How does one ever decide? I mean look at them:**

I love this guy, his build his color, his bloodlines are good. Maybe not exactly what I’m looking for. So he’s close but maybe not the perfect man, stud whatever.

I have loved Unconventional since he was for sale as a baby. I wanted him soooo bad. The Silver dapple color is pretty cool and he looks so much like Coyote. Ok maybe a bit better built, just the neck, but they do look a lot alike. His bloodlines are somewhat similar to the first stud on the topside but still not as cow/ranch bred as I would like  and I want a cow horse first and foremost.

I saw Moab  in person at a ride at Fort Robinson he was stunningly gorgeous. And so very strongly gaited. The owner rode him for the first time on those steep hills in a group of horses and survived. I would say barely but I think it was that whole Morgan thing where they look insane but don’t feel bad when you are riding them. I rode a youngster that belonged to the same people. It was a tiny scrawny two year old I think, maybe a foot wide with thirty days training by a guy who charged a hundred dollars a month. You get what you pay for I usually say, I was charging considerably more at the time. I loved the horse it was quiet smooth and level headed, tons of fun to ride even if it didn’t know anything, sold me on their breeding. Plus he is bred the same on top as Jerry and she’s such a good little horse. So why am I not more serious about him? I really don’t know.

Good bloodlines, great show record. A little thick through the throat latch. I like a nice coppery chestnut. I’ve admired him for a long time would’ve crossed him on Jerry in a heartbeat.

Nice looking horse, cool color, great bloodlines. I’ve always thought Chingadero was fascinating. Lots of good western breeding plus they are close to us, relatively. Not that it matters with AI.

And why am I checking out all these good looking guys?

It’s all because of this good looking girl. She’s bred pretty well, nicely built, strongly gaited, smart, opinionated, fun to ride, don’t know what she’s like on a cow. If she were to have a colt next year the youngest human child would be a year. By the time the  foal would be old enough to start 8 would be four. Maybe I would be in a position to start a colt. I am definitely not right now. In a perfect world The Goblin Child could have Onna for hers, 8 could ride Coyote and I would have a youngster. Would it be easier to just buy something ready to start when the time comes? Probably.

The two times I have bred mares it has been disastrous. First was Grace and her beautiful bay based grey stud colt. Beautiful and dead by nightfall. Then, if possible even worse, was Nev. He was perfect, gorgeous and sweet and fun to ride for one whole summer. Do I really want to do this again?

Yes, of course. I’m a glutton for punishment.

So which is my choice? How does one decide when there are so many beautiful studs to choose from? Close your eyes and pick? flip a coin? From even this small selection not one of them would be a bad choice and there are so many others just as good. It’s enough to make your head explode.

I chose the last one. Still working on the details and she’s not bred yet, only time will tell if it works out. I hate to even say anything about it until the whole thing is said and done. Afraid I will curse it.

Looking at their pictures next to each other here I think they are built just alike.

**To my darling husband, you know that if I’m checking out anything of the male variety other than you it’s got to be a horse right?

What does one write about a baby? Especially one who is sweet and healthy and sleeps well? Someday he will get old enough to read this, not that he will want to but he could, and he will be so hurt that I never say anything about him. I talk about his sister all the time. I even talk about the new horse more than I do him, poor guy.

So I will try. The darling boy has only been getting up once at night for quite a while now and then he’ll sleep till almost seven. When he does wake up he doesn’t immediately start screaming like certain other children I could mention did. He snuffles quietly, or should I say snorts and roots about loudly? He does eat like a horse.

Boys are way more fun to dress than I thought they would be. Of course who knew that I of all people would enjoy dressing a girl either? When I dress him all cute to go somewhere it never fails he doesn’t leave the car seat. If I leave him in pajamas he’s out the whole time with everyone looking at him.

He snored all the way through his first time to church. Ate, burped and cried through his second. He doesn’t do any better at that than his sister.

At his last doctors appointment he weighed eleven pounds already. Somehow we seem to make tall children. His otherwise tiny sister is as tall as her normal sized friends. 8 was in the 90th percentile for height. He’s a good two foot long. He seems so big to us, it’s all relative after all, and is in the 75th percentile for weight. I need to look back and see how old his sister was when she reached that weight. I know she was wearing the blue bear suit, that he wears now, in April so she would have been eight months.

