Ft. Collins CO

We made it to Ft. COllins a few days ago. I get mixed up and lost on my days easily, so I don't know how long we've been here! A few days though. :)

We got here mid day, and spent the day getting to know the place, reconnecting with Nate and Amy Bowers, and settling our stuff! It is a fantastic farm: they have 60 acres, 16 steers, a few horses in for training, a great playground and arena, and they live right on a lake. There is a track around most of the lake that we can ride on, we can't go in the lake though. It is a great trail ride for the horses! The first full day we were here was the 4th of July, and we got to play with some cows, move them around in the arena and get our horses confident with them. Martina and Sarge we both pretty scared.  Martina relaxed after a bit and got more curious about the cows. Hank did great later in the day helping to move the cows, he has done it plenty of times before and enjoys putting some purpose to his play! We went for a refreshing swim in the lake and played some bachi (sp?) ball on the beach. That evening we went over to Molly Sanders' and her husband Brett's house for dinner. We had a great meal with beef from one of Nate's steers, and watched some fireworks, all in good company! Molly and Brett live right on another lake too, and it was full of people that night!

The next day we spent more time with our horses and I got to watch Amy teach a lesson at the farm. She is such a great teacher, and makes concept so easy to understand. After that, I played with and rode Martina, she had a bit of explosion after I saddled her too early, and then played with and rode Hank. I got to opportunity to ride most of the way around the lake with Amy and a horse she has in training named Willy. He is an extreme horse, and had a couple good spokes, plus he is almost 18 hands, and when I watch Amy ride him, it looks awesome, and all I think is, "no thanks!" He's too much horse for me! On our ride though, we did a lot of trotting and Willy was trotting ahead, and Hank and his little trot had to get going!! It was really good for him because he then had more motivation to trot faster. We broke in to a canter at one point and Willy was still out there trotting his nice slow trot for him. On a nice long stretch we were both cantering and Hank was probably going the fastest I had him go, it was extremely fun. He did a great job and I felt in control the whole time. Very cool, he is such a great horse.

That night we went in to Ft. Collins and had wings for dinner at a spicy wing place, and then got some ice cream sandwiches down town, they were great! This morning Steve and I had the opportunity to do a little fishing and I went for a run on the beach. He caught a carp, they are all over in that lake, you see them all the time!! They are very big too!! Abbey went running with me, and played some fetch along the way. Then I had a play with Martina, and thought she was ready to saddle, when she wasn't she exploded again the same as yesterday. I unsaddled and re saddled again and she was good, hoping to make it right tomorrow!! We had a great play, focusing on flexion and maintain gait, and yielding off my leg. I had a play with Hank next, and he was great again, he is really impressing me these days. We did some nice drop to trot changes, I am hoping to play with flying changes tomorrow. Then Steve and I went with Amy and Willy again around the lake. Amy does such a great job riding him, he had a nice couple of bucks in there!!

It started raining this afternoon, so Steve and I came in to town to do some computer work. Everyone is enjoying the rain!!

Day one: MI to IA

July 2, 2012

Atlantic, IA

I am happy to say that Steve and I made it safely to our destination in Iowa. We got up this morning around 4, ate quickly, packed last minute things and loaded the horses. They had never been in our new trailer so we were wondering how they would do, and they all did great, and hopped right in. We were on the road by 5am, as planned. That is quite the feat for us; we tend to run a bit late at times. I got to drive the first shift, on our way towards Chicago. This is our maiden voyage with our new trailer, so we were curious to see what gas mileage would turn out like and how it would do in general. Both the truck and trailer were great, and we got better mileage than we expected. It was quite a quick drive really; it took us about 11 hours with stops. We got to see the Mississippi river, and lots of Iowa corn fields. We found our horsey hotel, got our horses settled. They got to play in the arena first, rolling and running around bucking, making dust. They got some molasses water and hay, and are now happy as horses. Steve and I got to then get the trailer up and running…turns out it is pretty easy. Now time to relax and cook dinner!