Cattle Drive!!

 Well.. that did not go how I expected!!! Although in retrospect, I probably should have expected something similar. We still had a blast, but..... 

Missy and I signed up for a Cattle Drive and we were sooooo excited. She wasn't sure how Indi would react to the cows but I figured Dan would be totally fine with them and probably LOVE chasing cows. It seems right up his alley.. making things move and do his bidding. :) Perfect job for him! 

So we hauled 3.5 hours to Smoaks SC Friday afternoon and found the farm. Four J's Ranch. It's a nice place. We got there and they greeted us and told us we could pick a stall. They were nice stalls.. freshly bedded with hooks for buckets and such. Sweet! The stall I picked for Dan had a great view... of a very menacing looking mechanical bull. Ha ha. Poor dude! Sleep well my friend! Hee hee. Missy and I headed out for dinner and then headed to our hotel. It was 25 minutes away but a decent place. 

 

 

It's okay buddy...don't be scared! Hee hee.. But dang, he is creepy!

 

Saturday morning we headed back to the ranch and fed the ponies. Then we took them out for a little grazing and grooming. We were told to be in the saddle ready to ride at 10 am. So we got on about 9:30 and started walking around. They let us in the arena near the cows. And man.. that footing is DEEP! Dan and Indi both looked at the cows and didn't care. They were more interested in the other horses and tractors and wagons. 

The arena was starting to fill up with horses and the footing was so deep and Dan was getting a bit silly, so I opted to take him back out and figured I might trot him around in the parking lot/pasture area to see if that would help settle him. He wasn't being terribly but he had a few scoots in the arena. And the footing is just so much deeper than I'm used to. We were trotting around and Dan was really excited. He was behaving but he was tight and braced. And then some cute little pintaloosa got loose and came running at us. They managed to catch him but that got Dan more amped up. And then he was just building. He wasn't settling. I finally gave up and just walked him and that actually did help a hair. They were calling for us all so we headed back to the arena. 

They had us all in there and I think there was something like roughly 30 horses and they would bring us 100 cows. They had weeded out the sassy cows that might charge us too! Yay for that! They did a quick talk about how to move cows. I LOVED that they followed Temple Grandin's techniques. Super cool. They said basically to stay behind their shoulders unless we wanted to stop the cows and not to cannonball into their grouping. We weren't "chasing" them, we were sending them. Meanwhile, Dan is pacing and walking around the arena, parading in front of all the other good horses who are just lined up on the rail watching and listening. Doh! So they said that we would do 3-5 riders at a time and practice moving the calfs along the arena wall.

Since Dan and I were parading around, we opted to go first. Luckily Missy came and joined me and so did two other guys. I thought we did a pretty good job! Dan and Indi didn't seem to mind the cows and did their jobs. We weren't fast and competitive but we got them moving. The other two guys were a little bit intense and gung ho and did some hooting and hollering and running. That got Dan upset so he did a spin and bolt a hair two or three times. When we finished one of the guys came up to tell me how to ride. Sigh... why do people feel the need to tell me how to ride in situations like this?? Ugh. He was telling me to kick Dan at the girth and not at the flank. Oh... maybe he's right. But still... thanks for the embarassing 5 minute lecture on how to apply my leg. 

After that we headed out so that Dan could stop stressing and we could offer them water. Plus... Missy and I were smart and wore our helmets to start but since they were both good, we decided to switch to our cowboy hats instead of our helmets. I Know.. I know... but calcuated risks.