Play Day

On April 11th a friend and trainer at the barn asked if I wanted to go with her to a fun show in Haysville. Of course I said Absolutely! Getting Fritz out into the world is always a good thing, and riding him around at a new arena is a fabulous way to do it. A fun show is something anyone with a horse can participate in and so Fritz and I decided to go for it. We actually did something in a competition setting which had nothing to do with cows. It was great. We ran the poles and tho we didn't win anything we also didn't knock any poles down. Yeah! This is a diagram of pole bending and will help explain what we did:

A rider and horse run past a timer line to the end of a line of six poles, then turn the end pole and weave down through the pattern, again turn at the last pole and weave back up, then run back home across the timer line. The fastest time will win.
The horse has to not only have speed, but also the agility to switch leads between every pole at a full out gallop.
The pole pattern consists of plastic poles that are set 21 feet apart and the timer line 21 feet from the first pole. The poles are 6 feet high and the base is no more than 14 feet in diameter. If a pole is knocked over, a 5-second penalty is assessed. Fast pole bending times are run in 20-21 seconds.

It's not as easy as it looks and no, we did not gallop through it. We jogged, or trotted.

Cattle Class

Tonya sent me some pictures of the cattle clinic held at the barn. Most of them are pretty ugly (No I won't post them). It is helpful to see what you are actually doing though. I can see I am definatly too tight and that I have the wrong leg on Fritz.

A Good Day

This weekend was so much better with Fritz. I rode him on the flag and did pretty well for not having done it in literally months. He was really doing well following the flag, I almost didn't have to do anything but hang on. Saturday I watched Dale work him on live cattle, Fritz did really well keeping with the cow but he also got spanked a few times for not paying attention. Four year olds!

Rough Ride

Went to the barn last night and rode Fritz. It was tough, some days he behaves as though he has never been in training and this was one of those days. Steph, my instructor, keeps telling me to get after him when he's being "dumb" but it's really hard to do that when I am never sure if it's him being dumb or if it's me. It just wouldn't be right.

She and I talked about me and Fritz. She said she thinks that Fritz is too much horse for me (she is kinda right) and that cutting is really too hard to start out in. What she said made sense, but it is also hard to think about letting go of Fritz. I must have already started thinking along those lines because the day before this conversation I found High Brows Joy (JoJo). She is a 7-year old paint reining mare. She is solid, which means she wouldn't make mistakes even tho I would, so she would be good for me to learn on. I haven't decided to go see her, try her out, to see if JoJo and I work together. I look at Fritz, look in his eyes and I know he wants to be good, I also know that the one thing stopping him from being good is me. Makes it very hard. Ugh!