First photo of how delicate his head was as a baby. Second photo is his gangly yearling phase on a really windy day. The fence behind him is five and a half feet tall. He’s a big boy.
Love him!!! So well put together even being gangly! How is mama bred?
She’s a spicy appendix mare by There’s No Telling out of an Only Blue Sky dam.
We are excited for him because he can long trot, jog, and lope. So, he’s going to make a killer all-arounder.
Oooh yeah I bet! He has that nice soft eye of the Marshmallows. Fun!! Love a great all-arounder!
Ranch Riding is going to eventually be the demise of Western Pleasure (NSBA style) as we have known it for the past 30 years. Maybe check out some of the stallions who are winning in Ranch Riding at AQHA shows. His bloodlines will be more inline with your mare’s bloodlines and the baby’s resale value won’t be diminished by crossing two completely different specialties.
Do you really think so? Are there fewer competitors?
Most of the Ranch Riding classes I’ve seen seem to favor a very different type of horse than the WP and HUS beasts. I like the WP type, I’d just rather they were permitted to lope out a bit.
I watched some of the Ranch classes at Congress this year, a bit of this and a bit of that, and there were some horses that were WP bred mixed in with the more Reining types. Some were a mix of both lines.
I’ll have to watch the Congress footage. I’m not sure what I was watching!
I can barely remember what I was watching, since of course work was busy when I really wanted to watch. 
I do remember that there were WP bred horses in there, if nothing else by their names. 
One thing I do remember being annoyed about is that I expected some of the riders to be much more polished in their classes. Smoother and easier looking than they were. Some of them have been around so long I remembered their names from the '80s.
Ok, now I definitely need to go watch. They added ranch trail to saddlebreds and I was surprised to see how difficult it was for some of the competitors. But it was the first year, and so it does make sense that maybe it was still developing. I know it’s been around longer with AQHA (I showed ranch pleasure patterns in 2013…I think it was 2013…might have been 2014) but there were only a few of us and the reiners were crossing over. That was with a former HUS horse that was a little on the shorter side (15.3). He didn’t really neck rein, but he rode off the leg well enough that we could cheat 
Nothing. I just enjoy watching it on my laptop.
Reining or cowhorse bred doesn’t mean hot or overly athletic. Obviously our goal is to have athletic horses but that doesn’t necessarily change their personalities.
I second giving a junior stud like FM Cottonwood a try!
He has a brilliant mind having been shown by an open rider and non pro (his owner) in the reining and then transitioned to the ranch with Bud Lyon and has been a champion many times over. Carlton and Dr Khris are lovely people and work so hard to do right by their stud and his offspring!
Another stud I’ve found to throw simply brilliant minds is Tricked Out Spook. Every baby we’ve had is gorgeous, shapey, great minded and talented.
