It has been on my ‘agenda’ to someday go watch a horse race in person.  When I was in highschool, I qualified for 4-H State Fair a couple times and when you were riding in the outside warm-up arena and the timing was just right, you could catch a glimpse of the race horses over the fence.  In an interesting twist, my brother has been training race horses for the last year or so and I was determined to go watch one of the races that he had horses entered in.  Timing hasn’t worked for one reason or another and then he was on the road with them for 3 months this Summer/Fall and distance was an issue.

As luck would have it, he had 3 horses entered this weekend and it was fairly close to home!  I made last minute plans and we headed North.

I went to the barn with my brother and watched while he finished getting the horses ready.

Legs were wrapped and last minute preparations were taken care of.

This is Stella, love him.

Owl was the first up and was ponied to the racetrack.

The saddles are ridiculously small in person!!!

My son and his cousin with my mom.  We stayed with my mom and dad last night we all travelled up to the races together.

Everyone was excited to see the horses 🙂

I didn’t get any great shots of Owl running, but I love all of the smiles in this photo after he won!

Next up was my favorite, Stella.  Here he is in the lead…

still in the lead…

and he wins!!!

Good boy Stella!

Thanks to a little help from my brother, this board makes a bit more sense to me.

Playing the ‘Call to Post’.

The last to race was Rogue.

Being ponied out to the starting gate.

Rogue has been running really well and we were all excited to see this race.

He ran well…

but it wasn’t meant to be today.  He was edged out at the last moment and came in second place.

It would have been amazing for all 3 of the horses to come in 1st place, but it was still super fun to watch them all do so well!!!

I am really proud of my brother and the job he has done with these horses.  He takes their training very serious and he builds their whole mind instead of just training them for the track.  Stella went with us on one of the cow moving trips and he was such a trooper.

I can now say I have been to the races!