Rodeo Time!

Every year, in our small town, we welcome the cowboys and cowgirls from WildTime Productions to produce our annual professionnal rodeo and demonstrate their incredible riding skills.

First, the events started with our National Anthem and the Cowboy Prayer. Then we had the bareback riding, followed by the calf roping, rescue rider, barrel racing, Junior bull riding, saddle broncs, exchange rider, steer wrestling, poney express and finally the Bull riding!

Here are a few pictures of each event:

Bareback riding, riders must maintain position on the horse for 8 seconds, only one hand strapped to the horse. The free hand must not touch the horse.

Calf Roping: The rider must chase and rope one calf without breaking the barrier (giving a head start to the calf) in the shortest possible time. The calf must remain roped for 10 seconds.

Rescue Rider: This event consists of one rider on a horse and one on the ground. The horse and rider make their way at a full galop around the arena and must pick up the rider on the ground. This is one spectacular thing to see and is very hard for even the better riders to complete.

Then, it's my favorite event... Barrel Racing! This sport is exclusive to women in the professional rodeo circuit. The horse and rider must complete a clover-like pattern around 3 specially placed barrels, they must do it as fast as they can, without knocking a barrel down. I appreciate how the horses are able to go around the barrels at such speed, proves that they are very agile!

Then we had Junior Bull riding, where boys under 18 ride small breed bulls for 8 seconds... I was not interested in this, they shouldn't have put this in the professionnal rodeo...
Saddle Broncs: A lot like bareback riding, except that the rider is sitting on a saddle and holding onto a rope that is connected to the horse's halter. Rider has one free hand and cannot use it, must keep it above his head.

Exchange Rider: One rider on one horse, one on the ground. The horse and rider race around the arena. At one specefic point, the rider on the horse must get off of the horse and the one on the ground get on it and completes the circle in the fastest time. Look at the picture below, you can see the first rider at the right of the picture (getting up) and the second rider getting on the horse succesfully. This happens VERY quickly!
Steer Wrestling: Rider must capture and wrestled to the ground a steer, with the help of a hazer, who's job is to keep the steer close to the rider's horse. There is about as much failed attempts as successfull ones.


Poney Express: Very impressive display of ability. Two riders, each on a horse must race around the arena. The first racer has to leave their horse and get on the second horse as the rider on that last horse dismounts. The first rider on the new horse must complete the circle around the ring.

AND Last but not least... Bull Riding: The rider must remain on a bucking bull for 8 seconds, one hand is tied to the bull and one free hand must not touch the bull. Points are granted for style of the rider and intensity of the bull.

I hope you've enjoyed my pictures... if my camera had been better quality I could've taken much better pictures.

This rodeo is not like the bad rodeos you see out there. No animals are harmed, they are well treated and are all fat and seem content. The bucking stock know their jobs and love it. I have been behind the scenes, where they keep all of them and all have good clean water and the staff ensures that the water is of quality and good feed. The staff is pretty oriented on taking the best care possible of their stock. Everyone works hard to bring a good show and ensure security.

I enjoy this event every year, coming from a small town, there is not much to bring tourists and new faces to us... this event is one of them and I hope it remains that way for a long time. Our small town economy has gone down the drain with the recession and this helps bring new dollars into our village.

My vacation - part 1

For lack of a better picture, here's the opening act of the rodeo. My parade pictures aren't yet downloaded... Did I mention that I LOVE the buckskin at the back!?!??!?

I'm back from my vacation!

I can't say that it was the best vacation ever. I left on Friday, June 25, 2010 at noon to go prep the horses for the parade. It was our annual rodeo on that weekend and the opening ceremony was a horse and buggy parade, so I was up for it and was bringing Dandy, Peg and Pearl.

I got home and started right away on washing the horses, with the help of my sister. We decided that we would wash Pearl the first, then Peg and Dandy. So Pearl gets her shower and is all sparkling clean and stunning. We tie her up to the fence to dry and proceed to showering Peg.

To this point, all goes well and we start washing Dandy after we've tied Peg beside Pearl. We are in the middle of shampooing Dandy, when I quickly glance at the two horses tied to the fence and notice that Pearl has got a leg over her lead, as quick as I could tell my sister, Pearl panicked... and this is where it gets ugly...

