Horseback riding 101 @ McKuster Ranch

This past weekend began last Thursday with the arrival of Miriam, our dear friend from the westside metro area, to visit the ranch. She and Kittee met here after getting off work that afternoon. I was on a school sports bus trip to Boardman, and found when I got home that Kittee and Miriam had feasted at our local La Ramada Mexican Restaurant for dinner. The leftover made a very good dinner for me upon my return home. Thursday evening we just sit around visiting, and making plans for Friday.

Here's looking at you
from a
horsey weekend.

Friday, after running my a.m. bus route I came home and stirred up breakfast for myself as Kittee and Miriam had already had breakfast after having slept in late for the morning. They were calling it their weekend OFF. After breakfast we headed for Walla Walla. There I spent my time helping on the trail-riding course of the annual spring show of the Northwest Quarter Horse Assoc. while Kittee and Miriam went into town and did some round-the-rounds and shopping. Friday afternoon, we were planning on getting in some horseback riding after my p.m. bus run, but the winds started kicking up and we decided to just sit it out and have a few beverages, dinner, and call it an early night in preparation for Saturday's activities.

Saturday, our plans were to horseback ride, ride, ride. After a breakfast of very whole wheaty hotcakes and sausage, Kittee and Miriam had an a.m. appointment in Walla Walla for a pedicure. They were only going to be gone for a couple of hours and upon their return we were going to groom, saddle-up our rides and ride, but again we found that the wind was very cool and gusty. So for most of the rest of the afternoon we made walks out to the pastures to just pet and play with horses.

I laid around with some of the herd while sunbathing

Kittee and Rosey played soccer for awhile

Kittee laid around stratching Kootenai's chin

A bit later while we were eating a late lunch, downriver Robert and son Adam came up and wanted to visit with Nugget. They spent most of a half-hour petting, grooming, and walking Nugget around his pasture.
While Nugget was getting so much attention, Kittee petted Derby and Miles the mule.

Again most of this day was quite windy with wind chill, so we shelved our plans for horseback riding, I build a fire in the house fireplace and continued to make frequent dashes to the pastures to pet and play with horses. Saturday I also watered the garden since our rainfall around here has been quite sparse lately. After watering the planted rows of veggies, I laid water on the 125 ft. asparagus row, planted my asparagus seeds and soaked that row again well with anticipation of warm sunshine to help get it sprouting and growing. We lost our original asparagus row when we built Rusty's keep on top of it.

Miriam and Kittee spent most of the afternoon playing cards, with the occasional outside visit with horses.




After their card playing they mixed up a couple of drinks and took in a video, while I was on the computer doing something.



Saturday evening we had a delicious dinner of onion, garlic, olive oil, stirred in with mixed veggies over large plates of pasta and thereafter Kittee and Miriam visited while I fooled around on the ‘puter and watched 60's-70's YouTube concert videos. Our plans now were to put in a lot of time with horses on Sunday, and to get to bed for a good night’s rest before this day got too late and into our Sunday’s plans.



Sunday was a beautiful day from start to finish. I fixed breakfast for all – corny grits, sausage, eggs and biscuits. Thereafter Kittee and Miriam did their things while I made another application of Round Up along / between the garden rows to kill unwanted weed and grasses. By the time I finished, Kittee and Miriam were working on grooming Misty for some riding time with Miriam.

When I got back to the barn I was able to catch Miriam playing / petting a couple of our fillies.

After all that petting Rosey was just a bit tuckered out.

Now here I will let the next series of pictures and the McKuster Ranch YouTube channel tell the story of Miriam’s progression with horseback riding this day.

Sitting in the saddle, testing stirrups

On lead in the pasture getting in tune with Misty.
(video link)

On lead in the round pen getting in tune with Misty.
(video link)

Miriam and Misty having fun on their own, no strings attached.
(video link)

Miriam did VERY WELL with handling Misty. If you watch the videos don’t forget that you can increase the resolution to 480p and make the presentation FULL screen, which makes a pretty nice video show of this day around the ranch.

Links to McKuster Ranch's One-Day horseback riding course -
Horseback Riding 101a -- 1:06 minute
Horseback Riding 101b -- 1:05 minute
Horseback Riding 101c -- 54 seconds
Horseback Riding 101d -- 18 seconds
Horseback Riding 101e -- 48 seconds
Horseback Riding 101f -- 1:25 minute
Horseback Riding 101g -- 47 seconds

On an annual basis, we ask Miriam to spend some time with our foals so as to make a year-to-year comparison of development. Here are pics of her stands with Rosey.

April 2010

June 2009

July 2008

Sunday afternoon after lunch and Miriam hit the road for home; Kittee and I saddled up Derby and Nugget and played with these guys right up until beer-thirty. We did some trotting in the arena, Kittee did some cantering/ jumping with Derby while Nugget and I did the limber-up and rail course at a jog. I have found Nugget to be much slower and stiffer than Misty in working these courses and I intend to work with him more on limbering up and moving faster.

McKuster Ranch
YouTube links

After working in the arena (pic on the left) I then took Nugget out to pasture and did some walking, trotting and cantering through the open space.

After Kittee finished with Derby’s workout everyone headed for the barn, for the horses' buckets of sweet grain and our first round of beers.

The late Sunday afternoon felt great sitting in the sunshine, watching the horses and life go by at a leisurely pace. We were quite impressed with the progress that Miriam had made with riding Misty this day, as we continued to sip in a couple of Sangria wine coolers. I told her we would be glad to continue into Horseback Riding 102 if she wish to return next weekend. As the sun begin to sink into the western skies there was a little overcast so I suggested to Kittee that we build a fire and stay out for awhile, enjoying the rest of this day and another wine cooler.

And so we did.

Since I started this blog posting with the ending of the work week on Thursday, I will finish it with the work to be done on Monday, being a run, run day. I had cut the irrigation pump away from the irrigation weir and put in a butterfly valve last week. This week I hoped to be able to put the system back together again. So today in preparation for fertilizing pastures and the new irrigation season, I had talked to downriver Robert about coming up to give me a hand with this project. I found out how much of a hand/ help I really needed trying to align the pump's intake pipe with the weir's outlet pipe without being able to use a movable compression coupling. I was told that the pump weigh about 100 pounds… I don’t think so!! But Robert and I got the job done, THANK YOU Robert, and now I only have to replace one butterfly valve fitting of which I have put in maybe 20 around here in the process of laying all the irrigation water lines and mounting the Big Guns to cover our 16+ acres of pastures with water.

Glad this BIG and heavy job is done.
That pump ain't light.

And that's the way it is around the ranch this past weekend.

Peace be with you -- Dale