Cutting

I've been running behind in the blog posting lately, so I'm playing catch-up and posting a few new entries today. There's lots of stuff that's been happening lately.....and it's all part of the summertime activities.

On Friday the 2nd, Craig and I went out to my parents and I got some practice in on the string cow again. Tommy is getting better about it, but he is still apprehensive and scared every time it gets turned on. But he'll get better about it, I just need to be patient with him.....

To make the learning session more interesting - I had the chance to ride big Grace! To be honest, I felt like a fish out of water on top of her. She is a total 180 degrees polar opposite from what I'm used to riding. Unlike Tommy, Grace has absolutely no fear whatsoever of the string cow - in fact a couple of times I thought that she was actually going to steam roll right into it when she turned! It was a weird feeling for me, because instead of constantly having to work to push a horse up to get closer to it, I had to use my legs (and the spurs) to actually keep Grace back off away from it. It was odd to have to do everything the complete opposite of what I'm used to doing....
Grace is also a big round power house of a stock horse, so I felt like I was riding a 747 coming in for a landing. (Quite the opposite of Mr. narrow rail butt Tommy.) The tack was different as well. I normally ride a long stirrup for distance, but on a cutting saddle the stirrups set up very high and short for a reason - to stay anchored on the horse when they turn. I had to get used to it in a very rapid fashion.

Big Grace working the cow. Notice how close she is to it? If you look at the older blog posts of me and Tommy, we are still working on getting half of the distance closer.

My free hand is way too high - (a very bad habit that I need to break). My other hand was clinging to the saddle horn for dear life.....

It was a very good experience for me to ride a seasoned cutting horse to see what it is supposed to feel like. A special thank you to my mom and Grace's owner Debbie Schuening for giving me the opportunity. I realize that Tommy and I have a long ways to go yet before he's anywhere near Grace's level - but hopefully in the future might be able to eventually get somewhere kind-of close.

Craig managed to get a cell phone video of Tommy and I practicing, and I put it on my Youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDnAXRchwfM