The other man

This was supposed to post on August 17th, but apparently my phone decided against it...

Well I hate to post about another man but I am.
As I sit in the Sacramento airport my heart aches. I came down here for the Northern California Yearling Sale since Thoroughbred breeding is something that our family does. I go down this time each year to help my grandmother and I have never gotten attached in the past but this time was different. Even though I knew he would leave, my heart was stollen by this beautiful chestnut colt by Old Topper. After a long and extremely screwed up situation with his sale that I won't go into detail on for fear of breaking down in the airport I said goodbye to this extremely special horse this morning.
I must cut this short as the tears are forming but he was so special to me I felt he should have a tribute on Leroy's blog, seeing as they were also friends for the last couple months (they shared a fence line). Even though I think Leroy may be a little upset that this post isn't really about him at all.

I'm going to open this bag and put it in my belly

No grain is to ever be left unattended near Le Roy. I have witnessed many times this attempt to outsmart the human who created the grain bag.
In fact once at an old barn of ours where the fronts of the stalls were completely open, I turned my back to him to look at another horse when I heard the sound of a bag scraping against wood. I turn back to look at him and he had grabbed the open, half full bag with his teeth and was dragging it up the side of the stall while backing up. I didn't even say a word, he saw me looking at him and dropped it immediately. Then I got the "what are you lookin at?" look.

The "You let her brush him barefoot?!" Day

My little cousin came out and she loved Leroy. So I told her we could brush him, or course, to a 5 year old his means use ever brush you can find and brush all the same spots over and over.

After taking some photos my mom's reaction to seeing them was of course, "Oh my god Stefanie, you let her brush him without any shoes on?! I'm terrified just seeing these"

PSH, like he is going to move any of those feet while grain is in front of him.

I was so proud of my boy until the second the grain was gone and he gave her what I will commonly refer to as the "Leroy Eye".
This is a look where one or both eyes get a little too big, where you can see the whites, and you can tell that there is a few possible thoughts going through his head.
"Oh my, you look interesting"
"Oh my, that looks fun"
Among others
Although a true "Leroy Eye" has never been successfully documented, here is the closest anyone has ever come to catching one on camera.

1 Whole Year

Our 1 year anniversary was August 2nd 2011.
So to celebrate I thought a photo shoot would be fun. Self directed of course, anything else would be too fancy for me.

So knowing how much he doesn't really like photos I decided to ambush him during his evening grain feeding. So while he was eating off the ground I knelt down positioned my phone in front of us and squeezed my head close to his. And what does he do? Flops his big ol' ears around and shoves one of his giant fuzzy ears into my eyeball.
I think it goes without saying he was not so pleased with my photo shoot idea.

And the aftermath was captured here: