Country Frank’s Lucky Star

Everything I hate about horse shows is the making-the-horse- pretty part.  My love of grooming, clipping and bathing is a triple infinity negative. Lucky Star is extremely protective about his ears.  Clipping his ears just didn't work well with the clipper.  We had an evening long disagreement about the scissor noise next to his ear.  Guess what Lucky Star and I are going to do during the May 2012 week-long Natural Solutions Horse Camp with Tony and Jenny Vaught.  Yep, we'll be working on clipping his ears, using natural solutions to…

How long does it take to get ready for the casual and relaxed April Kansas City fox trotter club gaited horse Spring Show? SCREAM! My answer is "two weeks of full time focused planning along with 24 hour continual worry". Tomorrow is trim, shave and a real bath. Lucky Star will not be a willing partner when we start the spa treatment. He is so low key about everything except bath shower. We've been taking little mini showers together when the weather is warm enough. When I say we take…

Wed night lesson night is always wild. Lucky Star is learning how to slow down his fox trot. He's learning how to rate the gait. The game at the end was trying to have a team of riders take turns pushing a big ball thru a two barrel goal. The gaited team lost one and tied one. I even tried to block the other team's ball and they still tied us!  If you aren't cheating, you aren't trying is the motto I live by!

When you ride out in a huge park full of deer food late in the afternoon, you might expect to see a deer. Deer stand on the side of the horse trail. They wait until the horse appears. We have a state contest. Then the deer explodes and hops away Lucky Star and I were engaged in the stare down. We won. When the deer exploded into the run away mode, Lucky Star did too. Both my shoulders and that is the left shoulder and the right shoulder ended up…

You build a relationship with your horse and it's just fun to watch the two of you forging ahead. Lucky and I have lots of little arguments. We argue about staying next to the wall, going too fast or slow, backing and sidepassing. When Lucky does something that I want, I have to immediately praise him, give him release, rub him, get off...whatever fits. I've noticed that the better I get at this, the less Lucky argues with me. Lucky Star is a lot of fun to bring along. I…