Owyee Picture Jasper in a sterling setting. When I first saw this stone I knew it would make a very nice pendant. I used a sterling back and bezel with a twisted wire rope to set the stone. I thought it looked a little incomplete so I melted some scrap sterling into little balls and soldered them onto the edge. Sorry, this one is sold but I have several other nice stones I can make similar pendants from.

Foxy

Here is a picture of the horse we keep around for the grand kids. She is a 22 year old mare we bought a little over a year ago. She is just a nice horse. The grand daughters get along real well with her. The oldest took her to 4-H last year and won the Junior Barrels at the Cassia County Fair. She was pretty excited. Yesterday we got Foxy out of the pen to start getting her legged up for the summer. Much to the girl's disappointment she was a little fresh and I wouldn't let the two little girls ride. The oldest did great with her and Fox settled in. It is spring break this week and the girls will be over at our place most of the week. I am sure Foxy will get a work out.

Giraffe pendant and horseshoe nail crosses

Finished this little pendant for a young girls birthday this morning. 1 1/4 inch diameter domed sterling silver disk with a hand cut brass overlay. Stippled background. Yes, giraffes are her favorite animal.

 I also finished up an order for some crosses made from horseshoe nails. This was a fun little project. None of them were the same. Some were left natural and some were colored by flame bluing or Nitre-blue. A few had small overlays of silver or brass and one was totally overlaid with brass.

Copper Pendant

This started out as a practice plate. I try to do a practice piece about every day in copper or brass in order to learn new engraving skills. One of my grand daughters came out to the shop as I was finishing this one up and asked if she could have it. I stuck a "rat tail" cord on it and let her have it. Surprisingly, several people have asked for one like it. Sometimes things work out!

Mother's Ring

I've done three Mother's Rings in the last several months. This one is a 6 mm sterling silver band with three grade AAA 4 mm natural stones- a yellow citrine, an amethyst, and a ruby. The stones are bezel set in an Argentium tube.
One of the others was a 6mm sterling band with a single 5mm Amethyst. And the other one was a 6 mm oxidized sterling band with four 4 mm stones- two amethysts, a pink tourmaline, and an alexandrite. They are fun to do, turn out looking real nice, and make a great gift for a special mother.
Price depends on the size and quality of the stones.

Kokopelli

I hand cut this Kokopelli from sterling silver with a jeweler's saw and overlayed it on to a oxidized sterling concho. Engraved it with a simple serpentine design on the flange. The background was stippled before it was oxidized. This design has been one of the most popular pendants I've done.

Go Kaborr

There are a few horses I've owned and/or trained that have been extra special. I posted about one of them yesterday (Colonels Oak).
Go Kaborr- This little horse was at the Idaho Youth Ranch while I was The Horse Program Manager there. He was an Arabian. Now I had never been real impressed with Arabs but he was the kind of horse that could change your mind about the whole breed. He was the best kid's horse I have ever been around.

Go Kaborr was donated to the Youth Ranch when his owner went to college and did not have much time to ride. He had been ridden in 4-H and shown in some open shows, mostly English events. He was well trained and even though he was 20 years old I accepted him thinking we would be lucky to get a year or two of use out of him.
Every kid that went through the Youth Ranch riding program started out with Go Kaborr. That amounted to over 400 kids during the time he was there. He seemed to really like kids and had a lot of tolerance towards novice riders. Go Kaborr would only walk with beginning riders. When he thought they were ready to trot he would trot, but only when he thought they were ready. If he didn't, you could not make him speed up no matter what. When he thought they were ready to lope, he would lope. By the time kids were loping on Go Kaborr they were ready for another horse that took a little more skill to ride.
I borrowed Go Kaborr to teach my grand children to ride. Pictured are a couple of them at a kids rodeo a few years ago.

Go Kaborr lived at the Youth Ranch for 13 years, packing around kids until he was 33 years old. He was featured on the Today Show when Al Roker came out and did a show about the Youth Ranch.  After that he started to slow down a little and was retired. I like to think he died peacefully in his sleep one night. Anyway it looked that way. He was laying in his stall dead with no sign of struggle.





Gokey you were one of a kind. I hope those kids are treating you well in heaven.

