WAHSET meet #2, Team sorting

Meghan and Carissa are partners for Team sorting this year. Here they are waiting for their turn.























And entering the ring, the judge holds that green flag up and when the first rider passed through the gate he drops it and time starts, they have 90 seconds to pen 10 cows.


They didnt get any cows the first go, Carissa let one slip by her at the gate that was the wrong number, these were really slippery cattle, and knew the drill on where they were supposed to go, and would try to sneak by the riders if they were close to the gate. So they got a no time.

I am finally getting the settings on my new camera here, nice and crisp, with good color!








These cattle are Corrientes, and they all had these big horns, I liked the spots on this one.


Outside the ring waiting for the second go round.


A lot of waiting goes on, there are a lot of teams.

Going in for the second round.

















I need to not change the setting when I have something good going LOL these last shots are a lot darker.














Here they are chasing cows back to the other side after a second no time. The same exact thing happened, with Carissa having a cow with the wrong number get by her.


















And all done for this meet, no scores at all for Team Sorting. There is a lot of luck in this game.




Luxor sat next to me and watched the whole thing, he is so good.

This is up behind the theater chairs, there is room up here to set up more comfortable lawn chairs, the steps are really wide.









Here you can see the huge wooden laminated beams in the roof, with the clear skylight panels.
And better light again.

The little mare in this picture reminded me so much of the little mare I grew up on, Dusty, same little buttermilk buckskin about 14.2 hands, she has a cute little dished face too.





And they had drill practice that night, and gaming the next day.... more pics to come

WAHSET meet #2, Steer daubing

First we were on the backside of the line, hard to get good pics when you are behind all the riders.

And the front side of the line, after we walked over to the other side. Meghan is on the far left with the lime green.

This little POA has the cutest markings on his ears LOL white spots on the tips. I thought he is so cute.

One of Meghan runs, Easy is getting a little excited in the box and the first run they broke the barrier, so had a +10sec, on the second run they had a 4.4 sec run.

See all the windows on the back wall, in this places heyday there used to be a restaurant up there, and they had a lot of stuff going on all the time. I seems to be getting, just old now, I would have loved to see it during the day.
Now there are plans to build a brand new huge equestrian center not to far from here, someone told me 2010.

Meghan next to Emily on Holly on Megs left, our right, Holly has the cutest funniest blaze, with that big spot on her nose, and white spot above her eye.

Here is a closeup of Hollys face. She is a cute little mare, she is a red dun.

And the line again, arent they a good looking bunch! The man on the far right is the judge.

These are the infrared heaters in the grandstands, they do help a lot!

These are the old granstand chairs, theater type seating, the seats all fold down. This whole huge huge building is all made of wood, kinda scary if you think about it! I bet it is the fire marshals nightmare. I will post more pics of it. But it is a really cool place, and has a warren of passages around it!

The brass #medalions on the back of the chairs. What neat old patina.

Mehan texting her boyfreind. you can see part of the arena and the entry gate in front of her.

Oh did I say we had a cat with us LOL, Luxor loves his kitty.

Will post Team sorting next.

Busy day today

Today was a busy day. Yesterday when Meghan got home from school, early at 11:30 she came running back in the house saying Easy was lame. My worst fear was that she was tieing up after running drill and a 2 1/2 hour ride home in the trailer. I went out to access the situation. She definantly was 3 legged lame, poor baby, but she was not tieing up. She is sore in her left stifle. I have Meghan run down to the Vet and get a tube of bute. We gave her a one gram pill before she left, but I absolutely hate handling bute in the powder form. I prefer to get it in paste form, its much much easier to administer and you dont have to worry about breathing it or getting it on you, it can cause aniphalactic shock in humans, it is not good stuff for humans to get exposed to. It is a bit more expensive in paste form, but I think it is a good trade off for the safety factor. So later that evening we gave her 2grams more and today she is walking almost normal. She is 24 years old, she must have stepped wrong or done something during the drill. She was not lame when we got home, so sore muscles and arthritis probably. We are giving her a little bute before running the drill just to help with the inflammation, and she has been just fine until yesterday. I think she will be ok, she is going to rest this week though.

