Introducing Poncho and Lefty

The past year has been a bit of a challenge for the ranch and our draft horse teams. Sadly, we lost Zig during the summer of 2009. Zig was part of our Percheron team, and his buddy Zag was left with an empty harness next to him after Zig passed. With draft horse teams, it can be hard to pair up horses who haven’t grown up together and learned to pull together. We gave it a shot with another draft horse named Whopper, but he and Zag weren’t a good match. So we bought a young team named Ben and Jerry, hoping they could work into being our rising stars. Well, the stars didn’t rise quite the way we wanted, and they didn’t have quite the right mindset for what we wanted in a team. We did successfully pair up young Ben with Zag this past winter, and it was a great learning experience for Ben to learn from an old-timer like Zag. But, as Zag is aging and having a harder time with the hard work of pulling the feed sleigh every day, we realized that we needed to find a pair that could step into the role right away and being in our starting line-up. So, with that, we introduce Poncho and Lefty. These guys come from a nearby rancher who didn’t need a team anymore, much like Zig and Zag when we first got them. They’ve done it all and we’re excited to start working with them to see how they do for Vista Verde. The team just got here last week, so they are still settling in and are a little nervous, as many horses tend to be when placed into a new setting. We’ll let them get comfortable with their setting and then hitch them up and see how it goes. Right now, they are living up at the barn with the ponies- Shamrock and Morris, who are not exactly intimidating pasture partners as you can see in this picture.
We are looking forward to introducing all the kids coming to our Colorado dude ranch this summer to Poncho and Lefty for the hay wagon ride we take out each Sunday evening. By the way, any guesses on who goes on the left side when hitched up?