Velvet and Nichole Take on Everyone

June 9, 2013Posted inMissouri Fox Trotter, Velvet
Velvet and Nichole won the garland in the youth Versatility Spring Show.  I clapped and cheered all the way through the blue and one red ribbon! Ranch Horse Day was a surprise.  This year the Ranch Horse classes just had one classification...Open.  Open means professional horse trainers and everyone else can participate.  Nichole is 17.  She was in Ranch horse events competing against her mom, step father, younger sister and a host of other adult riders.Points are accrued based on the placing of the horse/rider and how many riders competed…

Ava-Day One a Huge Success

June 5, 2013Posted inJennifer Vaught, Missouri Fox Trotter, NOVA, Powder, Susan FoxTrotter-book title in Amazon, Velvet
Day one, Showmanship started the day off right!  Jenny and Nichole won the open and youth showmanship classes!  Nova and Velvet were in show horse success mode. Tony and Powder joined in the next events and the ribbon sunumi started.  The Vaught family flooded me with ribbons.  Blue was the main color.  In the youth events, Nichole and Velvet mostly won the blue ribbon followed by  sister Caitlyn riding Attu.  In the open events Jenny got most of the blue ribbons with Powder and Tony getting many second place ribbons…

Ava Pre-Day

June 4, 2013Posted inJennifer Vaught, Missouri Fox Trotter, NOVA, Powder, Susan FoxTrotter-book title in Amazon, Velvet
Two hundred miles flew by and I entered the time zone known as Ava!  The golf cart guy met me at the entrance.  I found Nova, Powder and Velvet and the Vaught family.  Life is good.  I beat a lot of people here.  There are still parking spaces available if you want to run on down to Ava! We had fun times at the office getting everyone signed up and ready to go tomorrow.  Everything went smooth as silk.  Everyone has numbers and even better, safety pins to attach the…

Lucky the Drill Team Leader

June 1, 2013Posted inCountry Frank's Lucky Star, Missouri Fox Trotter
Three of us fox trotter people in the group lesson were assigned to ride three abreast...noses lined up.  We were instructed to go at a flat foot walk.  Well that is fine and good, but on the arena corners, some of us were walking and others were going much faster.  On the straight-away, some of us had to fox trot to keep up.  Lucky was doing a fine fox walk...a little faster than a flat foot walk and not quite a full fox trot. Finally the rules were explained to…

Tenor and the Sweat Drops

April 24, 2013Posted inMissouri Fox Trotter
I was honored to get to ride Tenor while I was in Florida.  I used to own Tenor.  I bought him from Teresa Osborn when he was one day old.  He came home to live with me at 4 months.  A new internet family came to visit me not too long after that.  Ginny had found me on the internet because of my stories involving natural horsemanship and Missouri Fox Trotters. Kevin and Ginny met me for the first time at my home.  I had let Tenor come out into…

The Concrete Journey

April 23, 2013Posted inMiscellaneous
Concrete and horses have been long in our human journey. Both the Parthenon and Hoover dam are made of concrete.  Humans have been using both horses and concrete to advance civilization.  The Parthenon had those Roman chariot races for the movie Ben Hur.  Hoover dam has no connection to horses, but it probably has more concrete than any structure on earth. The Romans knew that adding horse hair made concrete less liable to crack while it hardened. In Florida, I learned a new appreciation for the inanimate talent of concrete.  In…