12 Januar 2008

Working Cow Horse

Driving home from the barn last night I was thinking about which new thing I could try this weekend when my phone rang.
It was Stephanie who invited me to go to Sarasota with her to watch a working cow horse show. I’ve never been to such a show before and going places with her always turns out to be fun, so I immediately agreed and Jon also did as soon as I got home and told him.

Jon and I, Laura and her two little girls, and Stephanie and her neighbor’s girl Bailey drove for 2 1/2 hours all the way across the state of Florida the next morning to see the horses and riders in action. Fortunately her sweet grandmother – the one we’d gone to the dinner show with last weekend – let us borrow her mini van so we could all ride together.

Working cow horse is a combination of reining, the western dressage, and cutting, the part they actually get a cow involved.
As we missed the morning shows with the pros and just got to see the intermediate and green classes the cutting was pretty basic. They “just” had to keep the calf on one side of the arena and not let it get past the horse without touching it.
It was great seeing the horses paying attention to the cattle’s movement and working with the riders.

The reining part with all the sliding stops, spins, lead changes and speed control was very interesting and fun to watch, too and it actually got me motivated to go and try to get in a show like that with Brownie, too. I think it would be a great new experience and Stephanie agreed to drive little Brownie and me and help me with the cow work.

Now I have a good reason to work Brownie in the arena more.
Neither Brownie nor me really knows how to spin or slide as impressively as those quarter horses, but in the green horse/green rider class not everybody does and there were some in that class who were bouncing around on their horses, so I would at least not get last place.
The show and the whole day were really nice and I enjoyed it a lot.


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