We took Emma up to brother #2s today to ride, they have a big arena and boarding facility, and Meghan worked Emma, she is such a spoiled brat, LOL, Emma, not Meghan (hmmm maybe I will rethink that one LOL) Emma just is not a competition horse we have yet to find her "go" button. So Meg rode her for and hour and a half and used barrels to turn her around and had to spank her a lot to get her to move, Emma tried a lot of tricks like leaning against the wall and kicking at the whip a lot, backing up (sigh) Meghan has to come to an empass with her, Emma has pretty good dominance issues, meaning she thinks she should be boss. Convincing her otherwise is sometimes an ordeal, but by the end of their session Meg was getting some more willing forward movement, when she asked for it. Emma hasnt been ridden since Dec. and she is one that needs to be ridden more. I dont have a problem with her when I ride, but then I am not asking her to go fast or the same things that Meg wants her to, although I have fought with her attitude also. Emma is a wonderful trail horse, and would probably be fine doing rail work, but thats not what Meghan wants to do. We took Emma out and Meghan is going to start riding her, just in case Easy doesnt get better.

So before we left with Emma this after noon I had to trim her feet and we cleaned her up, shaved her bridle path and legs a little, so she was at least presentable LOL

Then after Meghan rode we had a Drill Team meeting at the local ice cream shop. Papa's is the name of the shop. He lets the team meet there and use his big screen TV and watch the videos of the drill routine. He has the best icecream, I had huckleberry cheesecake, yum yum, and so did Meg, although she had a cone and I had a bowl.

Besides wonderful Umpqua brand icecream he does flavored cokes, and soup and hot dogs and I seen some bagel menus and coffee and hand made candy that he buys. When you get a waffle cone they make them right there and it smells wonderful!! I hope his little business makes it he is a funny character of a man and always gives Meghan a bad time when she goes in. This is the owner, Ivan, in the picture. He should be coming up on the first anniversary of the shop pretty soon.

Here is the area where we watched the videos. This is a really nice place, very tasteful. There are some artist paintings on the wall by a local artist that I went to school with.

After watching the videos the girls all went outside in the courtyard to run through the drill on foot, they changed it up a little. They did really improve on their score this last meet and were only 16 pts behind the winning team, there are only 2 teams in our district.

All of us parents and grandparents watched from indoors, as it was cold out there LOL

This is a brand new building in town finished in 2007, it is a really nice building, but sits mostly empty, for some reason our small town thought all this commercial space was a good idea, and now the owners cant rent all the space. They even put in underground parking. Maybe it will fill up eventually if the "economy" improves, arent you sick of hearing about that? Two different pizza restaurants have gone out of business a Belagios chain store and a hometown Pizza Palace that had been there for 25+ years, a sad end of an era. Gaming practice tomorrow night and Drill practice on Sat.

I will post more about the meet again and I do have the whole drill on video! Sorry this is a pretty long winded post for me LOL I forgot my camera earlier in the day.

WAHSET meet #2, Trails End Arena, Olympia WA

Thursday, 3-19-09
Well we left at about 11;30am, and got up to Olympia at around 2:00. We unload everything and Meghan starts getting Easy cleaned up for In hand relay.

As she is getting ready other team members are trickling in.

Missy and her mom are one of the first to arrive. You can see the "motes" for the ditches that are all over the place up here. We luck out and the weather is cloudy with sun breaks and only a few rain showers.

That is the arena building behind the truck, the building is huge!!

Luxor got to go with us this time, he almost didnt get to go into the grandstands with me. There was a big meeting to decide if they were going to let him in. He is classed as a service dog, but refusal to let them in can happen, because he is a puppy in training, not a full fledged service dog with a handicapped person. ( unless you count me LOL) Anyway the vote was just about unanimous to let him in. They had to reinforce some rules this year because so many people brought dogs last year, for insurance reasons, they dont want pets in the grandstands/arena area.

This is the teams stall barn, this facility is pretty old.

