4-H

Once upon a time, I used to do 4-H. Four of the five of us did actually. I did it until my freshman year when I could go into rodeo and I left the show biz behind for the fun stuff :) It's been about a gazillion years since then (seems like) and my niece decided that she wanted to give it a go. Imagine how weird it is to get back into something like that...it is very nostalgic for sure. So a lot of my time has been spend riding my horse, trying to train him even further and training Bronsynn on all the stuff she needs to know. She's a first timer and BJ, the horse, will be first timer for this so it was new for both of them.

I was up at 5:30 Saturday morning so I could get over to the padre's house and get the horse all washed up and trimmed and polished. We got over to the arena where Bronsynn, looking fabulous as shown below, went off to take her test:


While she was testing, Amanda and I put the finishing touches on BJ. Here he is getting baby powder put on his white stripe so that it will stand out more:

Isn't he pretty???

This horse did very well for his first pampering. He was shampooed, combed, trimmed, sprayed with shiny stuff, baby powdered, baby oiled, and painted!! Here he is pretty much all done, right before I painted his hooves black. He cleans up nice, eh??

It's a day long event so we set up shade and get the coolers out and we camp out at the trailer unless she's up.

Bronsynn got a red ribbon (2nd place - not second out of the whole class but each person is judged individually) on her two first show events, which was great considering this was a first. She almost got a blue ribbon (1st place) on this event (Western Showmanship), but she broke gait once and so she had to go home with a red. Still very stellar!:

Unfortuanely the speed events didn't go as well. BJ uncharacterstically bucked Bronsynn off during her run so she had a no time, and then that made her miss Scurry, which was a shame because that's a fun race with jumps in it that she rocks at. And Poles was done alright but she was a little nervouse after the Barrels and I couldn't get her to go any faster. She has one more show this August and I think it will go even better....we shall see. But it was a re-learning experience and she did really well. Fun day :)