Charlie Horse's 2017 Picture Thread

[Nanno]

Oh cool! Is that a herd of bighorns?

[Taffy]

I can hardly wait to get back to your area for some hiking!

[Charlie Horse]

Since its T-shirt weather I decided to get one more hike in for 2017.  I loaded Woodstock and Shelby (Vincent refused to load) into the Lexus and headed a couple miles up the canyon.  I'd wanted to explore the area south of the reservoir.  Since the days are so short it was going to have to be a quick hike.

   
This is the first hike to test my new Xmas present, a Nikon Coolpix B700 to replace my old Fujifilm.  This one has double the zoom at 60X and a lot more modern features.  Here's a pic of Luna.

   
This is where I turned around.. Up high on a clay slope.  The ravine I'd been following got pretty rocky due to the giant boulders that fall off of the mountain from time to time.


   
Woodstock.  Those cliffs in the background-- Its easy to go the wrong way when you head back down and find yourself at the top of a cliff when you swear you never actually climbed that high.  Its a bit of a maze and I might make a map next time.

   
Almost back to the parking area.  Thats Half-Nelson Mountain in the background.  Full-Nelson is to the south.  Its a nice hike but there are almost no trails compared to my usual area.  Its close, though, so I'll probably do some more exploring there.

[goatzrule]

What bred is Shelby? Nice pictures

[Charlie Horse]

Shelby GT is a "Cardboard Cutout Alpine"-- The skinny, long legged type. I consider him my best pack goat. He's 7.

Woodstock is half Alpine, half Boer, as you can see by the curly horns and floppy ears. He's a great goat but his back is pretty short and I think I'm going to have to make him a special saddle or go with one of those sopris types. I noticed he had swirly rubbed hair on his shoulder blades, meaning the saddle spent too much time up there. He has an excellent personality. He's 5.

[goatzrule]

I have a Cardboard Cut Saanen Doe. My Toggenburg must have been cut by someone that was blindfolded haha

[Nanno]

Shelby GT is a "Cardboard Cutout Alpine"-- The skinny, long legged type.  I consider him my best pack goat.  He's 7.

Woodstock is half Alpine, half Boer, as you can see by the curly horns and floppy ears.  He's a great goat but his back is pretty short and I think I'm going to have to make him a special saddle or go with one of those sopris types.  I noticed he had swirly rubbed hair on his shoulder blades, meaning the saddle spent too much time up there.  He has an excellent personality. He's 5.

I would guess this is more a problem with Woodstock's back width and shape rather than length. Pack saddles aren't very long, but Woodstock has the rounded back and shoulders from the Boer side. That aluminum saddle is almost certainly too narrow for his back and if it's one of the ones with un-contoured, square-edged panels then it's absolutely the wrong shape. In fact, there are very few goats who would be comfortable with panels that shape and they would be goats with conformation like Shelby's. If a saddle is too narrow for your goat's back, it's going to want to slide forward onto his shoulders no matter what its length. If it has those flat aluminum panels then it's going to rub him big time. He needs a more typical wooden saddle with contoured panels and a beveled front edge. The Boer crosses usually need a more deeply contoured saddle made with wider angling in the forks, but I'm pretty sure one of your wooden saddles would still fit him better than that aluminum one.