No real rhyme or reason to these pictures, but here are some more from the Makeover. The first one is a picture of Kirstin riding Careen Hammock's horse Surplus. Kirstin was so excited when Careen asked her to take Surplus for a ride. I'm thinking that Kirstin was probably the only 15 year old at the Makeover riding one of the newly trained horses. But, Surplus is so much like TAZ that both Careen & I felt confident that Kirstin & Surplus could handle it.

The dreaded trailer. I have pictures of Tuff loading in a trailer since the second week after we brought him home. Kirstin practiced trailer loading week in and week out. What does he do at the contest? He wouldn't step up onto the trailer. Go figure. The trailer is quite a bit higher than the stock trailer that we use and it had shavings in it which was something Tuff wasn't used to . Something to keep in mind if you are taking a horse to Tennessee. They got points for effort but he never got up into that trailer.

The only other problem spot was the backing through an "L" Tuff just wasn't wanting to back. Kirstin remained patient and tried 3 different times. On that last time, she told Tuff, "Just one more try" You could she her talking to him and then he decided that he would do one of the best looking backs ever. She got a roaring applause from the audience for her patience and perserverance which paid off.

The rest of the course was spot on. Tuff trotted around the cones like a pro, stop and stood for his hooves to be picked up, did the walking while she texted, and the release and catch was a piece of cake. We knew that she was on the fence as far as making the finals would be concerned. She was so excited when they called her hip number. She place 10th in the prelims, barely making it into the finals. But she made it, and that was all that mattered to Kirstin.

Sunday, saying goodbye to Tuff was hard on all of us. I know that Kirstin misses him terribly, but we know that he went to a great home and we can't wait to see how he develops over the years to come. He is going to make a great horse and Kirstin knows that she has done some good work with him, and that he is probably the most bombproof horse any of us have ever seen.