I have now just arrived back into the U.K. stopping over in Dubai to catch up with good friends over there. Since my last blog all the young horses that were in for the May / June young horse intake have gone home. All reports are that they are going well for owners. The week before flying out for the U.K. I had the first horsemanship / cow working course at home in Qld. 
This went really well and as I said to everyone on the course, what will help to make this course unique is the facilities. With different sized round pens, a mechanical cow and access to cattle.
This course was only 2 days and next year I am planning to run a 4 day course. The dates for this will be up on the website schedule in the next week.
The image below and to the right is of a young horse that I own and who has now had a couple of starts on cattle. As I mentioned to the riders on the course he is a horse that does buck and does a few other things, but that side is getting less. I don’t get to ride my own horses as much as I would like due to travel and schedule commitments, that aside for me as the horse grows in confidence and the foundation gets solid and dependable the rest starts to fall into place. With this course being a horsemanship / cow working course you have the principle and purpose combination.
For horses and riders I think that there is a real need to see a reason for doing things. With the cow working side you are going to have transitions and need to have your horse lengthen and shorten and learn to rate. So the horsemanship side was also about making smooth transitions up and down, straightness, having your horse be forward and off your leg. As riders improved in their horsemanship they got better with the cow working. The cow working will always show up areas for improvement. The mechanical cow was used in preparation for the cow working. The good thing with the mechanical cow is that it stops when asked and goes at the speed that you tell it. Over the 2 days you could really see an improvement in all riders and their horses.
