Horse Sales

We went to 2 horse sales today and I managed to keep my cowboy from buying any horses 

(and that is the hardest part of my job as his wife).

The first one was a local annual production and guest consignor sale. The bay horse in my header picture is from there and Kid, one of our For Sale Horses, we bought there last year.

They sell mostly started 3 year olds. The girl leading the horse and her husband-to-be trained most of them this year. She was a really good hand (better than her fiance).

They showed them outside in this small arena, different than last year when they road them in a very large cattle corral. That year a horse fell, tripped by a piece of bailing twine, so this was safer.

They had a quad pulling a roping dummy instead of real cattle (blah!) to show them on. It was windy and cool. We parked our truck where we could sit in it and watch the goings on. The horses all looked pretty happy and willing and moved around on a loose rein.

Crystal liked this buckskin but I thought it was a little wide in the chest which can make a horse kind of rough. 

They have an small indoor arena where they stall the sale horses for people to walk through and divide it from the auction area by this big tarp. That red pipe area is where they saddle the horses that are coming into the ring. They are rode into the ring through that open doorway you see on the right.

This is looking the opposite way into the stall area where people can look at the horses and visit.

I thought it was smart put hay in front of the horses as soon as the outside preview was over and they were waiting in the stalls. They all looked pretty happy. There were mostly sorrels this year, lots with faxen manes and yellow horses. Every horse had a nice rope halter, the same except different colours and leads, all the same, cut from the same kind of rope, probably from the UFA (United Farmers of Aberta  co-op store). It looked very tidy and professional.

Maybe that's how it should be but these guys are pretty western and kind of old school.

The Hayes Brothers are older (even than me) and they are heavy into Skipper W bred horses.

This is LeRoy, saying his little welcoming speech and I think Bobby and Pat watching from down the steps.

This was the first horse of the sale (a guest consignor). They went to great lengths to be sure we knew all about the one and only (and somewhat suspicious) phone-in bid on this horse. It didn't set quite right with my cowboy.

They passed the next two horses out then someone that knew Crystal, who was with us, came up to where we were sitting in the stand to tell her that her husband had been hurt in a quad accident (chasing some cows, I think) and was at the hospital. We left to take her home so she would be there when the neighbors brought him home. Luckily it was only a concussion and sore shoulder. Those quads are dangerous things. Not like a horse that will look where it's going.

I figured we might just go back to the sale but my cowboy didn't like what was going on there and we decided to go to the other sale we had wanted to go to but it was a lot farther away. The fellow that has been starting our colts lately was involved in that one.

Oh my, what a bunch of pretty horses, I would have chewed my own arm off to have almost any one of them. Alas, it was all in a big indoor area and my camera wouldn't cooperate so you will just have to imagine all the pretty horses.