Lucky Star has a two foot slide stop from a slow walk. You think I’m exaggerating! OK, try this… Lucky Star can do a slide stop at the slowest walk speed that exists. He can almost do a slide stop from a halt. He’s got the chunky four corner square body and conformation to do this.
So that’s why I was really surprised when our slide stop evaporated at the Cow Clinic. It turns out, Lucky loves to move when he’s dealing with other horses and cows. Stopping fast isn’t on his mind. Our “set and stop” was a slow down and come to a gradual stop.
However, in the afternoon when we were cutting cows in a big round pen, he was nearly perfect. Lucky did listen to my body when I wanted to stop. We don’t have the get up and go to stop a cow that really wants to get back to the herd. But we can move a cow around really great at a walk. Cow owners like to move cows at a walk. It keeps the meat on the bones.
Then it was time to let a cow out of the round pen, take the cow to a nearby cone and herd it back. Lucky and I were first to do so and we did a darn good job of it except the little cow decided it wanted to go to the far end of the pasture to visit the bull and the other cows across the fence. So Lucky got stuck out in the far away end of the pasture. He didn’t want to return to the other horses nor move around at the far end of the pasture. He was mentally stuck. We had the bull behind us and no other horse for back up support. Sadly all the other people managed to get their cows to the cone and back. It was a long time before my newest #1 best friend, Edna, came out to rescue us. She came out, got the little cow out of the corner and then came over to have her horse reassure Lucky. Lucky was able to follow Edna and we were 2nd backup to herding the little cow back to the pens…except wait!
A couple more people lost their cows to the far end of the pasture and I decided that Lucky and I should help them herd the cows back…and we did.
There is no argument in Lucky in Cow Clinic Day. There’s no slide stop in him either. Lucky Star loves being the big dominant boss in a cow clinic! It ended well!