Another beautiful hot and sunny day.  The boys are all riding this morning.  Claire and I had a lazy morning pottering around the ranch there was an artist with an exhibition of her pictures they were fantastic.  Claire and John bought a beautiful painting of a Wolf so lifelike. We all met up at lunch sitting outside on the patio again.  After lunch Claire and I had another riding lesson we had a different wrangler this time and we both seemed to get on much better.  We were both trotting and Claire did a little bit of loping!!!!  We were both so pleased with ourselves.  Nick and John came and watched and took videos of us (we were so proud!!)  It was very very hot now so we all went to the pool for a swim wonderful!  Alan was in team penning  at 3.30 Nick was filming him and I went to watch as the rest of us are entered to do the same at 4.30!!!  I'm not sure so just wanted to see how difficult it is before I decide.  Alan's team did very well and after watching decided I will have a go (I'm definately slightly mad...) At 4.30 finds the four of us sitting on our horses looking into the arena at several steers with long horns.......  Each team has three attempts and the object is to separate three steers from the group and get them into a small pen on the opposite side in the quickest time.  We did a similar thing at Tanque Verdee Ranch but the steers were tiny and the arena much smaller!  Each team stands by some barrells at the entrance and wait for the wrangler to give the command to start.  We were the second team to go (the first did good) The wrangler shouted "When you are ready" John was our Cutter so he was in the inside with us to his right in a row. John said go and we all kicked out horses and to our amazement went into a fast trot and then loped........we reached the steers and John managed to cut three steers loose and we rounded them up towards the pen John went to the back of the pen behind them and we went to the front and side so they didnt run away.  We did it -  we were so excited we were yahooing and shouting out heads off much to the wranglers amazement who had said how quiet the English usually are. (we showed her....) Alan was watching us and got quite emotional he was very proud of us (makes a change he usually has to apologise)  We had our other turns and didn't disgrace ourselves and we think we came second out of four teams.  It was amazing fun we couldn't stop laughing aferwards. That evening a man called Rick who we met at Tucson Rodeo arrived at the Ranch with a handbag Claire had ordered.  He stayed and had dinner with us he was a business man now but used to be a Seal in the American Navy. That evening there was a Critter Evening so Rick came and watched with us before he drove home. A very knowledgeable man was showing the critters to us he made it very funny as well as informative.  There were snakes, spiders, bearded dragons, chinchilla and scorpians.  The Chinchilla was very cute and funny runny very fast and having a dust bath in a bowl fur flying in all directions.  The poor bearded dragon ended up with a fluffy beard after the Chinchilla jumped over him!!!   It was another good end to a great day.  We said goodbye to Rick and all went to bed to dream about galloping after more steers.......