Elizabeth, Sassy, and 4-H

We got Elizabeth signed up for horse 4-H, and the leader also happens to be a professional horse trainer.  She confirmed that Cinnamon just isn't going to be a good riding horse for Liz, at least not without several months of consistent training.  So she helped us locate a horse that a family was looking to get rid of because they couldn't afford to feed her anymore.  That's how Sassy came into Liz's life.  Sassy is a 20-year-old paint mare who is super gentle and completely trained.  She came to us last weekend a good 60-70 pounds underweight, but after just a few days of good grass hay and a nutritional supplement, she is already starting to look much better.  She got to us just in time to get acquainted with Elizabeth and then accompany her through her first 4-H horse show on June 14th.

The horse show went really well.  Elizabeth was great with Sassy, looking completely comfortable in the saddle, and Sassy was obedient and more energetic than we expected.  Liz rode all of the events except bareback; she did the showmanship, western pleasure, scurry, poles, and barrels events.  The show started at 5 p.m. and didn't get over until 11:30 p.m. so we were there a long time, but Liz had the time of her life and can't wait for the next show in a couple of weeks.

I managed to get a few pictures of the showmanship event and video of the western pleasure.  By the scurry event, it was getting pretty dark, so the video isn't very good of that one, and by the time they finally got around to barrels, it was much too dark to get pictures or video, but here's some of what I was able to get of the evening.

Western pleasure:



Scurry:



I also managed to get a cute picture of Joshua wearing Liz's new cowgirl/boy hat and just have to share that, too.