Well, I am officially ready for fall and the cooler weather! It is just miserable some days here. Amp is enjoying his time off and probably will for the next couple of weeks before he is called to action again. The young horses are doing phenominal to say the least. I have been asked a lot lately what my plans for them are; whether I am going to run them in the Juvenile Futurity in December and futurity them next year or not. My reply is “if they are ready, then yes…if they aren’t, then we will enter up when we get there.” Bottom line, I have been blessed beyond abundance with my two 3 year olds and 4 year old and want to have nice horses out of them when it’s all said and done. Mocha is so solid and just has that ability to take whatever you throw at her in stride. Slasher is probably one of (if not the most) athletic horses I have ever swung a leg over. I have to be really careful with her and make sure she doesn’t scare herself, or me, because she has so much speed and just wants to crawl around a barrel!
As for Herbie, he has successfully competed in his first rodeo-exhibition as of this past weekend. He did spook at quite a bit, but we made the pattern and came out alive so I consider that a plus! My biggest surprise has been our trusty rope horse-turned barrel horse, Zan.
Zan is 15 this year and used to be Sammy’s calf roping horse. Several sets of circumstances brought Zan to my house last year on the same weekend that Amp made his last runs before the layoff caused by injury. About the time that Amp was back in competition form, Zan was laid off to recover from an injury. At that point, my thought was that with his age and his size (all of about 14.2 on a good day), I probably wouldn’t run barrels on him again. Well, fast forward almost a year after I had to get off of him and in the 4 runs that I have made on him all year, and really since last August, he has ran 2/10ths behind a pro-rodeo horse, and this past weekend we BARELY drug the second barrel over leaving it to win the Saint Jo UPRA rodeo. That was disheartening, but I had no idea he was capable to run against horses of that caliber, so I am very excited to say the least! What is really amazing is that he keeps on getting better with each run we make. I plan on using him a little more to give Amp a break from having to carry the “competition load” until I have the rest of the herd running next year. Isn’t it funny how sometimes our biggest blessings are right under our noses?!?!
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Matthew 7:7
