Brenda's Stories Page 8

Get That Kid Off Her - She's Mine

Boogy Bay's Daisy May Z.

continued by Brenda Zeigenbein
continuation of previous story entitled, Hunk Of Junk

After selling Cruisin Susan, I worried that I might not have anything good to show the following summer. I knew I needed to start early and work hard to get another horse ready to show. That fall Clarence had a boy helping us break some coming two year olds. One of them was a black filly named Boogy Bay's Daisy May Z. Clarence and I had never liked her - in fact we tried to sell her to everybody who showed up around our place. Watching her cross the pasture, all she could do was pace. I was sick one day and stayed home from work. Clarence came to the house in the afternoon and asked how I was feeling. He said if I was feeling better, he would like for me to come to the barn and watch Mike ride one of the two year olds. When I went to the barn, there was Daisy tied to the wall. Mike got on her and took off around the barn. I watched him make several laps and was amazed. She walked, she trotted, and she looked pretty darn good doing it. I said to Clarence, "Get that kid off her - she's mine". From that day forward I trained Daisy myself. All winter I rode her in the evenings after work and she continued to grow and get stronger. She was easy to ride, gentle, and well behaved but I found she needed to be rode fairly hard in order to really perform. There were many nights that Clarence gave up on us and went to the house and sometime after that, Daisy would finally go to work and I would go to the house and tell Clarence how good she did. I'm not sure if he really believed me. Setting her head was the biggest problem. She really liked to nose out and Clarence told me I needed to work on setting her head.

We went to the Two Year Old Futurity and Daisy did very poor. She stiffened her neck, stuck her nose out, and lost all her rhythm and shake. I placed her but was not at all satisfied with her performance and didn't show her in the stake class. We went back home and I started trying to teach Daisy to give me her head when I applied light pressure on the bit. Clarence showed me how to attach a rubber tie down strap to one side of her bit, take it up over her neck and attach the other end to the other side of the bit. It was not very tight and there was some flexibility so it didn't hurt her. This helped her to get used to feeling light pressure on her mouth so she didn't fight it when I was riding her. Soon she began to respond and started relinquishing her head to me and working off the bit.

Three weeks after the Two Year Old Futurity we went to the Spring Show at Ava. Before leaving home, I dyed Daisy's two white socks (one front and one rear on opposite sides) and when we got to the showgrounds, people didn't know it was even the same mare. Early in the week Daisy and I placed in our preliminary class. The day of the stake class I rode Daisy long and hard. She just wasn't working to suit me and I was pretty unhappy. I worked with her so long, I didn't even have time to bath her or to take a shower myself. I changed clothes, groomed Daisy the best I could and away we went. Clarence had listened to me grumble all day about how she wouldn't work and he was really sick of hearing it. Right before the class was called, he came down to the warm up arena to see how we were doing. He said, "Well?". I told him she had finally started working. When the class was called, we went in and Daisy gave me an exceptional ride. Can you imagine my pleasure and surprise when they called our number as the Reseve Champion in the Two Year Old Open class? This entitled us to a victory lap and was that ever fun! I still pull out the video and watch and rewatch that trip around the ring.

The next year I rode and showed Daisy and she won the Leonard Laws Memorial Championship in Illinois. At the Celebration, I loaned Daisy to Alicia Brockmeyer and she had a great time showing in the Novice, Youth, and Out of State classes. I told Alicia the ribbons all had to go on Daisy's stall door but she could have them to take home with her when the show was over. When I got up and went to the barn to feed on Sunday morning, the ribbons were all gone. I was really happy I could loan her a horse that could compete and hold her own with the other kid's horses.

Since Daisy had been bred in the spring, we turned her out with the broodmare herd when we got home from Ava in September. She raised three babies and then in the year 2000, she didn't have a colt. We brought her in, fed her, rode her, and started getting her ready to sell. Almost immediately a couple from Illinois bought her and put Daisy back in the show ring. Daisy now resides with Rod and Arlene Wilson of Millstadt, Illinois.

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