Where we camped, the power supply is iffy, so we can only run lights in the camper. We do have propane heat, but I only use that during the day when we are awake, it wasnt too cold and we took our electric blankets again :)

Luxors bed in the camper.

We walked over to check the progress of the classes.

There were the cutest minis doing the IHOR class.

There were quit a few miniature horses there, they do the in hand stuff, (obviously LOL) and driving with them.

And Meghan and Easy going through the course. This time they had a couple of classes on Thurs. night so things wouldnt go so late at night.

ANNNNDDDDD our funny story for the trip!!

Carissa is on the, in hand team, and they couldnt get there until late, because her grandma had to work until 6pm. they pull in around 8:30 and have to pull the horse out and run to the arena for the class. Carissa gets in their camper to change her shirt and finds their barn cat inside. "Grandma, we have a cat", "What!!!" Grandma says. "Oh, no!!" as she laughs. They go do the class and head back to the barn and we are making fun of them because they have the cat with them. We head to our camper to get settled down for the night and open the door..... to.....

m e o w!!! Our *&^%$%& cat had stowed away in our camper too!!! We had been up there since 2 in the afternoon and had not seen or heard her at all, we left the door open and came and went, she could have gotten out and we would never have known! Soooo we are stuck with a cat for the weekend too. Oh and their cats name is Yellow, our cats name is Amber, LOL

Isnt this just the most pathetic face, "Mom I dont want to loose my kitty!" in a big whinny voice LOL "Your not going to lose your cat" I say. Damn cat.

At least I can laugh about it, the whole team thought it was really funny that two of us has inadvertently brought our cats!!!

And her room while we were not in the camper. Made a cat box but she wouldnt use it. pulled the plastic down and peed on the plastic at least, and pooped on the bottom floor :(

Damn cat.

Here she is the next day looking cute.

Damn cat.

Oh did I say.....

Damn cat.

Well she survived and came home with us, none the worse for the wear.

Damn cat.

And more about the meet tomorrow, we were glad to get home early, before dark, and it was a much more pleasant drive home than last time.

WAHSET meet #2, we go Thursday!

The Washougal WAHSET team for 2009 is ready to go again! Meet #2 is this weekend. We will be at the Trail End arena in Olympia! for four days!

Meghan and Easy will compete again! Next meet #3 will be in another 3 weeks, then the State meet in May.

I am hoping this works!! this is the first video that I have tried to upload.

They take a long time to process. This is a Steer Daubing video for those of you that havnt seen it. Ok I had to upload it before I watched it sorry, I have one more. This first one is a demonstration in how excited the horses get before going in the box, a lot of them get sour to the box, and yes she does go in.

Ok so I dont have a program on my comp at the moment that will let me view the videos before I upload them, time to load the program that came with the camera. so we will see if this second video is any better. Ok it worked as you can probably see LOL. This old mare has more energy! she is just full of it, and she really does like doing this, dispite throwing the fit, she has always loved to run!! I will post again probably when we get back, unless I am able to pirate someones internet Hehehehehe LOL We will be in a much more rural area than the last meet.

What is your horse story?

This is Joe, my favorite horse.

A Bay Horse http://abayhorse.blogspot.com/ has this interesting set of questions on her blog, I thought it might be fun to answer them.

So, what is your story? Feel free to answer in comments.

1. How old were you when you first started riding? My mom bought her first horse when I was two years old, she used to put us on with her.

2. First horse ridden: Silkey

3. First horse trotted on:Silkey

4. First horse cantered on:My pony Pepsi

5. First Horse fallen off of:My pony Pepsi

6. Most recent horse fallen off of Mickey, but that was 18 years ago!

7. Most terrifying fall:When Mickey sat down with me and flipped over sideways and stepped on me.

8. First horse jumped with: Do you count the scurries that we used to do at game shows? Then it was on Silkey or Joe.

9. First horse who ran away with you:I have never had a horse run away with me.

10. First horse that scared the crap out of you:I have never had a horse scare the crap out of me, unless it was for medical reasons, and when Mickey coliced it scared me, and I had to put one pony down when she coliced, colic is scary!