Colonels Oak

I bought Colonels Oak about 7 years ago from Mike and Tara Miller of Big Piney, Wyoming. He was a  NCHA money earner and sire of several NCHA and NRCHA money earners including Miss Colonel Nita, the mare I showed to the Itermountain Reined Cow Horse Novice Non Pro Snaffle Bit Circuit Championship. For several years Colonels Oak was on the Equistat Leading Sire's list of Reined Cow Horses and his babies won more than $50,000 in cow horse earnings. Due to old age and declining health I decided to put down the old boy last fall. He is missed. His spirit lives on through his offspring- four of which are on my place now.

Salinas Bit

I recently finished this Salinas style bit with a Mona Lisa Mouthpiece. It's got a cut out of my registered brand- Triangle over C. My grandparents willed me the brand when they passed away. Each leg of the triangle represents one of  the 'partners' that started the ranch- My grandfather, his brother, and his father.

First Knife

I was taking some pictures of some knives I've done recently and thought some of you might like to see a picture of the first knife I made about three years ago. It is made from O-1 Tool Steel with a Redwood Burl handle. Since the blade is not stainless it has picked up a little character along the way. It's seen a lot of use- it's dressed and skinned two bucks, cut a bunch of hay strings, and has been used for something most every day here around the shop and arena. I have made knives that are a lot more fancy, but this is the knife I choose to carry every day.

Chin

 I was looking at some pictures of a couple of summers ago with one of my grand daughters last night. Came across a picture of her mutton bustin'. For those of you who don't know what mutton bustin' is- it where 4 and 5 year old prospective bull riders get their first taste of rodeo bucking stock.  The first picture is of her in the chute getting ready....

and the second picture is of her chin after she she landed face down in the arena sand.

MJK Braceket

Here's a little 1/2" sterling cuff bracelet I just finished engraving. I monogrammed it with the owner's initials and cut a scroll design on the sides.

The Black Colt

 

While I worked as the horse program manager at the Idaho Youth Ranch (a residential detention/treatment program for troubled kids), I got a call from a lawyer in Los Angeles. He had a couple of horses that he wanted to donate to our program. Since they were pretty well bred quarter horses and stabled near Sun Valley, Idaho (only about two hours away) I took him up on the offer.

The next Saturday I headed to Sun Valley to pick up the horses (he was flying up from LA that morning). He gave me directions and said you could see his cabin on the river for a mile or more before you got there. Well I could see a building but it was too big for a cabin. It was three stories high and looked to be about 5,000 sq ft. But that was the place. He met me in the yard and asked me to come in as he had something to show me.

He took me into his race horse trophy room. There were glass cases along two walls containing horse blankets, silver cups and trophies, newspaper clippings and photos. At the desk were two photo albums containing win pictures of the racehorses he had owned. He had me sit down and he showed me the pictures and talked about each horse (this took about two hours). I asked several times about the horses he said he wanted to donate and he kept saying he was waiting for someone and we'd load them as soon as he got there. When we finished with the photo albums he took me into his "great room". I understood why he needed a three story "cabin". The South wall was all glass and he had seven Alaskan Native Totem Poles in the room. Three looked new as they had fresh paint and unblemished wood. Three looked older- they had cracked wood and faded, peeling paint. All of them were over twenty feet tall. The last one was massive- over 4 ft in diameter, but only about 12 ft tall. It had no paint on it at all and looked to be very old by the condition of the weathered wood. A very impressive display.

Finally his friend showed up. Now these two were a real pair. The lawyer was very short- about 5'2" or 5'3" and 250 -280 lbs while his friend was over 6' and weighed less than 170. Both were over 60 years old and while I was there, both constantly had a drink in their hands. His friend asked if the little round lawyer had told me he was a great horseman. When I nodded yes he started yelling, “It’s not true. It’s all a bunch of BS”. Then they both started to tell a story at the same time about the lawyer falling off an old horse three years before and breaking his arm. His friend finished by saying the lawyer hadn’t been back to the barn since.

It was about a half mile drive to the barn. In a small pen next to the barn were two very nice looking black horses. A three year old filly and her full sibling- a two year old colt. The lawyer gave me their papers and they had impressive breeding. I asked about their training and he said, “They have never been touched!” Then he said to back up to the gate and he would run them into the trailer. I thought, “This I got to see!”

The lawyer set his drink on the top of a corral post and picked up a natural horseman carrot stick. His friend commented on the cost of the stick. “That’s a fifty dollar stick. FIFTY DOLLARS. You could find a better stick laying on the ground” etc.

