For those that dont know what steer daubing is it starts out like roping in the box, but instead of a rope you have a 4' long stick with a tennis ball on the end and when they compete they dip it in mustard so you can see where you touch the calf with the ball. That is the objective, to touch the calf or mark the calf as fast as you can, just like roping.
Here I got them just as the chute opened, the black blur is the calf.
Here is the view down the wall, hopefully you keep the calf between you and the wall.
I keep playing with the settings on my camera, we go from redish to clear natural? I am still figuring it out. Another run here, Meghan scored quite a few calves, she had a good night, they were not timing them last night. I believe in WASET you have like 15 seconds to score the calf, if you cant touch the calf, then it is a no time.
ya these pics are blurry but if you look close you can see the stick and her scoring the calf,
This run too, you can see the stick and her touching the calf on the hip, it looks like a lot of fun!
The girls waiting for their turn. Meghan has her WAHSET jacket on with the school logo.
and horse prints in the dirt, I just noticed the pattern and had to take a pic.
Meghan will be finishing out the year on our horse Easy, we had a disagreement with the people that were letting her borrow their horse. They did not want her to do cows, particularly steer daubing with him because of the box, for some reason they think he will flip over backwards in the box ???? she has been riding him for 4 months and he has not shown anything that would lead to that, but he wanted to ride him first before he would let Meg do this event, she worked cows on him doing sorting the other night and he didnt get excited at all, he is a lot calmer than our old mare is. He also said that the horse would have to score at least 150 head of cows before he could run??? I dont know what they are thinking, But it is their horse and they said no, so we decided to use our own. So the old mare is out of retirement again! Meghan has been talking about the cow events and I dont know if they didnt hear her or what, thats the events that she wants to do, and they shut it down, the weekend before the first meet. Easy and Meghan did so good last year, and went to the State meet in steer daubing, her fastest times were, 1.5, and 1.8!!, and Easy had never ever, done it before!! We find out she is a cow horse when she is 23 years old! They did respectable in sorting last year too.
Easy is 24 this year and we will have to give her lots of TLC, I hate pulling her out of the pasture and making her compete this weekend, but we have no choice if Meg wants to ride, it may make it a little awkward at drill practice, since it was the drill masters horse she was riding. It is a relief to me though, not to worry about someone Else's horse.
I went and got Easy some Trifecta vitamins with gluc, chond, msm, and hyluronic acid, so she can have some supplements that will help her move better I hope, and I will start feeding her grain three times a day, she eats hay so slow now, she is not losing teeth but has only an 8th of an inch of tooth on the bottom jaw. Easy also cute herself above her eye on Sunday, a board that her and Mickey broke between the stalls, she poked herself on it, and now the edema is running down and making her eyelid swollen, I have been doing hot compresses twice a day and putting furacine on the cut, hopefully most of the swelling is gone before Thursday, as we head out to the first meet on Thursday, it is about two and a half hours away. The hot compresses help a lot, if it was any place else on her I would use liniment, preferably absorbine, but we cant because it would drip down in her eye.
Well that all for now, Meg and Easy have drill practice tonight.
That's a tough deal, but maybe riding Easy again is just fate. 24 yrs old is not that old. Many horses are ridden right into their 30's if they strong and healthy. And it sounds like you've got some great plans in getting her built up, in shape and protected physically before and after the competitions. I bet Easy will enjoy her time out of retirement and being given something useful to do again.
ReplyDeleteThat steer daubing looks fun!
~Lisa
Sounds like a much more humane sport than calf roping. That's nice -- I didn't know that existed.
ReplyDeleteI had never heard of steer daubing....thanks for sharing~
ReplyDeleteTake care~
Christy Lee
*~Petals and Pine~*
Yes Katharine it probably is more humane than calf roping, although a couple of the guys were doing breakaway calf roping while they were daubing and that seems pretty humane too, instead of being solid the honda is plastic and has a split in it so that it comes off after the calf is roped.
ReplyDeleteLisa yes it was unfortunate, but I think she can still have a great year with the old mare, like I said she just needs some extra TLC.