Saturday Jessie and I went out back to pretend to do some cutting. I wanted to work on some of the exercises while they were still somewhat fresh in my mind.
It was pretty crazy. We found out that in order to work cows (pretend or real) we need to be VERY good at three things: the stop, the backup and the rollback. And, very good means very good. When I say "whoa" Jessie needs to stop quickly. When I ask for the backup, she needs to be quick with a collected frame. Looking back at the workshop, we could have worked on just these two items all weekend, because only one of us had these necessary skills and that was the teacher and the horses he rode.
Jessie and I worked on our stop for about 30 minutes trying to get it right. It was much better at the end of our session. We also did some loping just to break up some of the exercises. It was more fun for me than her because it was warm on Saturday afternoon.
We also worked on the backup up. Like many, we have a back up, but it doesn't change speeds much and she's not doing it collected. If I ask her to rollback at the end of the backup she is so much on her front end that it is just not going to happen. I tried using the fence to help us and it did a bit. It was a little better at the end of our session. We need a whole lot more work on this.
Sunday the temperature dropped dramatically and it was almost chilly on our ride. We went out to the development and loped around for awhile. We worked on a few things but mostly just enjoyed the ride, weather, and the company.
2 comments:
Did you say chilly?
Sounds like you know what you need to work on. What did you use as your cow?
It was 100 degrees the week before and last Sunday it barely made it to the mid 60's (Yes, were ARE sissys in Calif).
I used my imagination for the cow and if I thought really, really hard Jessie could see it too ;>)
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