She’s a Money Earner!

By Patty Wilber

The last weekend in March, LT packed tools for the Back Country Horsemen.

 The first weekend in April, she went to Lubbock, TX to compete in her (and also my) first ever National Reined Cow Horse event put on by the Panhandle Reined Cow Horse Association.

I have been wanting to compete in reined cow horse for a while, but have been waiting for my girls to get to a point where I felt we could get around a pattern and work a cow.

I  was not quite sure we were up for the challenge yet this year, but at some point, well, Just Do It.

Anytime I compete, I really want to win there is a chance to win learn, so I did my best to focus on winning the “educational opportunity”.  (That change in focus actually did take off a lot of the pressure!)

Another huge plus was that a bunch of my friends were going,  including Troy Rogers, who has helped me get LT working cows, and Chance Shough who keeps sending me cow horse links and entry forms (which I finally used!)

It was a blast to travel and work with such a great group! Plus, we all hung out to watch each other ride like our hair was about to fall off.

Oh wait.

That actually happened.

She-who-will-not-be-named had a hair piece in, and her horse worked his cow so dynamically (because she rode him so well and let him do his job), that the hair flew right off!

Everyone had good runs and I think we all took home some prize money. LT is now a money earning (250 bucks worth!) reined cow pony. That paid for my portion of the gas and hotel, anyway.

Bev Boyd took videos of LT on my camera (and I figured out how to upload those to YouTube to link here! Time consuming!).  But the bad news is that video hogs up all the memory so I have very few photos–and NONE of anyone else…

LT: all cleaned up in Texas!

A reined cow horse class consists of “dry work”, which is a pattern that requires running circles, spinning and stopping, followed by “wet” or “cow work”, which as you may have gathered, involves a cow.

Here are two clips that show a bit of LT’s dry work.  The things I liked best when I watched the videos were 1) the rhythm of her stride at the lope  and 2) her pivots.  The pivots are also pretty rhythmic and she is on the correct pivot foot!

Here is a clip of her first cow.  We lost contact with our bovine a bit (let the cow get too far away) but over the weekend, she stayed eager and she is brave.  If there is a cow to go get, she says, “Pick me!”

LT and I still have a lot to improve upon, but this goofy, hard to manage young horse has progressed steadily without having to force anything (much) down her throat!  (Plus she can pack. And I am going to show her English this weekend.  Note I did not say she was especially good as an English horse, though she does have a nice trot…)

English sminglish.  The cow horse stuff is SO FUN!  I am looking forward to the next one I can attend in June!