Do you need to slow down the hot horse? Does your horse need more focus work? Did you miss the “adding breaks” step to your training?
Many of the exercises I use for training my horses come from Heather Smith’s barrelracingtips.com and her book series. I started following Heather in 2012 when her first book, “The Secrets to Barrel Racing Success” came out. Slow down your hot horse with my favorite barrel racing exercises.
About a year and a half ago, Milan, our beautiful palomino paint mare, came up lame. I quit riding and using her in our program and went to work figuring out what was wrong. One of the things with Milan is that her right front foot turns in toward her left front leg. She also has been very tight in her shoulders and back.
Sportsmanship is lacking in equestrian sports these days. Everyone wants to
win but no one want to put in the work, take the losses and be happy for others. We don’t cheer each other on, high-fives are lacking and smiles at each other are almost completely non-existent.
There have been comments on my posts on Facebook regarding how I’m always smiling coming out of the arena. I will tell you that it hasn’t always been like that…I’m competitive but have learned the following:
One of my biggest pet peeves is people riding every different direction in the warmup pen. I have ridden in many warm-up pens of various
3 years! That is how long it has been since I went to a barrel race. I spent 2 yrs out of the arena and finally took up gymkhana in 2018, but I was still missing something.
They say there is no such thing as a free horse which in away is true. I paid nothing for this little bay paint mare, but I gained a whole lot when I added her to my program.
As my first gymkhana approached, I reorganized my horse trailer and made sure I had everything I needed to make my first show in a year and half, fun successful and as stress free as possible. I put the word out on Facebook asking my friends how they prep and I got some pretty cool answers…
March 24, 2018 will be the first time I have stepped foot (on horseback) in an arena since October of 2016.
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