The inhibitor

One day I'm 90 percent sure that it's time to let Tex go down the road, and the very same day, my son throws that percentage down a few notches. He is really starting to ask to ride. And of course, guess which horse he ONLY wants to ride? You guessed it- Tex. 

My son is actually more confident on him than my older daughter. He's been enjoying steering him, and isn't afraid to make him do things. His attention doesn't last long, but that will improve with age.

Lazy and gentle horses that won't freak out with kids are hard to find and expensive to buy. Tex isn't a perfect kids' horse. His upward transitions are quite rough. But I still see a little potential. 

Dang it, son. You've taken me down to about 40 percent sure I want to sell him today. 

How could anyone tell this face they're selling his horse?

"Can I 'wide' my horse, Tex?"

"Will you take my pit-cher?"

"I wanna [L]ead him."

90 percent sure...

In my last several rides, Hazel has been my mount of choice over Tex. In comparison, Hazel is like driving a smooth BMW, compared to Tex being like an old rusty, no power steering truck. She's so willing, so athletic, and so sensitive.

My goal for Tex was to keep him as our kids' horse and for a guest/backup horse. He would still be an OK guest horse for someone who knows how to ride already. But he continues to test the kids on every single ride, and they are still young and needing a horse that will help them build, not lose, confidence. They need too ride something with willingness. And in the past and present, I haven't particularly seen that characteristic in Tex. He also tests beginner riders of any size.

I'm still roping on him, but he's not really fast enough to keep up at a roping. That makes me want more and more to get Hazel going with roping so that I can compete.

In the past, it's been a good sign that it's time to sell a horse when I choose another one over that one consistently, and when I get aggravated with riding that one. I can't say I'm aggravated with Tex, because I've not known much better. But now that I've experienced Hazel, it's getting harder and harder to go back. The signs are getting clearer to me that I'm about 90 percent sure that I'm ready to sell Tex. But, of course, I'm going to be picky.

Last night, a 14 year old boy tried him out, and they seem like a good fit for each other. Tanner is a natural, gentle, and confident rider, yet doesn't have a ton of rides under his belt. He wants to rope, do youth rodeos, and just be a cowboy. I think they'd be wonderful for each other.  But they're not in a hurry, and, like I said, I'm only 90 percent sure....

Lessons learned at roping practice.

Last night at roping practice, on my first run, I caught, dallied, turned left, and my saddle (and my body) started rolling over to the right side of Tex's belly. I then put all my weight in the LEFT stirrup, put my right hand on the horn, and hung my whole body off the left side to try to hold the saddle on the center of the horse. All this while unwinding my dally and running the steer. All ended well, and I told everyone I was just doing some trick riding for everyone's entertainment. Lesson learned- tighten your saddle, stupid.

A couple runs later I swung too large of a loop, got too close to the steer, and somehow got my rope tangled up in the steers heels.

Lesson learned- keep a smaller loop, get further back.

Later I was in the head box and making small talk with the guy running the head gate while the heeler got settled. I accidentally nodded while talking, and poof- he opened the gate. 

Lesson learned- keep body language, you know, under control or something while visiting with the head gate guy. 

On my last run, everything was right - good steer, good heeler, last round. I nodded (on purpose this time), and just as that black long horned cow came out, her hoof chunked a huge dirt clod backward - right into both of my eyes. I went blind for a few seconds at high speed, but I just kept on swinging, and when I could see shapes through the grit, I chunked it. 

Lesson learned- ummmmm....?

 

My life is not normal

Lately on Instagram I've been following the Red Stick Moms Blog posts when one mom from the group takes over the Instagram account and documents their day. This morning, I realized that if I was to document my country life (#mylouisianacountrylife), it would look VERY different from their lives in the city or even near the city.

So, I wanted to document my last 24 hours just for the heck of it.

Josh is gone to a horse breaking clinic in Lafayette, so my mother-in-law got J, my daughter, off the bus at her house. The in-laws are our closest neighbors, and by the road live 3 miles from us on the same road. When I got off work, I picked up my son, R, from day care and drove the 30 minutes it takes to get home. I saw no cars on the entire 5 miles of country road to my in-laws house. I picked up J and we headed to the house. We immediately put our boots on (them in their cowboy boots and me in my rubber boots) and tromped through the mud and grass to the barn.

J, (4), is in charge of feeding the dog, cat, and chickens and getting the eggs, and yesterday, for the first time for me, she did her chores without having to be asked to. I praised her lavishly. I put R in charge of feeding our boarder horse, Spring, and getting him some hay. He had to have help getting the feed scoop full and carrying the flake of hay, though.

