The Whoa Podcast

After the Matt Sheridan Trail Riding workshop (see video), my wife and I decided to try a Trail Class. We found an Open Show and entered the Novice class. While we were both a little nervous, we thought the competition would not only help our horses, but our horsemanship as well. Here is the video of our run. We took a first and a third. My commentary will probably demonstrate just how little we know about showing in a trail class. It was a good time and our horses did a pretty good job for being in the show arena for the very first time.

Our journey through Clinton Anderson’s Downunder Horsemanship DVD series continues with exercises 10 through 17 of Riding with Confidence Series I. The exercises keep getting more challenging. As Clinton explains in the DVD’s, if an exercise is not going like you think, it is probably because you skipped some parts early on. You will be able to see some of our pitfalls. We continue to work on these exercises from time to time or when Jessie is not really paying attention to me. Remember, this was broken down into two youtube videos so be sure to check out Part One.

We get to ride quite often on weekends. We spend our time out with the horses talking about horsemanship, practicing the different riding exercises and just letting our horses relax and enjoy the outdoors. Here are some of the exercises and training we might do on a typical weekend ride.

On Sunday of Memorial day weekend we took the horses out to Horsemans’ Park located at Hart Park in Bakersfield. We ride Dusty and Jessie along the Kern River to Lake Ming. Along the way we saw swimmers, and campers and even some kayakers in the river.

Remember the basketball game of H-O-R-S-E? You know the one. You would call your shot, “Dribble around the trashcan, bounce the ball off the garage door, spin around twice and make the basket shooting backwards”. If you made it, and your friend didn’t, he got a letter. Well, this is our horse version of H-O-R-S-E. We took turns trying to challenge one another with different riding and horsemanship skills. Watch to see who won!