Day 1

Morning class was all groundwork. Hindquarters/frontquarters. Lead-bys. Flagging while doing the half-circle exercise from one end of the arena to the other. We ended with roping end hind foot. Mercy did amazingly better at the hind foot that I expected. Lead-bys got better, but she still is on top of me more that I would like. We also worked on back from the halter knot on both sides, as well as just from the bridge of the nose. Marcy pretty much fell apart when leading back to the trailer along the road. There is a creek and a culvert and she completely lost it and I had to ditch everything in my hands to get the forward back. It was a pretty big disappointment after having done what I considered really well in the morning.

Afternoon class was horsemanship with focus on backing circles for working cows and also leg yielding and a little bit of hindquarters/frontquarters, but mostly backing arcs and then bringing the front across. After a while we headed out to move about 150 heifers to another pasture. It was a pretty large area and Buck had us pair up with someone and hold position until everyone was in place. I was paired up with a guy name J from Bozeman, MT. We did all kinds of little exercises while camped out on our spot on a hill. Backing circles up and down hill mixed up with all kinds of other stuff we had worked on prior to heading out to the pasture. We then drew in on the cows and moved them up towards the gate where we rodeared them. Then they were slowly fed through the gate so Buck could count them and check them for ear tags. Part of these cows will be the ones we play with later in the week. Buena did fabulously, despite being in heat.

We finished up with some standing rope work outside the arena before dinner. Mostly just practicing our shots on roping dummies. At this point, I will NOT be throwing a rope from Buena, but I may sit on a fence and attempt to do a bunch of tosses and drawing the rope up to her on the fence and helping her tolerate it on her head and feet and hindquarters.