After too many hours in the truck ( we had two 'breakdowns' on the way home) we finally made it back home from Memphis. Our Nationals Show was fantastic, all the horses were great, and for me personally the fact that Rose rode Pastor and won 3rd National Champion A/O Fino Stallions was just phenomenal! I'm so proud of her, and of Nicole ( 4th National Youth Fino Stallions!!)

Other wins include JQ, 6th National Chmp 4 Yr old Performance Stallion, and a 4th Place Nat. Chmp in Versatility for Nicole and Cardillo. Cardillo also did very well for me in Trail, we were Honorable Mention ( 7th ) and for Cardillo to be there in Trail Class at the National level was just great, already looking forward to how well he will do next year. His behavior at the show was excellent, and he really excelled in the Mounted Shooting. This was an official CMSA Event, held strictly for Paso Fino's, and Cardillo and I were 3rd National Champ. in Mounted Shooting. His times were fast enough for us to have been Reserve, but I missed one balloon! ( but hey, one miss out of four runs ain't bad!) and that miss knocked us down out of second place. He was excellent though, all that hard work paid off. I'm looking forward to getting more shooting in on him, and maybe hitting a few more matches before the weather really gets bad.

Tappy was excellent. He did get a bit strong in Nicoles class and they were DQ'd. In my class he was perfection, just didn't make the cut. We had 20 in our class, and he really showed everyone that Pinto Paso's can excel in the show ring. We received dozens of complements on him, and lots of people, including several PFHA judges, thought he should have made the cut and placed. All in all we were very pleased with his performance.

On Friday evening the President of PFHA, Lee Vulgaris, walked up to me and asked me to go with him. He took me over to where they had Profeta standing after his demo ( Profeta is a legendary Paso Fino Stallion, one of our very best in the history of the breed) Lee asked if I'd like a photo taken of me and Profeta, and just like that had one of the professional photographers come over for the photo op. I'm not usually one to be thrilled by this, but it was a neat opportunity, and Profeta is the sire of Rosanne's Fino Stallion, who had done so well for us.

There's so much more to tell about our trip to Memphis, hopefully I'll get my head together and get more of it on here. Right now I'm going on too little sleep ( I was at the showgrounds until 2 a.m. on Friday, was back there by 8 a.m. and that was the last sleep I got until last night!) and my brain is foggy. There were some awesome photo's taken of the Mounted Shooting, I'll get some up soon.

( Robbie just told me that he was elected to be Class President at school! )

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