Ranch Sorting....

After a really bad run last weekend that I was too ticked off about to even write it on here, I have a new partner and we did wonderful today! We compete in two person ranch sorting (for those who don't know, you have a small arena divided in half by panels with a space left open in the middle. There are ten cows numbered 0-9 that you must push through the opening to the other side in numerical order from what number is called and you have 2 minutes to do it.) My new partner is Karen and she is a pretty green rider but a very nice lady that I've known for awhile, it's her boyfriend that runs the whole operation. Today out of over ten teams we placed second with all of our times combined and out of all the times seperately, we had the fastest time of the day, which was a personal best for me. The cows were really hard today, must have been the good weather, who knows. On our first run, we took it really slow because everyone else had no times and we were just going for clean, so in two minutes we sorted eight, which set us up pretty good and gave our horses a chance to warm up some. Our second run we sorted all ten in 1.3859 minutes. Now get this, for our best time of the day on our very last run, we sorted all ten in a whopping 1.0372. We were one of the two teams that scored all three runs. All in all, my horse worked really well and it was a great day )

Rick, his brother, and Trent started doing that this past Fall. I usually pick up Subway on the way over there, grab a bunch of lawn chairs, and I enjoy watching the guys. They have the biggest time. Rick's Dad is now wanting to do it when it starts back up again, on a filly out of my paint stud... well, she's not young anymore, but ought to prove interesting! Which will make 3 horses out of my studs that will be competing - pretty cool, huh!

The one I'm wanting to watch is Scamp. Won't be till late this year maybe... but it'll be interesting! I betcha he bites a cow... HA!

I love ranch sorting. Wish we had more of it over my way. There is a team penning club not too far away, but not quite the same.
When we started Pep on cows he would go at them with his ears pinned and teeth bared. He got over trying to bite them, but it took a while. Brennen & I have been looking for a sorting close enough to go to. I think he'd have a blast. There is an outdoor arena in town here going up. I'm on the committee and we hope to have it ready to go in the spring. Wade hauled the sand in the fall and we've bought posts and gates and ordered the panels. We still need to raise some more money, but think we'll have it useable by May.
Anybody got the rules for sorting? Maybe our arena committee could hold one and see what the interest in it will be.

USTPA also is the governing body for this sport too )

http://www.ustpa.com/index.aspx

Good luck on everything with the arena, I bet that will be a really great thing for the community.