Cattle Clinic

So this past weekend I took Milo out to the Cattle Clinic at Diamond Hill Ranch with Max Salisbury. It went great! Saturday we spent most of the day (and that means about 6 hours in the saddle) doing horsemanship including lateral exercises flexion, and other necessary cues to have when working a cow. Milo has being really frisky and was actually taking off and bolting a few times throwing bucks in along the way. I just had the saddle fitter out and have since improved the fit of my saddle through different padding while looking for a new saddle. So it cant be that causing the bolting. Nor is it the cows; he has seen them before. I think it was the fact that there were about 17 horses in the clinic, some of which were really nervous. So I think it may have been a combination between him feeding off the others, and when we would all work on the rail and horses were passing him he was getting rather competitive and wanting to out trot (or run) them. Below is a photo of us leaving the arena for lunch break. Milo naturally looks better than me.

We came back after dinner at 6 for our first taste on the cows. Like I mentioned before, Milo has sorted cows before once. But the clinic gave us a better understanding on how to read a cow, how to effectively move a cow, and also more experience with them. So Saturday night we were seperated into teams of two to work a cow around the length of the arena. It was great Milo and I both had a lot of fun, and his silly antics had stopped.

Today we worked entirely on cows (while of course using our horsemanship skills learned the previous day) consisting firstly on teams of three working the cow around the arena. At one point, Milo was pushing the cow from the rear, and the cow wasnt moving away (well enough for Milo) and he charged at the cow! Laying his ears back, trying to bite him and charging with his front legs. Of course thats a big no no and he got disciplined briefly for that.

This afternoon we did the sorting with an hour worth of practice and than the Jackpot. Practices went well and by our third time out, Milo was really starting to understand what to do - facing off with the cows, blocking cows from sorting into the other pen, and even doing a small amount of "cutting" work with the cows! He really enjoyed it and while not in the pen sorting, he would watch them from the sides. Its amazing because (not to my knowledge) he doesnt have any "cow" in him! But I think we really found what he likes to do, and even better Ive been wanting to get into reined cow work as well!

Our Jackpot round went well, we partnered with our friend Brittany, while we didnt get any cows sorted (we were going for a slow and steady so that we wouldnt get the wrong numbers in), it was still a lot of fun. Below is my favorite photo from the weekend in our Jackpot round.

At any rate, this is a small post for all that we did, but Max works a hard clinic! This we will definitely be pursuing in our training.