Today (Friday) I’m on my way to St. Louis for a reining this weekend. My goal is to earn the $600 that I need to pass the $1M mark. Plus, it’s a good place to show a couple of open horses, and there’s a small futurity. I can school before next weekend’s show at Ardmore.That will be a very competitive event, as always. It’s one of those shows where you can mark a 222 and not even make it to the finals. But it’s important to see how you play against everyone else. Every year, it seems like about 80% of the SWRHA finalists will be finalists in OKC.

Batman (Done Being Smart) is doing something a little different this week. He’s the won I won the Blainville futurity on and who was trying to be so good when he hit ground that wouldn’t support him at Congress (certainly not his fault!).  He was incredible schooling at Ardmore, and initially, I thought I would take him to Ardmore, but I’m probably going to hold off—I think he’s a really big gun for the Futurity.

So… he’s spending 10 days working cattle, for 2 reasons: 1) often, horses start to think that reining is hard…. But after some time working cattle, they decide things could be worse and reining is, by comparison, pretty simple. 2) working cattle is like a mind game and it keeps them really busy. Working with a horse can be like dealing with a creative kid: if you sit the kid in the corner and give him nothing to do, he’ll go nuts. But if you give him lots of projects and things to do, he’ll be happy. 

So Batman will be spending some time tracking cattle and doing all the reining moves we do—but he’ll do it in response to what amounts to a game being played with the cattle. He’ll have to stop and make turns, gallop and run, go slow and go fast—and it’ll really be good for his mind!