Stinker Meets the Parents

Pongo pulled a shoe, so I didn't get to do my jump lesson on him yesterday.  I was a little bummed about it, because my parents are in town and jump lessons are way more fun to watch than dressage lessons.  I am a little surprised that they came and watched my dressage lesson.  It was fairly chilly and my dad has Parkinson's and doesn't do well in the cold, but he said he wanted to come watch so they did.

Keep that shit on Pongo!

My parents grew up on beef cattle ranches and while my dad is a veterinarian (think old school farm vet) they mostly ranched for my lifetime.  They see horses as a commodity for working, not as pets, and a lot of the things we do for performance horses seems a bit ridiculous to them.  For example if a horse came up lame and my dad couldn't easily identify what it was, they were tossed out to pasture and reevaluated at a later date.  If a horse started getting arthritis their work load was reduced (turned into a kid horse or only ridden once a week).  If a horse had a more long term issue (like Stinker's EPM), they would have been sold.  My mom actually told me I needed to sell him, which didn't go over very well...

He isn't weird at all...

The point of all of that is I was very curious what they would think of Stinker.  It was actually quite funny, because my dad said nothing.  It isn't that surprising because he never talked a lot, but as the Parkinson's progresses he talks even less.  My mom is the one that made me laugh.  I asked her what she thought and she said, "He sure knows how to pick them up and put them down."  Ummm....thanks?  I think...maybe.

Such a Goober

Anyway, after they actually saw me ride him, I think my mom kind of likes him.  She still thinks he is funny looking (Saddlebreds vs. Quarter Horses...), but she decided he was quite flashy and looked like fun.  I think Stinker likes having an audience, because he was a total rockstar.  We even managed to work on walk trot transitions with out a melt down and to make it better we got some decent ones.  They were quite good for us, but decent for normal horses.  And to make it even better S thought he looked good enough we should be on track to do a training level dressage test this spring.  I am going with Stinker got the parents stamp of approval.

How can you not love this face?