Ranch Sorting - Woot!

A while back I tried team sorting with Paint Mare. It was fun but even though she is a good cow horse, she's gotten lazy, and we didn't do real well. Had a chance to do something similar, called Ranch Sorting, a couple of weeks ago, and I took Katie because her leg had finally healed and she needed to get out and get working again. Katie gaited, a Spotted Saddle Horse, so I figured we wouldn't do good either but at least we would get out and ride a bit and have fun. Boy was I ever wrong! Katie LOVED the cows and she did GREAT! So tonight we went back. Thanks to Kathy Rhudy, a friend of Mikey The Horseshoeing Housewife, who showed up to watch and was my camera man. However apparently I didn't have the settings right for nighttime... oh well, you will get the idea...

My first attempt to take a picture of the cows... guess the camera focused on the fence!
So I went beyond the fence, but it was awfully dark still

For those who don't know, the idea here is that you have a team of two, an arena divided by a fence with a "gate" (opening about 10 feet or so), and a herd of 12 cows. The cows are numbered 0-9, and the extras are called "trash". The cows are on one side of the gate and the team on the other. As you approach the gate, the timer calls out a number, and you start with that one, cutting out each cow one at a time IN ORDER and sending them through the gate, without letting the trash through, or letting them go out of order, or letting any that are already pushed through come back to the original side... quite fun!!! And, at least to me, much easier than team sorting even though there you have 3 people, because they do not divide the arena and give you a "gate" so you have to guard the whole distance...

Here's Katie and me, after a cow

Katie going into the herd

Hi! I'm No. 2!


My friend Melanie was having trouble with her horse Moses and she asked me to get on him, because she wasn't sure if it was him, or if it was her... well he was even worse for me at first, but I would NOT let him get away with his cr*p. I was very proud of myself for sticking on him through the wait and a whole sorting and not letting him get the better of me. COWGIRL UP!!
Moses kept trying to go up on his rear legs...

I finally got Moses to listen to me...

And got him to stand still at the gate...

Settling the herd

My camera gal had to go but once I was back on Katie we had several more successful runs, and even got a time of under a minute once! WOOT!