By Abi Price
Intern at The Stairs Ranch
At the Stairs Ranch we ride and train a vast amount of horses throughout the year. All year long we have our training minds working; teaching and perfecting the skill set of a horse to run a barrel pattern. As the training progresses and a horse’s skill set grows there is the opportunity to see the effectiveness of the training by doing a practice run.
Read more: Trusting Your Horse & Yourself Add new comment
By Abi Price
Intern at The Stairs Ranch
As a recent college graduate, I have had many moments to think about where my life is headed and what I am going to do when I get there. Fresh out of college I see many young people my age starting their careers and looking like they have it all together but really half of us have no idea where we are going and or know what to do when we get there. Then I started thinking and realized that growing up and going to college and starting a career is very similar to starting a barrel horse.
In his book “These Were The Vaqueros,” Arnold Rojas states that “a horseman cannot learn all they should know by trial and error; a person’s lifetime is too short for that.” Indeed, he says, five lifetimes would not be long enough to experience all the things a good horseman needs to know. You can spoil 100 horses before you can learn to train one properly; you could learn more on one horse if you had someone to teach you how to handle it than you can on 100 by trial and error without a teacher.
What to do when your horse sticks his nose out, bounces on his front end when he stops or sets for a barrel, and otherwise costs you extra time on the barrel pattern. Why does he do this? And what can you do to get him back on his rear end? The habits of sticking his nose out and bouncing on his front end and not getting on his rear end could be caused by pain in his mouth or the wrong bit. Maybe your horse is sore somewhere?