No trade. Now back to Horse Porn

Well, after considerable thought and realizing that the horse I was considering trading for was way, way too thin, I'm back where I started from.

I've accepted the idea that I've got to sell Canyon and find a horse with a calmer disposition. Canyon reminds me of Goose as he's described on GNH (a bit of the ways down on the post I've linked too). That's just not a horse for a 10 year old. And since we can have only one...

So I'm surfing horse porn again. You know, when you spend hours looking at horses for sale even though you've got PLENTY to deal with and the dishes are in the sink calling.

Domesticity has never been my strong suit. And I've got lots of dishes. It'll take us a week to run out of options.

Here's a few lookers I'd love to shake a carrot at. Opinions anyone?

http://www.keithranches.com/Champ.html
http://www.keithranches.com/Sally.html (even though I'm not a mare person I'm already in love with this horse. Something about buckskins, I think)
http://sanantonio.craigslist.org/grd/849209748.html

and even this one, although he's foundered in the past...
http://sanantonio.craigslist.org/grd/836926804.html

But the reality is I can't look at anything until I find Canyon a good home. So up he goes on all the usual sites again.

In the meantime, I'm working on his courage issues. We were on a trail ride at Guadalupe state park (where we had the great escape, remember?) with a woman who teaches kids to ride. Here were these girls, from about 8 to 12, all riding horses, all on bareback pads, riding without bits, just curb chains going through the halter. I think they are curb chains...

Anyway, every time the horses came across something that bothered them, they all went up to the object to sniff it. It was amazing to watch all these horses gathered around a deer blind, some sticking their nose right in. I got to thinking that if I could do this repeatedly with Canyon he might not have as many freak outs. He was by far the most high spirited and nervous horse on the trail ride (although he behaved very well on the Canyon scale).

So, while I've got him, I'm going to try to get him to be a sniffer. Today we sniffed a barbque pit and it didn't eat us. Same with the big chairs made out of willow, although they did creak.

Next week we'll work on the sprinkler on the tripod. That thing is really scary.