4-H Saturday

So, today was my boy's first 4-H meeting.

I don't know much about it, since, when I was a child I never once went to one. I never showed. I never saw good reason to. Most of the kids that I knew that showed their horses were giant pains, and I wanted as little to do with them as possible, so with my little kid logic, I assumed that all of the kids that showed were giant pains in the butt, and there was nothing I was missing by trail riding my horse bareback all over the county while the show kids were primping in their covered arenas & backyard show rings.

I still pretty much hold to this viewpoint.

But, I don't necessarily blame the kids as much anymore. That's growin' up I guess. But, that's neither here nor there.

I was talking about my boy's first 4-H encounter. He is in a small group of kids, most of them teenagers - pretty nice teenagers, in fact. There are two other kids that will be doing leadline classes with him this summer. One is the daughter of a friend. Both girls share the same first name. AND the same spelling of it. It's going to be an interesting summer. Oh, and he is, of course, the Only boy in the whole group.

Today, they learned about showmanship. We brought Champ, since I knew he could handle him, and I wanted him to be able to participate. So, of course, for the first time in a long time, Champ did not want to cooperate. Go figure.

He wanted to roll. A lot. What can I say? He's itchy. Like this fella here....

It was even more impressive when Little guy put old pony in his place. He wasn't going to have any misbehavior on the pony's part. When Champ misbehaved, he gave it to him with the chain on the lead. Every. Single. Time.

Boy's got it down. No misbehavin'. He won't have it. He did pretty good. Next up, he gets to work with his new pony .... Cinnamon. Yep, he picked her name.

Oh, and soon, Champ gets shaved. Got to fix all those itches he's got buggin' him.