Fred;
Ya, I know what you mean. It was hard to let her go at the sale yesterday. But she did sell this time, and to a guy we knew, so that helped. My wife cried a little and said good by to her. We had only had her a year but had done alot of training with her.
Now the ones I got (Sota, my 9yrs old mule, and Newt, my yearling horse) will be with me till I am an old man, Lord willing. Their remaining life span should be 25yrs more or less and that will put me at 70. I may still be riding then but not ready to break in a new colt.
Marcia, my wife, is pretty stuck on keeping her 10 yr old sorrel mule, Abby. She does want a black one but will probably never get rid of Abby, if she does get one, so Abby will probably grow old here too.
I'm real excited about Newt's potential as a posse horse. I was reading about a Florida Sherrif's Dept. using Belgians and Percherons as duty horses and it was working out real well for them.
He seams sharp for 12 months old. Yesterday I caught him on the 4' wide x 12' long teeter-toter, standing on it crossways over the pivot. He was shifting his weight to rock it back and forth while looking underneath it like he was trying to figure out how the thing worked.
He will also go stand in the box of pop cans and crunch them to get my attention. He picks up tires in his teeth, out of the tire pile he is suppose to walk through. He then trows them around and has a high old time with them.
I also shot by him last night while he was eating using a 9mm pistol. He jumped at the first shot but the other nine shots he ignored. I stood about 15 ft from him and was shooting away from him. He should be pretty "bomb proof" when I get done with him. I am going to have to upgrade my obsticle course to make it a little more heavy duty as he grows, as he will demolish some of my stuff if he reaches over a ton in weight.
I think I'll have to teach him to stretch one leg forward and bow so I can mount him.
Hud