Saddlebrook Appaloosas

Well the Midwest Horse Fair went well all except for my Internet access.  I thought I would be able to pick up some wifi signal on the fairgrounds. If not, I thought I would be able to use my phone for a modem and get online. Well wouldn’t you know it there was no wifi and my computer didn’t have the drivers for my phone so I couldn’t connect. If I could get online the Verizon people told me I could download them and I would be all set. Well of course if I could get on the Internet I would not need my phone. Now that I am home I will get it all installed so I will be ready for the next trip. My old phone was not this hard and connected right up.

The horses were great at the show. Matilda ended up not showing because of her abscess. By Friday she was getting better, but with all the time off we weren’t sure we should push it. Marla was able to ride her a little over the weekend and she behaved great even with all the flags and people flying around. Roxy and Spanky were the biggest hit of all the appaloosas. Spanky was great at the breed demo on Friday she acted perfectly following her mother and letting me lead her well. Saturday however was a different story. Roxy having not been out since Thursday wanted to run once she got in the arena. This I could control of course, but her being excited got Spanky excited and before long, Spanky was running around Spice on the leadline while rearing up and down. This was what everyone loved. Like watching a hockey fight, as long as you are not in the middle of it  you don’t mind watching. Well Spanky never did anything bad, didn’t flip over or rear near me or Roxy, so all in all I have to say it went pretty well. The most amazing part for me was how well they were behaved in the stall with all of the people stopping and taking pictures of them through the weekend. As time went on they got more and more used to it. Great training over all for a weanling that is for sure.

When the show was over I had to take Spanky and Roxy and my booth home Sunday and I went back today to get the RV and do a BarnCam quote for a customer near there.  They have a farm they just built. Actually it is an old dairy farm and they converted the barn to a house. It is very cool as they did all the insulation and metal cladding on the outside, so the entire inside looks just like ours only clean. LOL. The people live in Madison and go out to the farm often to see the Scottish highlander cattle they are raising. Those are the cows with the big long horns.  After that I finally got home with everything safe and sound. What a little adventure.

Thanks for watching,

S/B

The warm weather should be back in a while. Once it warms up again, the kids and I are going to get a ton of work done around here. The first project is stall cleaning, and then moving some hay and grain, also pushing the manure in the hole and doing some barn office stuff. I can’t wait to have their help.

When the weather is nice the horses just love it. Almost every one of them a week or so ago was laying flat out in the sun catching some rays. It is a little scary at first as you do not expect to see three horses laying next to each other looking like they are dead. Finally when you walk up to them they get up and look at you and say,”What are you doing waking me up? Can’t you see if is 70 degrees out?”.  Anyways that it what it looks like they are saying.

There has been a great deal of posting on the appaloosa message boards about letting “Cropouts” into our appaloosa registry.  I actually voted against this rule, but the idea was that there are now some registered quarter horses that are coming up with appaloosa coat patterns. They are registered and have paperwork and even are genetically verified as full quarter horses, yet they look like appaloosas. The motion was made at our last board meeting that since we are allowed to outcross to quarter horses anyway and they have the correct markings, we should allow them into our registry. This has made alot of people mad as the only way to get an appaloosa is to have the appaloosa genes in the horse. I voted against this because I realized that somewhere no matter how far back these horses pedigrees are incorrect, and we should not want to allow incorrect information into our database, even though genetically they are probably not very different than our true appaloosas.

Thanks for watching,

S/B