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Soooo, you’ve got two really long front feet again. I thought you were going to try to keep them shorter and just work on keeping her in gait until you got her speed built up. The guys must’ve run off and left you yesterday and made you let her pace to keep up. :-/

I understand about not wanting to have your guts jarred out though. So hopefully it’ll work, but I’ll bet it breaks off, just like her natural feet do when they get that long. We’ll see I guess.

I knew you’d say that. She wasn’t slow, she gaited the whole time and we gaited alot. She did’t pace and the guys at the barn that watched her said she wasn’t pacing. She just jars and doesn’t slide her feet and tuck her butt. I can’t ride her like that anyway and she’d just be a broodmare if I can’t ride her. I know they are longer than they were, but hopefully not as long as they were when they started breaking off.

When we were riding late this afternoon, I could hardly get Faith to go. I was almost doing Jumping Jacks on her and she would take little baby steps and stop. We finally got over the rise and I saw what looked like a puppy making it's way thru the cut wheat straw towards the woods. It made it and then I saw another one that was slower. My first thought was that someone had dumped a litter of puppies back there. Then Hal saw the 2ond one and said it was a baby coyote! Then he was pushing Sassy to hurry up and get up there. She didn't want to go either. He jumped off and ran out there with a stick and held it down. It tried to bite him and attack the stick. He said "I guess it's past trying to tame".

"YES, just kill it!"

He did and we went on. When we got back to the house, I went back in the field for another round and he put Sassy up. I got to the rise again and Faith started not wanting to go. I had a spur on that time. At the top I looked and saw 2 grown coyotes and some little ones in the middle of the field. The smaller adult broke for cover of the woods and the other one was just sitting with the pups. I turned and gaited back to the house. Faith was, like "Finally, I was trying to tell you there was something there!". Hal went back with a gun and shot three more little ones. The grown ones were gone by the time he got back there. Now we know why he has lost about 45 chickens and 3 of the ones we have left are one legged. He's already trapped 2 'coons and a possum with 10 babies and got rid of them. He saw a coyote after his chickens right next to their coop yesterday and the prettiest one was gone. They've been feeding their family with them and there's still a breeding pair back there.