What a glorious day!

It was an absolutely beautiful day today.  What a fantastic way to start a 3 day weekend!  I hurried through all my house cleaning chores and laundry so I could get outside as soon as I could today.  There are a million things I want to do...  Initially I had an assignment to clean the barn today but I skipped that silly work and decided on better things!

So here's the view out my back door headed out to the barn...  There's lots of horsey things waiting for us to do today so I better get busy.
Mike's been wanting me to try out Rev.  He thinks Rev would make a good horse for me.  I'm not so sure...  Rev is super smooth but can still be a jerk sometimes...  but hey, I guess Lucy can too...  It's the nature of an Appaloosa to be difficult and stubborn..  (just like me :-)  So I gave Rev a shot today..  Riding Rev is like floating, he doesn't jar my spine like Lucy does.  ha ha...  So I guess I can see myself riding Rev in Nebraska on our annual vacation this year.  Rev certainly is a beautiful horse.

Like riding in a cadillac!

But it's awful hard to give up my Lucy..  I've been riding Lucy for 4 years.  I bought her as a little weanling and have been riding her since she was two years old.  She's been to the Black Hills 3 years and to Fort Robinson once and she's always been solid for me...

And besides, who could give up a horse that can do all these tricks!!  Both Lucy and I dream of joining the circus someday..  Lucy will pretend she's an elephant and I'll be the sparkly circus lady...  You can tell my horse training is amazing!  I've taught my horse to stand in one spot...  Amazing I know!!  Karley, these pictures are for you because we both know you are going to be a trick horse trainer someday.  ha ha...  Okay, not really.  :-)

Then after we impressed everyone with our circus tricks, we decided to do some messing around bareback.  I'm surprised I could still do the bareback..  It's actually been awhile for me but I didn't eat dirt so that's a plus!!

After all the horsing around fun, I did get to give out a few treats.  Charlie didn't work to hard today but I though he earned a treat just for being so darn cute!

And here's old Thor hanging out in the pasture.  He won't take any treats from me yet but he is starting to fatten up a bit.  He's Mike's pride and joy. 

We did get some bad news this week.  Our trainer called us and told us he had to call the vet for Max.  Looks like Max has been diagnosed with Moon Blindness...  It's a condition that's comparable to Glaucoma in humans.  The prognosis isn't good.  Although Max has vision now, he is going to go blind and we won't be able to do anything for him.  Best case is he only goes blind in one eye.  Mike and I discussed and decided we are going to continue with his training anyway and still take him to Nebraska this August.  Hopefully he can adjust.  I'm a little sad.  Max was the last foal born on our place.  He is out of a huge black Quarter Horse mare and Mike's favorite App stud from Minnesota.  So we had high hopes for him.  He's a beautiful horse.  He's not blind now.  Hopefully he has a few years of sight left..  until then, we will try to expose him to as much as we can.  I'll have to let you know how Fort Robinson goes for Max.
Here's a picture of Max from early this spring.  He's a tall beautiful bay.  He's really proven himself to be quite smart so hopefully that will help him in the future.

Well, enough horsing around for today.  Tomorrow will have to be a dog day.  :-)  Ha Ha!  See you later!