In May 2007, the family barn welcomed a new member. It was so fun to have a newborn, and a clean slate of a homebred baby. A year or so earlier the plan was to have one of the last true homebred black and white Pinto’s at the barn. This baby would’ve been the last of the Sultzer’s Pinto’s, and it would have been massively sentimental the line of horses that preceded it. However, what Cheyenne gave birth to caused an uproar unlike any other!!

Instead of a white and black colt like we all expected, Cayenne popped out, and much like the name suggests he is red. Chestnut with some chrome in fact. How did this happen? Well, we came to find out that his sire didn’t have full paint genes and could throw solid babies if given the chance…and Cayenne just had to take it.

He is a May 2007 chestnut gelding, and a very dear part of the family, he just came out of the printer wrong. We joke that we picked up the wrong baby, but he has Cheyenne’s face through and through. He is now about 16, and just a goof. He has cow sorted, trail ridden, swam, taught us cousins how to ride, adventured through Colorado and more. He has been a great addition to the herd at Red Rock Ranch. After Cheyenne’s passing its nice to have a piece of her still with us today.

I had been hesitant to reach out to my Aunt Lori, but she welcomed me back into the family barn life, and has offered to let me ride Cayenne since he has been unridden for a bit. I am immensely grateful for the opportunity, and it has been so much fun riding him. He is a very different ride than Cheyenne ever was, but its still fun. He is very sensitive, a bit emotional, and a bit forward probably due to inactivity. On the ground he is a puppy dog and he likes his ears scratched, he’s getting into our grooming sessions and we’re figuring each other out. In the round pen he likes to go full giraffe mode, and he snorts like no other. He offers lots of trot, kind of a pace, and very little lope or canter. I always reward him for stretching and carrying himself properly, and he immediately comes to me and checks out. To remedy this he and I play tag or red light green light for a while and he loves it. After I feel like he’s got all of his wiggles out I take him back to the barn through the orange groves.

Outside the barn we’ve gone over 150 miles together across the Arizona desert since January. I have tracked all of our rides for time, stride, distance, and just to remember certain trails. Many of the same paths I rode with Cheyenne. Luckily for us we are always prepared with his hoof boots. We truly wouldn’t have made it all this way without his Renegade Hoof Boots which I’ve mentioned in a previous post. Being a barefoot horse is amazing, but it does require a certain amount of maintenance and injury prevention. I’m forever grateful to my Aunt Lori for introducing these boots to me as they have been life savers.

I will be using the #G2BCayenne tag for him and anything with a pepper emoji refers to him. I hope you guys are just as excited to see more of him like I am. As you can tell my horse purchase plan fell through, but it presented me with a bit more of a sentimental option.