I knew it!

I just knew that something was going to happen to prevent Farmmom from getting to ride Monkey, and I was right.

At some point yesterday afternoon or last night, Monkey managed to slip in his stall, and strain a muscle in his hip. He's a little swollen, and sore, so he didn't get ridden today. Farmmom did get to walk him to loosen it up while I cleaned his stall and Sparky's horse's stall. Sparky missed class today, so JJ asked me to clean his stall and feed his horse this morning, no big deal.

JJ was worried that Farmmom would be upset about Monkey getting hurt, since owners tend to be touchy about those things, but she understood that it happens.

He asked me why I wasn't riding, when he saw me cleaning the stall, and I told him that Monkey had managed to fall in his stall and bruise himself or strain a muscle or something.

"What? How can you see a bruise?"

"Um... he's swollen, and he's sore. It's either a bruise or he pulled the muscle, either way he's stiff and sore enough that I'm not going to ride him today."

"You've been paying attention in Horse Production, good job!"

"I thought I was supposed to pay attention? You mean I could have been slacking off all this time? Well geez!"

JJ got a good chuckle out of that one. He's upset today because some people didn't fulfill their responsibilities yesterday, and gave him excuses today for it. I can't really blame him, either.

Also, last night was the second night of the college rodeo here, today at noon is the short rounds for all of the events. Last night was pretty eventful, one of the bareback horses managed to kill itself, it ran into the fence after the ride and I think it broke its neck. One of the saddle bronc riders got taken to the hospital, as well, he came off his horse and had what looked to me like some kind of seizure, his head and legs were twitching, one arm was up by his collar bone twitching, and when he stopped moving, he didn't move for a while. He walked out of the arena, but I heard today he got taken to the hospital afterwards.

Another of the saddle bronc riders just had a bad night all around. His first horse fell over on him, which got him a re-ride, his re-ride horse refused to come out of the chute, which got him another re-ride, and this third horse dumped him right out of the chute. I felt bad for him.

One of the bull riders got a re-ride too, cause his bull fell over.

Today, they'll have the really rough stock out. One of the bulls is the number one ranked bucking bull in the country right now, and the horses last night were just freakin nuts, which tells me that today's rides are going to be hellacious.

I'm going to make myself some lunch and go out to the fairgrounds and get myself a good seat. It's just too bad Farmmom couldn't stick around for the finals.