11/15/98
Working with real cows was much better. The real cow didn’t yell at us about forgetting our back and hindquarter turn when we got excited about keeping up with the cow.
Our first task was to follow the same cow around for about 15 minutes to give the horse an idea that we were focused on that cow. “What fun! Sage thought, Let’s play with cows every day.” (Although she enjoyed her time in following one cow, she didn’t catch on to the idea that it was her cow).
We spent Saturday and Sunday herding and driving cows in many ways:
Driving with many riders in the “U” shape.
Driving with few riders in the “U” shape
Driving with horses nose to tail. This meant that one horse did the driving and the other horses following in somewhat of a straight line pretending to do the driving.
Driving cows using the “U” shape with the riders split into two teams with each team having their own cow.
We had to drive through each other’s “U” shape.
We had to drive our cow around two barrels in a figure eight pattern while the other team had the same goal but went around the barrels in the opposite direction. We had to keep our cow in and their cow out.
The barrels were placed farther apart and we drove our cow till his nose touched our barrel.
The groups switched barrels. It was a race. We had to drive our cow through the other group and be the 1st to have the cow touch his nose to the barrel.
Riders formed into two touching circles and one rider had to pick a cow out of the herd and drive it into the other herd. Two horses acted as the gate. The gate didn’t open until only one cow was separated from the herd. The gate also had to watch to see that the 2nd circle of cows didn’t manage to sneak back into the 1st circle.
We practiced cutting any cow out and then a specific cow.
Sage did really well during the circle and herding exercises. Her cows didn’t challenge her much, and we managed to get our turns completed in time to stop most of our cows from returning to the herd in the cutting game. The cows didn’t run very far, so we didn’t display our lack of impulsion. We did well in cutting out a cow. One secret is to sidepass into the herd, wait until the cows break apart and then go for the hole to keep them separated. This is repeated until you are left with one cow. Our sidepass is spectacular, so we did really well. We got several compliments from other people Saturday night. Also, several people commented on how interested Sage was in the cows. She always had her ears pricked forward and never took her eyes off the cows. I knew that there was a cow pony in there screaming to get out! One extremely smart friend told me that Sage did the best of all the horses. (The man is now listed in my will)