The horse world......

A boy and his horse.

On Sunday Mark and Kaleb went to a horsemanship clinic that the WRCHA (Wyoming Reined Cow Horse Assn.) was having. The WRCHA is basically a group of people that live here in Gillette. There are several of them that put on clinics in the fall as a fund raiser for their organization it also gets more people interested in the WRCHA. Mark thought it would be good for Kaleb to get instruction from someone else. Which is true. Mark said that Kaleb was pretty shy there. Which isn't surprising, he tends to be shy when he is around people he doesn't know. Anyway, one of the clinicians is a lady. Kaleb told me that she said she liked his horse. He thought she was all right.

This is Mike and Annie scratching each others backs. Annie has been on hiatus since early August. She turned up lame right before Mark was going to show her at the state fair. Reining in hard on the joints and especially the hocks. Annie is 6 years old. At this point in her career, for her to go on she is going to have to be on joint therapy meds. We have resisted doing that. We had an equine vet check her out and her hocks are sore along with the suspensory (not sure how it spelled ) tendon in her left front leg. We put her on rest and have thought through the options. Annie is one point away from earning her Register of Merit in Open Reining. So the question is whether we want to put her back in the show pen knowing it could make her lame for the one point. It would be cool if she got her ROM, but definitely not the end of the world if she doesn't get it.

Annie seems to be sound again and we have decided to put her on meds for her joints to help aid in wellness. We also decided that I would start riding her to exercise her. I rode her for the first time the other day. She is totally awesome and fun to ride. Mark may not get her back.

This is Mark's latest project Will. Or Wilbur or Wilford, just depends on the day. When he first came here I thought we should change his name to Wild Eye. He would stand across the pen from you and he had a huge eye like he was scared of you. Mark spent a lot of time taking the spook out of him and earning his trust. Now Will reminds me of a puppy dog. He follows us around like a big goofy puppy. He gets in my personal space. Will has his days when he has 'spook' issues, he will probably always be like that, but he is definitely a different horse than when he came here.

It has been two years since we had a vacation and that was to Florida to Disney. Last year Mark's vacation was painting and laying flooring on the main level of the house. We took some long weekends for horse shows but other than that we haven't been anywhere. The thought of going away seemed to be a good idea. The budget is tight though. We have talked off and on about going to the NRHA (National Reining Horse Assn.) Futurity (its like the super bowl in reining) in Oklahoma City and driving it. I knew we had points on our credit card that could go to plane tickets so I looked into it and found we had enough points to get cheap tickets from Gillette to OKC. We will leave here on December 1 and come home on the 7th. We will be there to see the finals on the night of the 6th.
We are all looking forward to the trip, but especially Mark. Mark has only had 10 days off since August 1. On the weekends he didn't actually have to be in the field unless there was a problem, but he is on call which means he is on the phone and blackberry and sending reports. They have had a lot of projects going on and the hours and stress are starting to wear him down. He had worked his vacation so he won't have to go to the office from Thanksgiving until December 8. He has to fly to southeast Texas next week for work. They are moving a piece of equipment that goes on a gas well from here to one of their fields in Sweeney Texas. This is new territory for the Texans so Mark gets to go down and help with the installation and show them how it runs.