Spring 1 Clinic

It was the first clinic on the ranch of the season. Faith and I decided to partake in it. The first night everyone makes a run. Martha and a few others sit up in the announces booth and takes notes about your run. Faith had a couple weeks off because her feet were once again ouchy, but we finally have her figured out. So we were unable to work the pattern much. When we went we loped the whole pattern, her first was a little sloppy, her second wasn't bad, but her third came up a little wide. we ran a 22.5. on Saturday we worked on keeping an event distance all the way around, bending at the rib cage, checking her at the right moment, and getting my hand in position. You want an even distance all the way around because if you come in close you will come out wide, but if you come in to wide you might over compensate and come out to close. so if start and end about the same place you will save the most time. Bending at the rib cage is like taking you horse and bending them into a C. When they are going around the barrel you need to keep the momentum and the best way to do that is first get their nose slightly to the direction your turning, then as you approach the barrel use your inside rein and inside leg to make them move over, turning them into a C or the shape of the barrel. If you look at the good barrel horses you will see their hind end on one side of the barrel and their head at the other side. Checking checking checking. You will hear a lot of barrel racers talk about rate and checking. Well checking is when just before the barrel you just slightly pull on your reins to put the horse on their hind end and get ready to pivot. if you just run and turn the barrel it wont be pretty. its like driving a car, if you need to make a sharp turn you have to slow down right? Well constant checking will then give a horse natural rate, meaning they can soon be able to rate their own speed. They know " Ok right here i need slow down just a little" but you have to rate at the exact moment. Too early can make you turn too early, too late can make you run past the barrel. You want to rate about 1 or 2 strides away from the barrel. But it also depends on your horse. Now my hands. You want to go to your saddle horn around the barrel, other wise you will be left in the dirt my friend. These horses know what they have to do and their gonna do it with or without you. right after you rate them drop your outside hand and push on the saddle horn to push you down in the saddle. Then slowly move your inside hand toward your jean pocket. You don't want to pull it down towards your thigh because they will start to drop their shoulder and throw away their hind end. If you pull it across their neck it sends mixed signals as to which direction your going. As you cam around the back side of the barrel pull on the horn to pull your self up instead of balancing on your rein. As you pull up your giving the horse their head to move on. Faith has a pretty nice first barrel witch is good because it sets you up for success on the other two. As the weekend went on Faith started to have a really solid second. You just rate and let her do the rest, but i have to make sure she doesn't start to suck me into it and anticipate, she has to wait for me. The only barrel we have a consistent problem is third. Because she has such a good second she books it out of it and doesn't rate enough at third so makes it too wide. on Sunday, the last day she was high as a kite. she just wanted to work the pattern. But that night she hustled to first i didn't rate her at the right time so she bobbled a little but it wasn't too bad, she wrapped around second barrel, it was text book, but ran wide around third. But she ran a 19.5! We dropped three seconds off of our first time. In the barrel world every mil-second counts let alone a whole second! I was happy enough with that! But it just got better. The awards ceremony was next. They award the most improved and the 4D. 4D means the 4 Division. 1D is the fastest and 4D is the slowest, you are placed in the D's by how much slower you are from the fastest time. a 17.4 won the 1D. Faith won 3rd in the 4D! She won a halter. The first time I ran her for time and she placed. I couldn't have been happier.