Alayne drove into Missoula on Thursday to pick up our blind Quarter Horse, Cash, who has been with horse trainer Will Balis for the past few months. Since Alayne is the rider in the family, not me, she also needed to learn from Will how he had trained Cash so she would know what cues he would respond to. That's Alayne riding Cash in the photo above.
Will has done remarkable things with Cash, but he also told us that Cash is one remarkable young horse. In fact, Will had taken to using Cash as a lesson horse — riding him while he trained others to learn how to ride, and taking him on group rides as well. No one could ever tell the horse that Will was riding was blind.
Will said Cash is incredibly light on his feet, and very willing to do anything he was asked to do. To show off Cash's dexterity, here's Will doing a spin:
Cash is also one very calm, centered horse who doesn't spook. Will even had him dragging objects, like this jump you see behind them:
Will told Alayne that whenever Cash encountered something new or different and wasn't sure what to make of it, rather than bolt, he'd just stop, listen, and wait for Will to provide direction.
Finally, here's Will loping on Cash:
And with that, Cash came back to the ranch to hang out for another couple of weeks before leaving for New Hampshire.
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Shelter Challenge Update
The latest round of the Shelter Challenge begins on Monday, May 17th. We are going to sit this one out because of our current transition between Montana and New Hampshire locations. At the start of the contest we will still be in Montana, but when it ends we will be in New Hampshire, so what state we should be competing in isn't really clear. Also, I think having three of these contests in a single year is overdoing it, frankly, and my sense is that people are getting burned out from the constant daily voting 10 months out of the year. That's just too much. So we're going to stand down on this next round of the contest and then come back and compete again in the third and final round at the end of the year. Obviously, we can't prevent people from voting for the ranch, but I wanted to let you know why we won't be actively promoting it this time.
Rolling Dog Farm Blog 
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