CATTLE DRIVE

Here is John on his 'used to be his' horse, Copper. John is good on horses, he takes advice, listens to it and has a natural way. He only got scared once, when Copper...who is really rather fast, kicked it into high after he asked her to lope for a bit. She can go from 0 to more than 60 in like a second...he didn't fall off though, just lost his hat. He looked a little concerned as he flew past me and Caballero, but he managed to whoa her and stayed quieter for the rest of the ride (including on the way home!) It was kinda funny. At one point I thought, uh oh...he's a goner, but he proved me wrong and stayed on top where he belonged. Nice John!

John, myself and Jon James got to go on a mini cattle round up this past Monday. We were helping bring in cow/calf pairrs from their summer grazing fields. There is a community of farmers that each bring 20 cow/calf pairs and in the fall they round them up and take them home for the winter. Bob, Amanda's signifcant other, invited us to go along. We had Cab (my horse), Copper (Johns previous horse) and one of the farmers lent Jon James an older mare to use. It was beautiful weather, the horses were pretty much well behaved and we did finally see cows in the last quarter of the ride (they were being pushed from the farside of the area by other riders, we just made a 'wall' so they couldn't turn the wrong way...they seemed to know what was expected and gave us no trouble.)

That is Jon James way over on the hill. He did his job, separated from us and kept his horse moving in the line. Well done!

My Caballero. Such a cutie, such a scaredy cat, but heck...there was A BUNCH of new stuff for him to experience.

John Paterson is in this picture, for the first hour and a half this is what we saw. Each other. Separated by scenic hills and valleys. But that is what we were supposed to do, slowly move forward, apparently in a line that spanned the whole field, we heard cows but didn't see any. I saw a herd of deer though. That was exciting :)