Howdy Trailfans,

Mom just realized that we haven’t talked to you all in a while. Actually she said in a very long time. So now its up to me again to walk down memory lane. And that’s not an easy task since time flies whether you are having fun or not.

I heard all them humans talking about this year being the year 2020 and weird things happening all over the world. Well, nothing really changed much for us out here. This is year number three WT ( without trails) . We are still hanging out in the pasture, go for rides with mom, she goes to work now quite a bit doing other horses feet . We would love to have her home more of course. So that’s gonna be our new years resolution keeping mommie at home more.

Anyways, Let me start where I left off two years ago. Now last year started out with lots of snow actually. It got pretty cold there for a while. Mommie still made us work though. Tor went to his new home early in the year. BG went down the road to help out some neighbors with some health problems and decided to stay with her new family.

We all did get a lot of riding done as I remember. The desert was nice and colorful with all the moisture during winter. Until mom went back to the old country to be with grandpa for his 80^th birthday in May. She did a quick stop in Florida along the way for a little mini vacation. Not cool for us, but I think she had a good time.

When she got back all hell broke loose though. The second day she got back she turned little nephew Daz out with me for only a short time in the big arena. I told him to keep it down but he got carried away running around until he got hurt. When mom got home he couldn’t move anymore. Turns out he had fractured his first pastern bone. From then on it became the year of the daz. Five trips to the clinic in Phoenix to put his leg in a pin cast, changing casts and the final cast removal ten weeks later. Mom became his personal nurse and we didn’t really see her much. All that continued for quite some time. His other leg bowed out a little from all the compensation. That took way longer then the healing time for the fracture. Mom is still working on his hooves and things are looking really good now. Soon after his second birthday she even put a saddle on him already on our daily rounds together. Yes, I am the lucky one again taking him for a ponying. Why me??? No idea.

We did manage to go to one endurance ride in September in Sonoita. It was Lilly boy and me. Lilly Boy did his first official 30 miler. I was supposed to go the next day but it started raining so hard in the morning that mom decided to stay in camp which I totally agreed with. Until she came back from base and told me we had to go on a rescue mission to look for a missing horse. I did tell her that she was crazy but does she ever listen to me. Of course not. Well, we got drenched and still came back without the horse. It was brought back later by someone else.

And then 2020 hit with dad being sick in the winter quite a bit. And mom started taking on more clients and even one of our relatives from Utah in training for a while. Rio had a good time with us all. He made it back home just in time for the big , what the humans called , lockdown. I guess there is some kind of a bad flu virus going around in the cities. Anyways, I don’t really understand what they are all talking about. We are all doing good out here. Life hasn’t changed much for us. We still go out for rides and have fun. And we don’t need toilet paper either. I heard that was hard to come by for the two leggeds. Lol.

Then the drought hit though. Fires everywhere. One even really close over the hill by cisco tank. That was a bit scary but mom had it all figured out what to do in case it got closer. We all kept a close eye on it overnight and throughout the next day until mother nature took care of it with a good down pour drowning the flames. Other areas we heard were not quite as lucky and fires continued throughout the rest of the summer all over the south west.

We still went for rides though during the cooler part of the days. And let me tell you there were not a lot of cooler times during the summer this year. Mom took us all on a little mini vacation and escape to our place up north in St. johns for a couple of weeks. That was fun. Mom got a lot of work done while we played and grazed out in the big pasture.

Once we got back mom took some of us on some shorter trips to Arivaca lake. Those trips definitely took us down memory lane being at our old campsites and all. We even found a new trail down the backway to the lake.

Another highlight for us was grandma finally visiting again. I heard it wasn’t that easy for her to come over this time with that whole lockdown thingy. But she made it safely here and back to spend the holidays with grandpa. But we got to have her here for Halloween and Thanksgiving. We got lots of apples and carrots on a string from her again. Yummy.

As for right now mom is taking a couple of days off to spend with us. That always makes us very happy. Life without her is really boring. So for next year she said she’ll stay home more to spend more time with us. A general plan is to spend the summer up north to get out of the heat. But then again she also said that she can’t make any plans with the current situation going on in society. So, we all just gonna take it a day at a time.

Oh, Ebony had a foal by lilly boy in February. A solid smoky black colt who is the spitting image of his mother. He was snatched up by a nice lady down the road where he went to live in June after he was gelded. Ebony is going to have another foal end of February. We’re all looking forward to another youngster around. They are so much fun to play with.

I think that’s all I remember for now. Hope you are all well, Stay healthy and keep on riding.

Mom will be working on the rest of the website including the visual news page during the next few week. So check back in soon. She is also planning on a calendar again. This time it'll be a trip down memory lane and have all of our hard workers from the past 20 years on trail in it. We'll keep you posted.

We all Spotsie , Ebony, Lilly Boy, Daz, Bo, Queenie, Chica, Buddie, Missy, Dan, Katie, Bandito, the three black cats (Precious, Pywacked, Kitten) , mom and dad wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New year.

Signed Spotsie