Winter entertainment

 One more week and the days get longer! This is the most boring part of the year when it gets too cold to ride and life revolves around doing chores and staying warm. 

It revolves around feeding time for these two! Peering in the barn door as I feed the barn cats. Those faces..... so hopeful!

I might be able to get another ride in next week; we have a bout of stupid cold followed by above freezing so if the wind isn't howling I should be nice enough to ride. Yes I am a fair weather rider, I have done my time riding in all kinds of inclement weather so I feel I have nothing to prove and Gussie is happy to wait for nice days to pack my butt around. The privileges of age for both of us!

At least the morning chores have some sunshine lately. 

I have been entertaining myself with following the National Finals Rodeo on the Cowboy Channel. There are two horses competing who really impressed me; the first is a calf roping horse from right here in Alberta by the name of Peso. He was exceptional last night in round 9; placing his riders in 1st, 2nd and 3 place. He is a big soggy buckskin gelding who is rock solid in the box and powerful in his stop and he holds the rope perfectly. If you get a chance to see his runs on fb you will see what I mean. The really cool thing is that Tuf Cooper switched from his own horse to Peso last night and was 1 tenth of a second from winning the round. Tuf knows a great horse when he sees one!

Not my photo, couldn't find who to credit it to.

Peso is a grandson of Shining Spark, - both Belle and Jayne were granddaughters of Shining Spark, so no wonder he caught my eye!

The other horse that caught my eye is in the barrel racing; his name is Jarvis, ridden by Kassie Mowry, and he is a son of The Goodbye Lane who is proving to be an exceptional sire of speed horses. Jarvis isn't flashy like a lot of the other horses in that event but his runs are poetry in motion. And he has plenty of speed, winning 5 rounds so far. 

Photo by Hailey Rae

Tonight is the finals and I will be cheering both of them on!

Too hot to trot

 With this heat wave in place, I am wondering if it will change any of the equine events that are currently ongoing- example, the Calgary Stampede. I do have a bit of an issue with them for blocking the live feed of the Cowboy Channel (for Canadians only)for the duration of the Stampede- it blocks 24-7 not just during their broadcast. Which means that I can't watch any of the live coverage of rodeos or races even in the US until the Stampede is over- and they say right in their profile that they are a non profit organization and support the western lifestyle- but they granted Sportsnet the rights to broadcast. Why not also let the Cowboy Channel carry it? To me, it means they are hypocrites. Last time I looked, Sportsnet was not a supporter of the western lifestyle and are cashing in on carrying the Stampede- I would have to pay 20 bucks to get it as an app. Yeah... not happening. 

Anyway, rant over- I hope the Stampede reschedules their events to a cooler part of the day for the sake of the livestock and competitors. 

Meanwhile, back in Smaltownsville aka Benalto, which is 3 miles from us, I got to watch a pro rodeo the day before it got stupid hot. It was still plenty warm though. Here are three of my cell phone photos. 

The pickup man in that photo is Gary Remple, who has worked all the top rodeos including the NFR. He's one of the best. Nice to have him here! The bullfighters were outstanding too.

Off day

 Sunday after church we went to the local Pro Rodeo. Man it was hot! Hottest day of the summer so far. It was nice to have a "date day " though, it's been a long time since we went anywhere together just for entertainment. Didn't take my big camera but got a fun video with my cell phone:

Ruby got Sunday off, but Saturday and Monday I worked her on the ground and on trailer loading. 

She has off days; I can usually tell within a few minutes what kind of horse I will have on that day. Saturday, she was doing her robo-horse thing where she kind of shuts me out and just goes into what I call dude horse mode: doing things out of habit and not tuning in to me. So I worked her in hand, asking for hip yield followed by shoulder yield/change of direction. It took her a bit to get smooth with it. Then I worked on whoa. I have a 3 step program that I use, giving them the best chance to respond to the lightest ask first. Verbal command, followed by reinforced by body position and a stronger verbal command, then a louder WHOA combined with a flip of the lead rope. She pretty much totally ignored the first 2 and I had to resort to #3 several times before she ended up stopping consistently on #1. 

I chose not to ride her in that frame of mind so I took her over to the trailer  to work on trailer loading. I haven't done that with her since I bought her. The seller loaded her just fine into his big stock trailer, so I wasn't anticipating much of an issue. Wrong. She didn't think it was a good idea at all. So we worked through that until I could load her once all the way in and have her wait until I asked her to come out. 

Monday we had storms in the forecast. I was planning on riding her before we got the expected thunderstorm, but I ended up with a strong attack of vertigo so I just did a rerun of trailer loading. I suspected that she had time to think about it, and sure enough she was much better. Minimal arguing, and I loaded her a few times and had her back out. (Saturday she was turning around in there and stepping out. )

Ruby is proving to be a prime example of a double swirl horse. Some days everything is just tickety boo, other days, she puts up walls. So I am learning to read her and deal with the horse I have on that given day.  

Annnd it's stupid cold

 We finally hit that -30C mark this last week. 

That's -27.4 F and we turn our furnace down at night so the indoor temp was 60 F.  

It was bloody cold doing chores! I bundled up and got out at daybreak to see how all the critters fared. The cats that I could see were all fine, Beamer was snug in his blanket , the mares were frosty and hungry. ( They did still have some hay in their shelter so they were just being picky!)Velvet started to shiver when she saw me but stopped as soon as she started eating. I plan to blanket her for our next cold snap. I had to pick the snowballs out of her front feet; Ruby didn't have any. 

Saturday warmed up to a balmy -19 for the high. The sun was shining into Beamer's stall and lil Bandit came out and sunned herself. 

I was wondering if she has the blue eyes....

but she doesn't. (I am still assuming it's a female, no proof yet.)

I have been hunkering down watching the NFR on the Cowboy Channel . Sure are some good horses in the rodeo world. I think the NFRR should include ladies breakaway roping. When a girl can come out and rope her steer in 1.8 seconds without breaking the barrier, that is some serious skill. Fast starting horse and accurate throw. The American rodeo which is on in March includes breakaway, so get with it already!