The good, the bad and the ugly

The good –
Last night we had drill practice. MIL took Abby and I took Max just to ride around in the arena. Abby didn’t do too badly for MIL. We need to work on her brakes but other than that she didn’t have too much of an attitude tonight.

Max was superb! He is getting so soft and he’s so pretty when he moves with his head tucked. Everyone thought it looked like I’d really been working hard on him. If only they knew. LOL

The bad –
On the second run MIL didn’t feel comfortable running Abby. She worried that she was a bit too tired and didn’t want to push her so I said I would. I started off by letting Abby know just who it was that was up on her. She wasn’t thrilled. We headed off in the pattern and when she got a bit lazy she met the end of my crop (which I might add has a lot more bite than MIL’s crop). She kicked up her heels to let me know how happy she was about it so I returned the favor by whacking her again. Needless to say by the end of the run she was pretty compliant and very tired.

The ugly –
The gal who is using Sis this Friday night for the cowgirl queen contest brought Sis along last night just to take her for a ride. She’s had her for about 2.5 weeks now working her to get her ready and to get used to her. If I hadn’t known she was coming I wouldn’t have recognized her. She has lost so much weight she looks horrible. MIL was so upset and about lost it (crying). She couldn’t believe she (MIL) had let her baby get like that. I tried to tell her it wasn’t her fault. I don’t think the gal using her realizes she’s lost so much weight since she sees her on a daily basis vs. us not seeing her for a while.

Friday is the queen contest and when Sis comes home from it we are going to have to be very careful not to upset her digestive tract. I told MIL we need to give her a loading dose of probiotics and then slowly re-introduce her to the pasture so she doesn’t get sick. I’m a bit worried about how she’ll bounce back. Sis is a pretty easy keeper and I’m not sure I’ve seen her this thin since she was a yearling (a sick yearling). I’m a bit worried that with this much weight loss over such a short time frame that she may have broken down some muscle.