because of the distance, I'm not comfortable with letting him go until he is fully not my responsibility. There are too many horror stories of leases gone bad. So, I gave her the option of getting her finances together while I "saved" him for her. I won't sell him to another buyer for a period of time and if she isn't able to pay in full by the end of that time period, he's back on the market. And I was very generous with the amount of time I gave her....R was happy that he's not leaving right away.

In the end, the amount she pays me might be not much more than what I'm spending to hold him....hmmmm......

We move the horses to a new boarding facility tomorrow! The new place is much closer - 7 minutes from our door to theirs. It's a full-care facility, so we won't be buying our own hay anymore (Yahoo! Glad to let go of that responsibility!), plus they take care of the daily stall cleaning for us. I know I'm weird, but I think I'm going to actually miss that part. Although the barn owner did say I was welcome to pick stalls anytime I wanted. ;-) One of the best parts of this barn is that the animals get daily turn-out. Every day. All year. In green, irrigated pastures. It'll be worth the increase in board expenses....