Pearl is pulling back on the lead, with her leg caught up, she falls to the ground, gets up, falls down again, at this point, we are half way to her to help, but she is not tuned in, she rears up and nearly runs us over. While she reared up, she pulled back on the lead and on her way down from her rear, two things happened: The lead rope with tension on it caused her to over extend her knee and on her way down, she smashed her nose on the fence post. At that time, I was running to the barn to get a knife. When I came back, Pearl was on the ground, her legs tangled, her nose in the dirt and breathing hard. There was way too much tension on the lead to release the quick knot (these knots are useless!!!). I cut the rope quickly and left Pearl loose in the yard. She was terrified, so there was no use running after her, there isn't anything in the yard that she could've got hurt on and I knew that she would search the comfort of the other horses, so she went near the pasture, where Misty was standing.

At that point, I was making my way towards her, I saw that she was limping and that there was blood, but I didn't know where it came from. I was shaking like a leaf... Pearl was shaking hard too. It broke my heart when I caught her. She wouldn't put weight on her leg and I noticed that the blood came from her mouth. My sister came to join us but I was crying so hard, I was really scared, I couldn't even lead Pearl anywhere so I let my sister take her. My heart was broken. I watched Pearl walk away, she was limping. I ran in the barn to get a rag soaked in cold water to stop her bleeding. It worked almost immediately.

I also put some cool clay on her leg and felt for any dislocation but all seemed in good order. Obviously, we left her home for the parade and my sister took my SO's horse, Peg, for the parade, he was kind enough to let her go with Peg after our terrifying ordeal. My heart wasn't really into it anymore anyways, but I still went because I had an engagement towards the organizers.

Dandy and Peg did great, we were there way too early and we drew a big crowd, but the horses handled it like real pros! I know Peg is used to this kind of environment (speakers, loud music, crowds of people, like kids running everywhere, all kinds of different horses, etc.), but it was a first for Dandy and I couldn't be prouder of her. She was jigging a bit at first because of all the new "friends" she wanted to meet, but quickly settled and was a real doll. After waiting for about an hour, a few horse buddies that were also participating in the parade made their way to us. We left about 10 minutes late. There was quite the crowd and we went right through town and Dandy did great, never flinched! We won $25 each because we had the cleanest horses there! So it was worth it, but I would've liked it better if Pearl hadn't been hurt, I don't care for money at that point.

I don't have the pictures of the horses with me right now, it's on my mom's camera and I need to put them on my memory stick to post here... so probably next week, we'll have them since I should see her this weekend.

All went well. I returned to Pearl and she looked better. Over the week, she kept getting better and better, the limp is completely gone, there was hardly any swelling and she is back to running around, chasing her buddies. She will get another week off, then I'll reassess her and see. We might try her out under saddle for a short (very short) ride to see how she does. As of the last time I checked, there was no heat, no limp and no swelling.

This was a huge lesson for me. I tied Pearl long enough that she could eat some grass. I always preach to tie short and I didn't practice any of it. Thankfully, she wasn't badly injured and it scared the heck out of me. None of my horses will ever be tied long enough to reach anything again. She wasn't tied there overnight or anything, just for a few hours. I will never do that again. I had questionned myself about the lenght of rope a few times, I should've shortened it right away, it would've saved me a lot of heartacke and panic... and for Pearl, pain, panic and confusion. If you have any doubts on something you've done with your horses, don't wait, fix it NOW before something like this happens. If you preach about something, you'd better do it yourself... skipping on it only once is not okay. Feel free to throw rotten tomatoes at me, I feel rotten enough as it is. I wanted to spoil them a bit and let them eat the long grass along the fence (that is not part of their pasture) but it turned into a real disaster.

Below: Pearl on Saturday morning, no more limp, no more heat, no more swelling. The leg that was injured is the left front from the knee to the fetlock. Pearl got a lot of cookies and attentive care for the whole week. I checked on her every day, applied cool clay when I felt heat and she was a very good patient. She's always had great legs and I want to keep it that way!

Please be careful and prevent instead of trying to heal!

Much much more pictures to come... I will cover the rodeo in the next posts.