11. First horse shown :!)Silkey

12. First horse to win a class with:Joe, we won a trail class

13. Do you/have you taken lessons:I have had a few huntseat lessons and some equitation lessons for 4-H, one time lessons, not anything ongoing.

14. First horse you ever rode bareback:Silkey

15. First horse trail ridden with:Silkey

16. Current Barn name:We dont have a barn name, we have our horses at home.

17. Do you ride English or western?:Have ridden huntseat, ride western most of the time

18. First Horse to place at a show with:Silkey in 4-H

19. Ever been to horse camp?:Not unless you count going with my girls as an adult

20. Ever been to a riding clinic?Yes went to a reining clinic with Garth Brown, and a Riding Clinic with Pat Wise

21. Ridden sidesaddle?Nope

22. First horse leased: Never leased

23. Last Horse Leased:NA

24. Highest ribbon in a show: a Blue

25. Ever been to an 'A' rated show?:been to them yes, never shown in one

26. Ever competed in pony games/relay races? We did a lot of game shows when I was a kid

27. Ever fallen off at a show No

28. Do you ride Hunter/Jumpers?: No

29. Have you ever barrel raced?Yes

30. Ever done pole bending?:Yes

31. Favorite gait:Trot

32. Ever cantered bareback?:Yes

33. Have you ever done dressage?:Have taken a few dressage lessons as a kid

34. Have you ever evented?:Nope

35. Have you ever mucked a stall?:Many many many

36. Ever been bucked off?:Yes

37. Ever been on a horse that reared Yes

38. Horses or ponies.Both! love them all!!

39. Do you wear a helmet?:Yes every time

40. What's the highest you've jumped:2-3 feet

41. Have you ever ridden at night?:Yes

42. Do you watch horsey television shows?:Yes

43. Have you ever been seriously hurt/injured from a fall?:Yes, I have had my horse, Joe, slip and fall with me and sprain my ankle, and Mickey going over sideways with me I hit my head and she stepped on my arm.

44. Most falls in one lesson:none

45. Do you ride in an arena/ring?:We have a small fenced 50x80 area we ride in a lot

46. Have you ever been trampled by horse?:No

47. Have you ever been bitten?:Yes, more like pinched by Easy, the saddle was hurting her

48. Ever had your foot stepped on by a horse?:Yes when I was a kid

49: Favorite riding moment:Out on the trails

50. Most fun horse you've ridden:Probably Joe, when I was a kid, that horse would do anything for me!

Wow that took awhile LOL, now you can answer some or not, let me know.

Kokanee fishing, Lake Merwin WA

This is the bow ornament LOL Teddy loves to run around the boats when we are cleaning or whatever, I think he just likes to be up high where he is bigger than everyone else. LOL yes there is a junk pile beside the garage LOL the water heater is gone now though!

The First Kokanee trip Hubby and #1 brother in law went by themselves. For those of you that dont know what Kokanee are, they are landlocked salmon. Hubby with one of his fish.

This is the trip where all of us went. This is Bro in law #1's boat.

My cousin Liz telling fish stories LOL

Left to right, Joe, Liz, DeAnn, and Bro # 1

Scenery, it is beautiful up there and there were bald Eagles flying around and in the trees, no good pics of them, my zoom wasnt powerful enough.

Hubby and me, baiting up, you have to fish in 40 to 60 feet of water and troll with corn on the hook, and ford fender flashers above.

This turned out cool with the reflection. The lake is so beautiful deep green. Yes the lakes in Washington are green LOL not blue.

The view down the lake, it did sprinkle on us just a little bit.

I liked this little tree, it was at the entrance to the dock area.

There are a lot of cabins in gated commuities up here around this lake, you cant see them because of all the trees.

And our haul for the day, ours are on the left side, and Bro in laws on the right! we smoked them, and man were they goooooood!!! We smoke all of our trout now, it makes for tasty flesh and you can pull the skin and bones right off, no fighting all those little bones, and did I say they are sooo tasty!!

This trip was a couple years ago, but I love the scenery and the boat pics.

We have to go again this year!!!