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Hi! Sorry for being so quiet lately! Guess what I’ve been doing? Riding horses and chasing cows! I’m been having so much fun. You know, chasing cows is a lot like longing horses, putting pressure on the hip speeds then up and pressure on the head slows them down. Piece of cake right? Pffft!

I don’t have a bunch of time to write because I’m behind on everything, but heres the quick summary:

• Turns out Leo is super supple and I’ve done “a great job” there
• I “get” the cows. Does that mean I’m cowy?
• Leo and I are horrible at turn-arounds, which means, it’s really me thats horrible at turn-arounds.
• We did our first flying lead change. Woooooooooo!!!! It was ugly, but we did it!!!
• I have a riding instructor/amazing horse trainer that is a total keeper
• Leo is going to his first team-roping this weekend. This is a pass or fail for him so keep your fingers crossed.
• Best news of all! Leo is coming home after the roping next week. (Of course, if he does horribly at the roping, he’ll probably only be home for a short time, but I’ll worry about that if it happens.)

I hope everyone is having a great summer so far! Hows training going? How are the horses? Whats going on?

When I worked with Leo on Sunday, I was very lucky to have the company and watchful eye of Dan. Dan is the only person at the barn that rides a reining horse. Since he is usually off on some mountain, trail riding, he isn’t around the arena very often. When he is though, he will usually give me some pointers (in between the times he’s busting my chops of course).

Again, Leo spent 3 months in training to become a team roping horse and then spent a few years on vacation. Team roping horses are generally asked to pick up their left leads because they really only need to go left. If you ever find yourself in a team roping arena during warm-up time, you’ll notice that you never see the horses going around to the right.

I’m sure this has something to do with Leo being so stubborn about picking up his right lead. Since I’ve been trying to just get him to go without bucking, I haven’t asked him to do anything very challenging. I’ve started to now because in the last few weeks, he hasn’t given me much grief. In fact, he seems to have settled into the fact that he has to go to school now.

With Dan watching, I demonstrated how on a right lead, Leo leans VERY hard to the inside of the circle as though he’s about to round a barrel. His whole body is tilted in a way that my body can no longer be straight up and down. Instead I’m riding tilted with my left shoulder high above my right shoulder.

Dan taught me the way to correct it. While Leo was ripping around in a right circle on his right lead, Dan told me to take the right rein and pull it up towards my left shoulder and then just bump Leo’s bit with it. After I figured out where my left shoulder was, I bump, bump, bumped on his bit until, like magic, he straightened up. He straightened up and went around in a nice easy vertical canter until I asked him to stop. Success!!!