Yesterday we headed out to Rapid City, to attend the Black Hills Stock Show. It was a REALLY long day because we left at 11am on Friday and got back at 5:30 am this morning. The good news is my horses worked really really well. The bad news is I’m now tired, and I didn’t win a check.
And for Shuttle (my 2008 futurity horse) making her first run back in the 8 months since this happened (and it got worse– see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here for most of the full history.), I’m really tickled with her. Had she not crashed the second barrel in her open run, I’d be happier with her, but she wanted to turn so bad, and I wasn’t riding her like the ratey horse she wanted to be yesterday- I knew I should have worn spurs (spare me the animal rights bs, please folks). Our exhibition runs were P.R.E.T.T.Y. And had she made that run in the open, and I actually asked her to run out, she’d have been about a second off I reckon. I can’t complain because she hasn’t seen a barrel since the middle of May. Yesterday marked the first time.
And Gump. Wow. Can I just say that he is awesome? He loves me. And all this slow work I’ve been doing is really paying off. We ran at the bottom of the 4D. Which is better than last time we ran. We were 3 and a half seconds off. This time we were right at 2 seconds. We’re a second barrel away from running a full second and a half off, and we’re just some speed shy of running in the 3D. Not bad for a horse that just began seeing the barrels in September. He’s only been to about 5 big barrel races- maybe 10 total.
Okay so Shuttle looks AMAZING! And Gump’s second looks hell of a lot better!
How exciting is it to have two to run right now?
And I LOVED the commentary during Gump’s run . .
“Go Go!”
verification word: indors
as in “indoor arena”, which is where your runs were!
Sounds like you had fun, even if you didn’t bring home a check! Looks like you have a couple of awesome horses.
Are there any big rodeo/horse events going on there in June? I’m planning a book tour through Montana the end of May/first of June. Don’t know for sure if I’ll get that close to SD, but might if there was something going on.
Heidi
You and Gump look born to be a team. Go Jj, Go!