Little Gray

Hello,

Since I have been in the roping and rodeo world all of my life. I love animals, from the roping steers, to my blue heeler, all the way to my horse I really enjoy being around them. I think the strength and power of a horse is one of the things that I really respect. When I was younger a lot of the horses I rode, my family and myself broke themselves. A person really develops a bond with them when you do that, but because of my schedule now I don’t have time to develop two and three year olds anymore.

So because of that I buy horses that are around five that are someone else has brought along slow and has taken them to some small jackpots. I try to slowly put them into my system. I bought a horse just like that about five years ago in Oklahoma that I have really enjoyed, but he has been a challenge. He is everything the guy said he was and maybe a little bit more. When I bought him they told me that he had two other owners and that he would rally watch a cow, he was very quick, you could head or heal on him, he was pretty to look at, but he was a little watchy. I should have asked for the definition of watchy, but I got caught up in fact that he was fast and pretty so off to Oklahoma I went. When I got him home I didn’t have him two weeks and he bucked me off. Three days later he did it again. My son said that I wasn’t even trying to stay on him, so he was going to help his old man out, so he started riding him. In one week he had bucked my son off twice. But because the horse has so much ability we stayed with him and he is now my number one horse.
Over the years when I’m in the Oklahoma area I have had two different guys approach me and tell me that they were previous owners of Little Gray. The guy I bought Little Gray from said that he never bucked him off, so I though maybe it was something we were doing wrong. One of his previous owners said that he had attacked his dog and killed it. The other guy acted like he had never bucked with him. He said he did buck with me one time and broke my pelvis, but that was the only time. Well, I told him that counts! Long story short, is he has taken a lot of riding to get all of that out of him and I still don’t entirely have it all out. But, a guy once told me that a horse’s body will give out before his mind will and it Little Gray’s case that is true. His feet and his joints bother him a little bit, but because my joints bother me too I think we are a good match for each other. I am always concerned about his soundness, because I wouldn’t perform up to my ability if my feet were hurting me. So, I don’t practice on him as much as I would like. Sometimes because of it he doesn’t work as well as he should, because he is fresh so it is a little bit of a catch twenty-two. Danged if I do, danged if I don’t.
My son dates Jackie Dube and she is a barrel racer. She was runner up to the World Championship and her family has made a living with race horses their entire life, so she is very good with soundness problems. After watching me ride Little Gray and being around me and him, she suggested that I give him Silver Lining Herbs with his feed. Now before I go on, let me tell you I don’t like change. I believe that one of the reasons people aren’t successful is because they change with the wind. Maybe if I so this…. or maybe if I did that…. To that I have always said just roll up your sleeves, work hard and keep doing what you are doing. I am hard headed and hard work has always been my motto. I think a lot of people would be better off if they possessed more of that. I think I have worked hard a lot in my life and sometimes I would have been a lot better if I would have worked smarter instead of harder.
When people suggest change to be I always think of the contestant on The Price Is Right. Just in case you haven’t watched a TV in the last twenty years, it’s a game show where the contestants have to guess the price of the prizes and the one that comes closest wins. Well there was one game show where they give the guy four cards with different prices on them and he has thirty seconds to run and hang the correct price on the four prizes on display. When he thinks he has them correct he has to run over to the big handle and the machine displays the number he has correct. Almost every time the guy will have two correct and for some reason he’ll run back and change everything, go back and pull the handle and a big zero comes up. The buzzer goes off and he wins nothing. I don’t want to be that guy. I don’t want to be running around like I’m crazy changing everything, every time the wind changes direction. But, to keep up with the times a person has to be open minded. You have to be open minded and be willing to change, but still stick with your core beliefs. So with that said, I have been feeding my horse Silver Lining Herbs and you can’t believe the difference it has made. I am not making this up, or exaggerating in any way. I am telling you it has made my horse more comfortable and because of that I am able to practice more on him and his performance has improved. It is tuff for me to change anything in my program because I don’t want to be the guy that pulls handle and gets the big zero. By being a little more open minded I have made my horse’s life better. As a result it is going to be easier to reach my goals. His joints are feeling better and mine are still sore so I wonder if I could take those herbs as well? I may need to in order to keep up with my horse. I’ll keep you posted.

Until Next Month,
Thank you for your time.

Walt Woodard