October 13, 2007 - Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds, Watsonville, CA
Gabilan Cutters
In April, Donna and I started taking our mares to a monthly cutting practice at a local arena and introducing our horses to this sport.
At the first cutting practice, Ruby was scared of the cows, all the noises and the quick action. She crow-hopped back to the other riders.
On May 11, our second cutting practice, there were very few cutters so we had a lot of practice, and Ruby settled down and eventually she started to hook up to a cow, but as neither of us had had any lessons, we weren't sure what to do and eventually all cows got around us.
Our third practice on June 1 went a little better.
The next practice on July 13 was when it all started coming together. We still hadn't had any lessons yet, but my horse found her courage and we did great.
August 3 was our next practice with cows and Ruby was quick and sharp. Still no lessons.
But in September, we started getting cutting lessons from Billy Martin and after we finished our last reining competition on Sept. 14, went full-steam into cutting.
We joined the local cutting club--Gabilan Cutters--and our first show was on October 13. At this point, we had maybe three lessons.
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We're in the 150 class, which is the ultra green horse & rider class. We can use reins to guide our horse. Ruby and I are seventh in the class. These are re-worked cattle, so they're already wise to the way a horse moves. |
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Ruby walks calmly through the herd in our first cut. |
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We started off good. Ruby made a quick turn with this first cow, but then she stopped before we got to the fence and the cow got away. |
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Here's the cow running around us. I probably had the reins too tight and contributed to her lack of speed going across the pen and not staying in position. |
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I can't even tell you which cow I was working. I think the white cow was traffic and we were working the black cow, but Ruby didn't turn when it did, so it got away. |
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We turned this black cow a few times, but she also got around us. |
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Hey, this is ridiculous now, so I'm just having fun. I can't hold any cows. My horse won't turn. She's excited just to be here. At this point, we are just peeling cows off the face of the herd and they just run right around us. I feel like we have been in here for 10 minutes already. |
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Let's try this one. |
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Let's try one of these. Actually, we were hooked onto the one closest to us, but it went to the fence and then around us when Ruby then hooked onto the tan cow (switched cows) when the black cow got farther away. |
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We aren't working either of the cows in this photo. These two are just traffic. There just seemed to be a lot of traffic. |
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The last cow we worked was the first black cow (far left), and we actually turned it a few times and had it pushed out from the herd when the buzzer (mercifully) went off. |
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In every photo, Ruby's tail is flipping and whirling, not so different from reining.
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For our first show with only a few lessons, we reached our initial goals: 1. Don't get bucked off. Our score: 60 (tied for last place with 7 other riders) |
| Our second show was on November 10 at the Blackburn Ranch in Gilroy. We had many more lessons, and it's turning out that Ruby is a natural at cutting. However, I am not, so we still have a long way to go. Out of 14 riders in the 150 class, we scored 67 and got second place! I have to thank my turnback riders (Billy Martin and Ramona Koch) and herd holders (John Holman and especially someone else whose name I didn't get who yelled at a cow when it got to the fence and turned it back into the working area) for their help in accomplishing this. Sorry, no pictures at this show. | |