The filly was curious and looked into the open end of the trailer. The lawyer snuck up behind her and gave her a good whack on the butt with his stick. She jumped forward then rolled back over her hocks away from the trailer- right over the lawyer. Knocked him flat. He jumped up cussing and ran after the horses. He got another whack or two on each of them but didn’t get either one close to the trailer. He really raised the dust for about a minute and then leaned against the fence and started sucking wind. When I was reasonably sure he was not having a heart attack I said, “While you get your breath back why don’t we see what this filly is about. It looked like she might want to face up”.  I sent her away by tossing the end of my halter’s lead rope near her and sure enough she looped around and faced up. I did it a couple more times and she faced up only three feet from me, I backed up and she hooked up and followed. I rubbed her face and slipped the halter on. I asked her to step to the side, and although her eyes got big, she did as I asked her. I stepped her to the other side. All was good. But now the lawyer was getting his wind back and started fidgeting with his stick. The filly moved forward- since it was in the direction of the trailer I walked along with her. I stepped in the trailer, the filly saw the lawyer coming with his stick and she stepped right in with me.

The colt was not in the pen, I hadn’t noticed where he went. But there was a stall in the  barn and he was hiding in there. The lawyer flushed him out and the colt started calling for the filly. She answered from the trailer. He ran up to the gate and looked in. The lawyer snuck up behind him. I thought, “Some people never learn.” And sure enough the lawyer whacked the colt on the butt. But some people do learn. He was able to get out of the colt’s way. When the colt ran by him he smacked him a good one right across the forehead. The colt headed back to the stall.

I got to the stall door before the lawyer and had to actually block the opening with my body to keep him from running into the stall and using his stick on the colt. I reminded him the filly did well when we backed off and let her think. “Let’s just wait a minute and see what the colt is about.” He stood in the door and I walked into the stall and just stood in the middle of it. The colt was nervous but not aggressive or mean. With his head down in the corner he was just trying to hide. I moved him around a little by gently shaking my leadrope. Finally he was standing along one wall and let me approach his shoulder. He had a welt across his butt and his eye was running tears. His eyelids were “spazing out”. The lawyer had hit him in the eye when he had run past.

I had a tassel on the end of my rope and I stretched my arm way out and stroked him with the tassel. His skin flinched all over were ever I touched him. After a minute of that he let me touch him with my hand- then the flinching started all over again. He ran around me and towards the door. The lawyer started yelling, cussing and waving the stick. The colt continued around the stall and back to where he was before. I sweet talked him and rubbed him (from an arms length away) and he tolerated it pretty well. I moved a step closer and he ran around me towards the door again. The lawyer smacked him with the stick again and the colt ran around the stall and back to me again. The lawyer was running out of patience and wanted to run him out of the stall. I stood there with one arm pointed to the lawyer telling him to back off and the other arm pointed to the colt trying to hold him there. The lawyer finally quieted down and I stood up straight. The colt sidepassed a step closer. I knew then that I was making progress. I leaned over next to the colt’s ear and whispered, “Don’t go over there. The little fat man is crazy!” I swear that the colt understood! He started licking his lips and chewing. It took another few minutes to get the halter on and get him led out of the stall. Once outside the colt reacted to the lawyer and his stick by rearing up and pawing the air. I pulled him down and he went right back up. I moved to the side and tried to pull him down. He threw all his weight away from me. I pitched slack in the lead rope and he fell in a heap. When the colt got up he almost looked embarrassed. Stood by me for a minute and then moved with me to the trailer. He looked in at the filly and didn’t know if he wanted to step in. But here came the crazy lawyer with his stick so the colt jumped in.

Both the old guys started saying how impressed they were with the way I handled the horses. They said I was a great horseman and a real horse whisperer. Their congratulations might of meant something to me if they hadn’t been so drunk or if they knew anything about horses. Besides, I couldn’t have done it without the crazy drunk lawyer and his natural horseman stick.

They filly broke out real nice. She was a sweetheart. By six months some of the more experienced kids at the youth ranch were riding her.

The colt was a little harder. He broke out OK but was a little reactive for kids that knew nothing about horses. We sold him to a rodeo guy as a steer dogging prospect. But he never got to ride him much. His daughter, who was a senior in high school, took him over, loved him and finished out his training.