At the Lone Pine High School Homecoming Football game one of our terrific mares was used to present the colors. The tradition at the high school is just before the game they have horses racing around the track to Lee Greenwood’s song, Proud to Be an American. One of my FFA students asked to borrow one of our horses.
We love horses at the ranch. John, my father in law, and my husband Mark, could talk for hours about horse lineage, what is the next great stallion we should be breeding to and the history of our amazing Quarter Horses. The special thing about our horse operation is that we ride and assess the mares. Most ranches use geldings, but for us it is about the girls. We sell the geldings as weanlings or yearlings and keep mares to raise and ride. This gives us the chance to evaluate the conformation and personality of the mare. We might use a mare on the ranch for 8-10 years then it is time for them to have a foal. If the mare turns out to not be a terrific saddle horse then she is sold and not used in the brood mare band. This way we have great mares having really good foals. We either sell them if they are geldings, or keep if mares to start the cycle over.
Now back to the Homecoming Football Game, you take a Lacey horse, Miss Katie Lena aka “Frito”, and put a 100 pound girl, that practices a couple of times, ask her to race around a track with bright lights, music, and tons of people cheering and she just does it. It is such a joy to be able to raise great horses that will do anything. We use our mares to work cattle throughout the year in all types of jobs, but then we do parades and football games and they are kind, smart, and willing.
Frito did amazing, the football team gave it the good fight, and Molly was the Freshman Homecoming Princess, looking beautiful in her pink dress and waving to the crowed from a 2011 Mustang Convertible. Isn’t football season a blast?