I went through the mud to feed the other 3 in the back pen and let them in off the rye grass, and then fed Tex and the mule on the other side of the barn. Usually Josh puts them up at night in a pen even further from the barn, but I decided that I didn't want to go out there in the dark the next morning to let them out, so I left them out. A few more hours on the rye grass won't hurt anything.

After we fed, I brushed Hazel and roped the dummy for a while while the kids played on top of the feed bags in the tack room and rode their bikes around. When it started getting dark we headed to the house to eat supper, checking the onions and potatoes growing in the garden on the way there. The green onions have been thriving, and the other onions have sprouted. We found three potato sprouts as well.

I heated up some meat and potato hash leftovers for us, and then the kids took their baths. We watched about 30 minutes of a movie, facetimed with Daddy, and then they went to bed. I worked on packing our bags to go to my mom's for the weekend. Then, I sat down and listened to some new songs we might be able to sing for Cowboy Church. I realized I wasn't going to have any time to type up our slides for the music, so I went ahead and typed those up and sent them to everybody. By that time it was about 10:30, so I set my coffee pot and alarm, went to bed, and read my AQHA magazine until I got sleepy.

This morning my alarm went off at 5:45, and it was raining pretty steady. I drank my coffee and threw on Josh's big rain slicker and went to the barn to feed. The horses aren't used to seeing me in that, so the three in the pen got scared of me and ran around like idiots. and Hazel wouldn't come in her stall to eat when I was close to it. Then they wouldn't go out on the rye grass because it was raining, and I had to halter and lead Tater out so that the other two would follow. I let the chickens out and fed the cat and dogs. Spring's stall was a disastrous, wet mess, so I just moved him and drug his big huge water bucket to the dry stall next to it and cleaned what I could. Then I labeled the barn with chalk on the concrete so that our neighbors would know how much to feed everybody while I'm gone tonight and tomorrow. Hopefully it'll be easy for them, because they can just leave the horses out.

I headed back to the house just as I heard J screaming "MAMA?"wondering where I was. She came out of the house with her boots and rain jacket on to look for me, and R stayed at the door with his footy pajamas on. I had sweated under the rain slicker, so I jumped in the shower while the kids got most of their clothes on. A few talks later, we finally made it out the door, into the car, and drove the 30 minutes to school, meeting no cars on the first 15 minutes of it. We were, as usual, just barely on time.

It seems like we have to do a lot more pre-planning to accomplish things than most.It's ALWAYS 30 minutes to get to school, no matter what the traffic is like. There is no fast food (except at the neighbors' house!). The grocery store is found in our (or our neighbors') pantry or in the garden. We always have mouths to feed, weeds to pull, stalls to clean, and always something going wrong.

 It's a lot of work, but I'm thankful for my Louisiana country life. 

Unresolvable differences and mutual dislike

The other night, Josh asked me to rope a few runs on his roping horse, just so he could see what he did with me. Let me preface by saying I think this horse is a Butt-hole. He is willing to do only one thing- load in the trailer, warm up, make clean heading runs in the roping pen, go back in the trailer, and go home. Ask him to do anything else and he will flat tell you NO. I really don't like him for this reason. 

But for some reason, my female soft hearted side saw him with rose colored glasses this night at roping practice and selectively forgot my disdain. Or, maybe it was my bull-headed cowgirl side that said, "I've got this." 

And just that day, my best girlfriend and I had been discussing coming off horses. We came to the conclusion that when you come off a horse, you learn two things. 1. You are NOT as skilled of a horseman/woman as you think you are, and 2. You have been riding enough horses to come off one.

Well, I'm sure you've already come to the conclusion of how my roping runs ended that night on old Jethro. So, let me give you the rundown of it. 

On the first run, he jolted out of the box, I was jerked back, and he tried to pass the steer. I checked, and he pinned his ears, tossed his head, and said no. 

The second run we go down, I swing and miss, and since I missed, at the end of the pen I checked up told him to go left and get off the steer. 

Then he pins his ears, shakes his head, flips me the bird, and he's like "don't you know I'm a head horse? Shut up and hang on.  I am staying with the steer no matter what even if he goes in that chute. I don't care if you missed. Get a grip, lady." 

Then I'm like "we missed and I want you leave that steer alone and go left." And he goes right, and I go left, and he looks down like- "ha ha, I won."

I will never like this horse, but I'm pretty sure he hates me even more.