A year ago Carolyn and I began discussing how to go about organizing something to help her liquidate some of the tack Ray had acquired for their retirement.  In order for that to happen, there would need to be a big enough crowd to have an opportunity to market at fair price some of the tack that Ray had collected.

In order to draw spectators, we needed to have a worth while show so if we could give them a good demonstration with some of Rays’ students, a nice dinner with entertainment and the opportunity to purchase some gear from Rays personal collection.  That should attract some people.

We wanted to provide the participants with something beyond the opportunity to pay tribute to Ray, so we put one of Rays’ Harwood saddles, a couple of tickets and an item of Rays’ personal tack to each of the participants along with the chance to display their talents.

As for the colt that I had, he could have went either way.  But with my experience of contract colt starting around the country, keeping mental notes on different pedigrees of horses paid off.  I don’t hear very well and luckily as I was walking across the round pen to that horse for the first time, I heard them announce his pedigree.  They were horses that I am familiar with and had learned that they took a slightly different approach than the majority of horses that I work with.  This little guy was true to form.  He wasn’t as soft as a lot of horses can get but with a little more patience, he was very tolerant.

I had discussed with Carolyn, my interest in using a horse to start my colt and she basically shot me down.  At first I went around with my lower lip hanging down but I decided that I needed to support Carolyn on this and even though I wanted to demonstrate what I thought was important in what I learned from Ray, it was more important to be supportive.  As you can guess I was happy the second day when Carolyn asked me if I would get on my horse and help out some of the participants that were having trouble.  So I got my way after all!  I really enjoyed the challenge of helping the horses through some of their troubled spots and helping the other participants.

After signing what seemed like 10,000 posters and having the opportunity to visit with spectators, the majority of participants and Carolyn, I believe the goals were met.  A lot of the spectators were very pleased with what they saw and the atmosphere they experienced throughout the weekend.  Many made reference to wanting to see something like this again.

The participants that I talked to seemed to be happy just to help out and felt honored to be there.  My personal feeling was that after all the things that Ray did for me through the years, I would hope that he would appreciate my helping Carolyn in return.

As for Carolyn, I know she had her ups and downs through the weekend, but all in all, I think she was honored by the support and help she had to put it on and was pleased with how it all came off.

I was very honored to be  a part of this event.  I was very proud of the grandkids and I believe Ray would have been too.