FINALLY!

Today has been a pretty long day. I went out to the barn at eight, and fought with Monkey for a while.. he decided he didn't want to go to the arena first thing, and we had to discuss this a bit. His stubbornness was finally defeated with the simple expedient of backing him all the way to the arena fence. He was so focused on the fact that he was facing the barn, where he would much rather be, that he didn't notice we were at the arena until his butt bumped the fence.

I swear, if he could have, he would have slapped his forehead and said "Doh!"

Then he wanted to act up in the arena, but we handled that. Once he was behaving fairly well (and blowing just a bit) we went to the indoor arena for a while, because it was freaking cold and I had forgotten my stocking cap in the car.

After that, we went down by the rodeo arena where Monkey got tied to the fence to stand, while I hooked up a trailer and helped S work with her horse on getting in her trailer. Can't really blame Diablo for not wanting to get in there, it's a tiny side by side two horse, stubby and not much head room. I tried loading Monkey in, I was going to load him and unload him a few times with Diablo watching, but Monkey refused. To the point that he actually pulled the rope out of my hands, walked around to the side of the trailer, and looked at me like I was crazy.

Then, Farmmom, Farmdad, and Mamaw showed up with some of the calves, which are being loaned to the program to train the cutting horses on, and we unloaded them. After that was accomplished, I still had to finish cleaning Monkey's stall, and Monkey was still tacked up, so I sent Farmmom off to ride him while I finished up getting his stall ready for him.

She came back with the world's biggest grin on her face, it made all the fights more than worth it. I'm just glad she finally got to ride her horse, we've been trying to get her on him for a while now and it just never worked out. Now she knows for herself the difference, and doesn't have to take my word on it.

Now if I can just get ahold of the former boss about riding out some of her three year olds and get some extra income coming in, I'll be a happy camper, and able to pick up some of the tack that I've been drooling after for a while.