Everything Horses and Livestock® Magazine Feb 2019 Vol 4 Issue 1

Everything Horses and Livestock Magazine ®

up on top of it. This is known as either a flow obstacle or a foot placement obstacle in the cowboy racing world. Over time he began to trust me more and more, our bond was in the making. All of this work landed us 2nd place in the trail class on September 15th. Part of the trail class was a separate score for the horse’s body and coat condition. I was very blessed to be sponsored by Better Equine and Total Feeds with 6 bags of Total Equine feed. Chester was fed 8 pounds of Total Equine each day for 120 days and looked fabulous going into the competition! He had a nice top line started, his gut pulled up slim and tight, was well muscled and a gleaming bloom on his coat. My mom sat on the fence, watching in the evenings as I worked with him. She gave me suggestions of things to try and how to teach him new things like pivots, side-passing and the come-over-que. These were

things I had never taught from the ground before. Chester was always willing and a fast learner. Once he understood, it stuck! I started taking him to every-other-week lessons with my coach, Cal Noyans. Cal is a long-time professional horse shoer and trains horses for others at his ranch outside of Melvern, KS. Sometimes Cal would have to take the rope from me because there were things I physically could not muster on my own. A great example of this, Cal took his roping rope and looped it around the mustangs’ butt, then let the loop get bigger until Chester had stepped his back legs through it, Cal then pulled the rope tight around his flank, this was way more than I could have ever handled! In the weeks to follow, I was able to continue safely with the rope work at home. This helped Chester in more ways than I understood at the time. I used the ropes to start working his feet and picking them up, one

by one. Cal built my courage and confidence as I faced my biggest fear of getting those thick, back legs picked up off the ground with my hand and walking behind him with bravery. In the beginning, Chester liked to fling them around. Cal taught me the importance of having the correct angles to get more from my horse by doing less. I was amazed at how such subtle changes could make some of the biggest differences in Chester’s response to me. Cal and Chester both taught me so much through the process, and for this I am very grateful. I knew I had to do well in the freestyle class, so we enlisted a gal known as “The Freestyle Queen”, Ashley Purdin. Ashley is the head trainer at Equus Curito in Louisburg, KS. She gave me two lessons worth of valuable advice. The first was needing to be in time and rhythm with my music and secondly to know where We were at through the entire

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