Sonny is my new Missouri Fox Trotter horse from Florida. \u00a0He became allergic to Florida and the only cure was to get him out of Florida. \u00a0He has been a lesson horse for Tony and Jenny Vaught for many years. \u00a0He has led a great life and it will continue in Missouri. \u00a0He is in his 20\u2019s.<\/p>\n
We had the big Sharon and Sonny test today and Sonny aced it. We did our round pen warmup, rode my pasture and then went out to the real world. I coached Sharon in the round pen on flat foot walk. Mostly Sonny walked fast, but every now and then he had a comfortable fox trot which was amazing.
\nOccasionally, he paced, so Sharon got to feel that too.<\/p>\n
In the pasture, I led and did some flat foot walking. Sharon kept up which I found amazing.
\nSharon has become the boss. She rides one handed and carries the end of the reins as a permanent spanker. \u00a0She and Sonny are a team now.<\/p>\n
We did some stopping too. I demonstrated the flat foot walk using the words \u201chunk of meat and two potatoes.\u201d \u00a0Fancy also showed Sharon what the fox trot looks like.<\/p>\n
Upon leaving the pasture\u2026we rode up the gravel road to the cement road and returned. I coached there too. I just call out the gaits Sonny is doing. Sharon is using her motivation spanking reins now and Sonny believes her. \u00a0Sharon is enforcing the rule, \u201cDon\u2019t Change Gait.\u201d<\/p>\n
Next we enter the site where the new house being built. There are strange things all over the place. I put Sonny and Sharon in the lead. If I was riding Fancy there alone we would stopped and stared a long time at suspicious things. Sonny led at a fast walk. Sharon said he was looking at things! Sonny never faltered or reacted to anything! We followed a mowed path leading to trees, but the mowed stopped, and I decided we had done enough. We returned past the opposite side of the house with more strange things and walked over a large expanse of leveled dirt. I suggested to Sharon that this could be an arena! Sadly it\u2019s for a storage barn. Sharon is going to suggest it become an indoor arena!<\/p>\n
Sonny earned his \u201cMillion Dollar Horse\u201d title on this day.<\/p>\n
I <\/em>had my phone for this ride. \u00a0Sadly it was dead. \u00a0I didn\u2019t charge it last night, so still no pictures.<\/p>\n We rode home and into our stalls. I felt very weak when I got off. It was difficult to take off the saddle. I led Fancy to our tie pole and told Sharon she could tie Sonny there too since they get along so well. I went into barn and cleared out a chair. I let Sharon wash Sonny and asked if she would also wash Fancy.\u00a0Sharon did everything and got horses back into their open stalls.<\/p>\n I managed to walk to the house and fell into my air conditioned bed. My heart rate was around 140.I\u2019m having an episode. My heart is not pounding like it does sometimes. I now know the weakness is rapid heart beat. It did get hot and were were out in full sun for 45 minutes or so. (I discovered the heat index was 100 on this day and humidity is high. \u00a0Not good.)<\/p>\n When I was typing this story, sitting in my favorite Thai Spice restaurant, I caught a glimpse of something moving on my shirt. Those were the \u201cDays My Friends\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sonny is my new Missouri Fox Trotter horse from Florida. \u00a0He became allergic to Florida and the only cure was to get him out of Florida. \u00a0He has been a lesson horse for Tony and Jenny Vaught for many years. \u00a0He has led a great life and it will continue in Missouri. \u00a0He is in his 20\u2019s. We had the big Sharon and Sonny test today and Sonny aced it. We did our round pen warmup, rode my pasture and then went out to the real world. I coached Sharon…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[114,145],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fancy","category-sonny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7812"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7822,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7812\/revisions\/7822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nIt was a tick.<\/p>\n