That is all I can think of to say about him I’m afraid. He hasn’t had any explosive spit-ups and only a couple overflowing poops. He is just a good incredibly adorable baby. And well loved. I hope someday he will be able to appreciate how well loved he is. For now I think he spends most of his time cowering in fear.

I had managed what sometimes seems the impossible, both children were down for a nap at the same time! I turned the TV on to play Sesame Street for the next couple of hours and laid a drink and a snack out on the table in case the oldest child awoke and searched until I found a shirt with a snapping pocket to hold the baby monitor in case the younger woke up. I caught Princess Onna and let her graze in the yard while I saddled. Everything was set, I was going for a ride. With one last walk through the house to make absolutely sure everybody was ok I mounted up.

Princess Onna was in fine form. She pranced in place on her tip toes and her back was humped so high it was like sitting on a beach ball. I pulled her head around and moved her hind quarters over and let her circle a couple of times then we started off again. The wind was blowing steady enough to cool the first eighty degree day of the year but not quite howling. The first leg of our trip took us between feed bunks and cattle on one side and equipment and stacked railroad ties on the other. Having decided she was done being contrary she walked down the road without flinching.

Down at the Quonset my part time mechanic husband was spending the weekend fixing the corn planter with his father. They were within range of the baby monitor. With Onna standing, not quietly but standing, I yelled up to him as he sat in a tractor cab just inside the door to tell him where I was planning to ride and that I was leaving him the monitor. I lead Onna up to the four-wheeler as we squeezed between the drill and the building. I turned the monitor on and sat it down to make sure it was placed where it had reception. Just as I remounted we heard a child squawk. I said a few choice words and waited to make sure he was really waking up and not just stirring. He was definitely awake. So much for my ride.

Rushing back to the house I was trying to balance hurrying to get to a crying baby and not running my horse back to the barn. Which is the more important priority? She has a good fast walk and it’s a short distance, I think we got there as fast as was necessary without teaching any bad habits.

Dismounting I dropped my bridle and left her to mow the lawn as I hurried to the child. He had decided  he was starving. Keeping an eye on the horse out the window while he ate I mourned my lost ride. But The Goblin Child was still asleep. I keep hearing about my friends and friends of friends who ride with their children sitting in strollers in the arena surely I could manage. Sure I don’t have an arena but I have a driveway and a shaded spot out of the wind to set a car seat.

8 sat happily watching the branches of the big pine tree sway in the wind while I sat happily in the saddle. We, the horse and I not the child and I, worked on turns on the hind quarters and stopping. Knowing the guy who started her I can guess the sort of things he would have installed, knowing that shes been a trail horse for the decade or so in between and probably not practicing roll backs, I don’t know what she can do, what hasn’t been taught and what she just doesn’t feel like doing. I am enjoying finding out.

Three? years ago before starting Nev I was burnt out on training and just wanted to ride. Starting Nev got me in training mode again. Losing him took away any opportunity to train. One does not “train” Coyote to do anything, it is beneath him, he decides what he is willing to condescend to. Now here I have, if not a colt to train, and maybe not even a horse that is any more willing to accept instruction than Coyote is, at least something new to play with. She is light, relatively, and responsive and what, powerful maybe? Coyote can bolt with a rider, at a walk. She gives that same feeling.

We have moved the garden this year and the old/usual garden plot was sitting there beautifully worked so we claimed it for our arena. I put her on a circle and we walked. I have come far enough that I no longer work on head set. That lesson took awhile to learn. She deviated and we worked harder. She got mad that I would dare to tell her what to do and trotted. I realized how long it had been since I trained horses and cowered in fear of her breaking into a canter. We worked on staying on our circle while she chose to walk or trot and I thought of everything that could go wrong if we crossed that magic line into a lope. It’s one thing on Coyote, he’s not scarey no matter what he does, and he does a lot. I didn’t want to go any faster on a new, more than slightly rotten horse. Then I got over it.

The next time she wanted to go I let her. It was great, we may have paced more than loped but what ever. I wasn’t afraid anymore. Right about then 8 started to fuss. Our ride was over but it was alright I had accomplished more than I had ever hoped for. I had loped a circle.