First off I want to talk about last Wednesday. It was such a big day for me because I had an interview. Not just any interview, either. It was for my rodeo royalty competition. The girl I'm competing against and I went down to the rodeo grounds, all dressed up, and went in the building one at a time. When I was in there, all they asked me to do was tell them a litte bit about myself. After I talked about myself, they asked me questions that were mostly related to me. The hardest question they asked was "What would you say to someone from PETA (People for Ethical Treatement of Animals) who tells you that rodeo is competely wrong?" It is such a hard question because I've grown up loving rodeo. It's all I know and it was hard to consider that someone else is so against something I love. I started off with "I'd say that they are entitled to their opinion, but I don't believe rodeo is wrong. Our horses get taken care of so well and the cattle are only used a couple times. They don't get beaten or starved and this is a really good place for them compared to other places they could be." I went into a little more detail but I really didn't know what else to say.
Another thing I want to talk about is what we did this weekend. We vaccinated all our calves. We only have 19, but we also did my grandparents, who have about 30 or so. It took a really long time. Basically, all we do is put them in the chute, give them a couple of needles, and possibly tattoo (and in one case tag) them. We already tattooed some of them, so we didn't have to do all of them. Mostly all I did was chase the calves in and fill up the needles with the medicine.With tattooing, we put tattoo ink in their ear, and then we take our tattoo gun and clamp their ear. What it does is put holes in their ear, but not all the way through it, so we tell the calves apart in case they lose their eartags. The other reason they have tattoos is for registration purposes. At any cattle show you go to, someone will check the tattoo, just to make sure it's the animal that you claim it is. This is very affective because the tattoo will always be there. We also don't brand our animals because they are purebred and my dad doesn't think it looks very good so the tattoo could help us to identify them if they ever got lost.
Filling up shots.
Ok next thing. 4-H On Parade is coming up next weekend! It's the largest youth 4-H event in Canada. I love it so much because I get to see so many of my 4-H friends, and not to mention show off my projects. It's always so much fun!!
We move in on Thursday afternoon. What we do is set up our stall by basically putting up a bunch of decorations and putting a lot of shavings down where the animals are going. Then the female projects move in that night.
On Friday there is the female show. What we do is spend the whole morning fitting animals, and helping everyone else. The steers also move in on Friday. That night there is a multi-judging. All you do is go and judge animals. You place them according to what you think is best and on the information that the actual judge gives you. Then you write down your order and orally give your reasons. The person who is closest to the actual order and gives the best reasons wins that catagory. We judge beef heifers, sheep, dairy cows, horses, and usually something like gloves or atvs. Sometimes I do well and other years I don't, but it's still fun.
On Saturday, we have the steer show. It is probably the most stressful day because every single person in our club has a steer so we often have to help out the younger members and then do our own steer. It's a very long and tiring day and I usually never win. That night they always do something fun. This year I think they have some version of tug of war.
Sunday is the last day. We have team grooming that morning. It's where three people take someones steer and they fit it. It's a competition against other clubs and I'm on the team this year. Hopefully we do well! That afternoon is the steer sale, which is always the hardest part especially for new members. It's sad when you spend a whole year getting close to a steer and raising it and then you have to sell it. After the sale we take down our stall and go home.
I look forward to this weekend every year because, even though it's stressful and tiring, it's always so much fun and worth the wait! So if you get a chance, check it out!!
I know my post has been fairly long today but this is the last thing, I promise! Plus I kind of have to write about this, seeing as it's the title of this post. Riding. I've been riding so much lately just because I'm training my horse to listen to the commands I give her, verbal or not, so she'll listen to me when I need her to this summer. I've been working on patterns, which is basically an outlined path someone gives me to ride with different actions in it like jogging, loping, stopping, turning, etc., and in one I was working on I had to lope in a circle. When a horse lopes, which is like running in a 1,2,3 rhythym, they have one foot going farther than the other and this is called a lead. If the right foot goes farther, for example, it's a right lead. The proper, and more comfortable, way to do this is to have the foot on the inside going farther. Especially when going in a circle. So I was doing this pattern and Oakie wouldn't pick up the proper lead at first. She'd pick up the wrong lead and then switch half way through the circle. My instructor thought this was slightly weird that Oakie switched leads while loping, so we did an experiment. What I did was ride a figure-8, one circle going one way, then, on the other side of the arena, go into a circle the other way. When you do this you have to switch leads between the circles. Usually to do this you have to bring your horse down to a jog then back up to a lope, with the other lead. Our experiment was to try to get my horse to switch leads without slowing down. This is a fairly advanced thing to do that many barrell racing horse do, called a flying lead change. After a couple times, Oakie got it. I was so excited!! This makes life so much easier because my horse does not like to slow down.
We also started training our new colt this week. We had a halter on him and just walked him around while my brother saddled up his mom and took her riding for the first time in quite a while. My brother and I played tic tac toe on our horses, which is easier than it sounds and it's really good for teaching horses control. When we wanted an X, all we did was walk our horse back and forth until a line was made and then made another line that crossed it. To make an O, all I had to do was make my horse do a turn on the honches, which is basically where she only moves her back feet around and her front feet stay in one place. Another thing my brother and I did, was play tag. It was so much fn because we just ran around on our horses like crazy. Then we chased some calves around because I might have to do that at a rodeo this year. That was pretty easy and really fun. This is how I ride because it's fun and makes riding more interesting than the usual exercises.
I know that was a long post today but thanks for reading! That's about all that's going on right now but I'll let you guys know what else goes on.
~Miranda~
