Month: October 2013
Where’s Your Drive?
Hey everyone, Barry here. We’re at October 22nd and I’ve not posted anything lately. I haven’t lost my drive, I’ve been crazy busy riding almost every evening. My latest situation has me training three after my day of shoeing. But, I’ve learned a new trick. I always ride the one that I look forward to last. I can always get them all ridden in that order. If I ride my favorite first, I can never get them done.
Today I had a great change. I bought a new harness and a cart for the yearlings. I’m planning on working them to the cart this winter, and since I’m not one to put things off ,that I want to do, I started line driving them today.
Ranch Sorting and Saturday at the Ranch
We had a great time sorting calves at the two man sorting Friday evening. It was an evening filled with friends and training horses. Jody and April Moon came out. Jody and I have done some Ranch rodeos together and penned cattle on many occasions. I partnered with Danny Davis for the biggest part of the night. Danny and his wife raise some really nice Appaloosa horses.
My new gelding has around 25 rides on him at this point and is a pretty level headed ride. I think horses learn on cattle faster than any other way because it lends reason to our maneuvers. As each run came I would look for holes in our training. The biggest one that I saw was that my horse was super soft to the right but in a bind he would be a little stiff to the left. Guess what? We’ll be working a lot more on the left this week. Like anything else problems get worse with speed. A tire on your car vibrating at 30 will be a lot worse at 60.
Sorting was awesome, but for my wife and I, a visit from my youngest daughter, Anna, and her friend today was priceless. Anna’s in college, very busy and we don’t see her nearly as much as we’d like. They rode, and I got to work on Shineys left side. Anna rode him afterwards, and he was a real gentleman. Kaitlin rode Natasha’s mare, and all was well in our world.
Tomorrow is a new day! True Grit Cowboy Church starts at 10:00am, at 1912 Ardmore Hwy 110 Ardmore, TN. We’d love for everybody to come, and worship with us!
Chasing Dreams
Well, I told my wife that I would lay Shiney off for a couple of weeks and catch Chip up. I must have unconsciously lied. I shod them both yesterday. I put slide plates on Shiney because he’s ready to learn to get in the ground. It’s pretty exciting when they start craving the ground,and I think this rascal is going to tear that ground apart!!!!! So I spent another week on him.
I’m sorry I don’t have any photos today, but I’ve been riding Shiney like I stole him. Every afternoon I’ve been working toward a goal, 2 man ranch sorting Friday night. It may not be fair to ask him to perform at a high level, in fact, I’m sure that it’s not. I will only ask him for what he’s been taught, maybe barely more. You see, chasing cows are like chasing dreams to me. That’s always been my favorite thing on a horse. When my son came along, I raised my own teammate, and we chased dreams together. Jesse’s in medschool now chasing another dream, and I have a couple of other teammates, my wife Natasha and Houston. Tomorrow will be a first for Shiney and Houston. Natasha knows about cattle, she’s been putting up with my bull for years!
We work these horses for many hours to get them prepared for a 2 minute run. It’s time to check our preparation, see where we’re at, come home and work on weaknesses. I hope my next post has a photo of Shiney cutting the cats from the kittens, if not that’s ok it’ll be back to the old drawing board.
Chase your dream, don’t let it get away!!!!!
Regret's Ranch: Home of Faulk Performance Horses 