Posts by Susan

It’s our house that is the site of the family Christmas. This year we held it on December 9th.  I like to have the horses home when the family celebrates Thanksgiving and Christmas, so JR came home for the weekend.  It was warm here in Missouri and so the kids got to ride a horse!  The little kids choose JR to ride, since he’s the cutest and friendliest! I put the Parelli bareback pad on him and hoisted up the oldest child.  We walked quite a ways and things were…

Jenny and JR have spent time just passenger riding which JR choose to do at a walk.  The emergency stop or bend to a stop was instituted before JR moved.  Then they added direction with reins, stopping, backing, fore and hindquarter turns.  I know that Jenny has asked for the soft feel and probably have done a little sidepassing. Our philosophy is to FIRST get JR to be a versatility horse and learn the athletic moves plus flying lead changes.  After this is accomplished, we were going to help JR…

  JR is a coming 3 years old. It is time for him to go off to kindergarten. I waited till late Sunday afternoon and bundled him up in the trailer for the trip to Pine Dell farm…7 miles away. Velvet was told that she would have to give up her stall for the time being and become a pasture horse. Velvet thought that was great, until she realized that her personal food service delivery had ended!     I put JR in his stall and gave him hay. I…

"Since you’re an advanced student now, I bet you are starting your own horses." "Why aren’t you starting your own horse? You’ve done all the ground work, haven’t you?" "Why are you paying someone else to start JR? He seems really tame?" Here’s my reply: I have access to "natural" professionals who start colts. These professionals give the colt the best start on the road to becoming a saddle horse. If you had choices for your children as to where they would start their schooling, wouldn’t you give them the…