Show Day~Part 2!

~When I was a girl, I had dreams of becoming a woman.

Now that I'm a woman, I have dreams of becoming a girl.~

~Agnes Mobley 1898~ 

Oops...guess I forgot to mention that there was more to Saturday than just the cutting show!

But, before we get to that, I want to apologize for sounding  like a whiner in yesterday's post. Everyone left such thoughtful and encouraging comments...you are all greatly appreciated! I'm totally pleased with where Colt and I are considering when I started him as a two year old, I didn't know how to teach a horse flying lead changes, do a spin or a sliding stop. I've done all of Colt's training myself...I can't afford to hire a trainer...but that's what makes the whole process so rewarding...looking at what we've accomplished. What I learned yesterday, is that my horse knew which cow I should have taken...HE KNEW! I need to listen to my horse more often!!  Thank you for being such good friends.

OK...on to Part 2...Our Reined Stock Horse Futurity Board asked the High Desert Cutters if they could do a stock horse jackpot after our last cutting, and it all worked out! Our Futurity is September 8-9 and this really helped people find out how their horses were coming along...and we all need all the practice we can get!

It was pretty simple; they just scored on the dry work (reining pattern) and fence work (there weren't enough cattle to do herd work too). The competition was divided into snaffle bit/hackamore horses, bridle horses, and youth. I think they had about 12 entries.

I did a really dumb thing by not checking the memory left on the card that was in the camera...so it died on My Poor Man just as I started my fence work...dang...that was the best part of our whole day!!!

But, here's a lil' bit of the reining pattern and what lil' bit we got in the camera on the cow...

The pattern that they chose had two large fast circles and one small slow circle, change leads in the middle, and then two and one again. Colt is really good at changing leads and tends to anticipate the changes. You see him bobble in the first circle trying to change leads on me...lil' bugger! But he did the other changes nicely, but I could feel him thinking...I just tried to focus him on forward as much as possible.

My sliding stops don't have much slide to them...I'm working on that, but his turn arounds are OK...we just keep working on adding a lil' bit more speed. Our score on the dry work was only 63.

But the fence work, which I didn't have much confidence in at all, turned out great! I got some coaching last Thursday evening when we had herd practice at the Bell-A Ranch...that really helped. The cow I got didn't have a lot of speed, but it sure wanted out of the pen (looking for a way out all the time through the fence). I wanted to work it two more turns in my boxing, but it darted under Colt's neck and headed up the long side of the arena...I thought to myself I'm never gonna get this cow turned...she had just learned how to be disrespectful of us...but we took her up the wall and asked for the turn and she turned!! Yeah!!

OK...now the turn to the left...yep, got'er done!  Then we circled her to the left first and that went well, but when I changed hips on the cow and got about have a right circle done she died...we ran out of cow. I had to do a lot of hollering at that cow to get her to go and it took us two tries to get her to complete the circle to the right...but we got'er done...the whistle blew!

We scored a 67!!

I didn't get to see the judge's sheet, but My Man said the judge kept saying "nice horse" while I was working him...that sure made me feel good!

So, that was our big day...Oh yea...I either got 3rd or 4th and will be getting a check! I like that part!