While I "enjoy" being pregnant and not allowed to compete, I'm loaning my horses out to my husband and a youth rider who is a close family friend. It's interesting, stressful, and fun at the same time because this is my pride and joy horse who I've poured blood, sweat, and tears into for 13 years and it's tough to hand over the reins even temporarily.

Last night was the first time my husband made a run on my main rodeo horse, Chance, since 2017. They didn't light the world on fire, but the run was super solid and now they have a better feel for each other. Matt said he could tell Chance was listening to everything he did during the run and he knows he can ride "the gray mule" much better next time. 

In addition to Matt riding Chance at big barrel races this spring, summer, and fall, we are going to haul him to a few youth rodeos for our favorite youth rider to run. She's got two of my other horses, including my little red horse and my 26 year old who refuses to retire, but there is one arena near us that those two horses don't  enjoy (big pen and super deep ground) so we have offered Chance to her when her youth rodeo association has rodeos there. 

Last Friday night, we hauled Fred and Chance down to meet her so she could ride Fred more and get on Chance for the first time ever. 10 minutes after she got on him, they slow loped through the barrel pattern for the first time and Chance was absolutely wonderful. He just continues to impress me and prove that he's worth his weight in gold. We are really excited for him to debut as a pee wee horse in a few years!

Typical run with me: https://youtu.be/BttEbqnI7_E

Matt's run on him last night: https://youtu.be/E1Hj9v7ztEA

Cruise through with new youth rider on Friday: https://youtu.be/CuIIr04C198

You are fortunate to have such a nice horse. He was taking care of your hubby and the young girl.

I got very very lucky when I found his ad on BHW 13 years ago! Chance is priceless. Matt HATED running in my saddle and said he felt like he was bouncing everywhere and not able to ride right at all,  so next time we'll put one of his saddles on and figure it will go better for both of them. My goal is that they can have a shot at 2D money at Barrel Bashes and other big races. We know Matt will be at least a couple tenths slower than I usually was on Chance but hey sometimes it pays better to be in the 2D than the bottom of the 1D! lol.

Our little gal is probably going to try him in a treeless since it will suck her down onto him and help her stay with him better. She's not used to anything close to his caliber since she's only made one run on the little rodeo horse. I'm THRILLED that Chance knew to throttle it down for her. We always knew he was smart but he's proving it more and more this year.

Update -- Matt and Chance just finished their first big show together and managed to basically win back the entry fees with their third run. We tried 3 different bridles but finally think we found the "right" one for them as a team. They finally started to look comfortable together and I know they'll just get better with more runs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlH2PEt8MOI&list=UU3h0VmyuYbqBRUor4JBQVlA

Good for you. I don't share horses with my husband well.... ok at all. 

I never said it was easy LOL.   I may have snarled at Matt in the warm up pen yesterday and said something like “for the love of God get off the saddle horn and get two handed going to second!” Lol

His horses are all free runners and mine are push style so it’s a difficult transition for everyone. I was really proud of Matt for stepping up and starting to jockey Chance  a little better on Sunday. And of course we are extremely lucky that Chance  will ease off the speed a little bit and let a different rider get the feel of him instead of just running off and taking advantage.