Hi!

Now that you're here, I can explain a little about how we consistenlty produce the type of horses you'll find for sale on our place.  First of all, we both have full time jobs as veterinarians, not as horse trainers.  Raising, training and showing horses is what we do for recreation.  Because it is a hobby, we're not under any time constraints and we take our time.  Although it may take us longer to reach the destination, we truly enjoy the journey along the way.  This works for us, and we've never heard any complaints from the horses, either!

Now that we're out of the breeding business for ourselves and our youngest colt is now a yearling, I guess I don't have to go into how we'd handle foals lol! 

As of 2008, we started switching our focus to finding a few good young geldings to bring along.  Frankly, neither one of us is very patient when it comes to waiting for the babies to grow up.  There are so many high-end horses out there now to choose from we decided it made more sense for us to go 'shopping'.  Temperament will still be our priority, but now there will be no gambling anymore as to color and gender!  Additionally, we are looking forward to working with some different bloodlines than what we have had in the past.

We use Sam Hudson of Hector, Ar to start all our colts.  He has a lifetime's experience training, and does a great job.  Before they go to him, I'll have worked with them quite a bit and they'll be mannered as to the routine things - standing tied, accepting a saddle, bathing, loading, etc....  They may even have been to a couple of local shows for some off the farm exposure.

Normally, they'll get 45-60 days with Sam.  In that time frame, he'll have them guiding easily, giving to the bit and leg, pick up and lope both directions, have a good start on the stop and turnaround, and will have been ridden down the road a little.  Once they come home, I'll make a point to ride them at least a couple of times in the first few days then depending on the individual colt, they'll get a layoff when they come home of anywhere from a couple of weeks up to a month or so.  After their layoff, I'll probably be the one to ride them for the next several months at least (Blake only likes them after they're ready to start tracking cattle lol!).  I try to do at least a season's worth of showing.  It doesn't have to be serious, it just has to happen.  If not actual showing, at least taken to different arenas for exposure to various situations.  They don't get hammered on, we don't have enough time to overwork or overshow one anyway, but the low stress outings they do get make a tremendous difference a year down the road!  With horses we buy that are already going under saddle, we'll start them in whichever part of the routine they're ready for.

As you can see from the pictures, there's not much our horses don't get exposed to.  We try to do quite a bit of trail riding, ground work with ropes and balls and sacks and such, and a little ranch work.  This is my favorite 'phase' of training, and gives me the biggest sense of achievement when working with our horses.  I truly appreciate hearing people comment on how well-behaved one of our horses is.... but that doesn't hold a candle to how good I feel when I see him tolerating and handling a potentially bad situation and knowing it's because of the time and patience that was put into him on our part.  This is where having three cooperative boys comes in handy.  They're always willing to do their part in helping get the horses used to just about any kid-related activity you can think of - and some you probably don't.

Once a horse is ready (even if we know he's not aimed toward a roping career) we'll start tracking and pulling the sled and the donkey.  They may track for weeks or even months on and off before ever coming out of the box after a steer, and we always start them on the heel side.  They'll get plenty of scoring along the way, and learn to deal with the noise and excitement of gates and chutes and horses and steers coming out.  Eventually, we'll get our easiest steers up and start them coming out of the box.  Once a horse has gotten fairly consistent scoring, rating, closing and stopping we'll move up to medium cattle.  At this point, they'll start getting hauled to local practice pens for variety, until they're ready to jackpot.