Cutting Clinic with Guy Heintz and Loren Christianson

This past weekend I spent in Airdrie at a cutting clinic. I was pretty worried going in that we were not good enough to be taking the clinic.  Well it turned out we were not mounted on the same quality of horses as they all were, but I think it was an amazing clinic and I got all kinds of advice that I can use.

Both days we spent working cows from the herd and getting tips on how we can improve our cut.  I need to ride with less hands and more leg.  He says he would not like to come back as my horse cause I just pester her all the time instead of asking and really meaning it then backing off.  I hate when people do that and I didn't think I did, untill he told me at the time I was and wow I quit and amazing how much better Razz was.

I also was told I needed a new saddle, which I knew because I am using a wade ranch saddle which is amazingly comfortable, but not appropriate for cutting.  He figured it would solve most of my stopping problems cause it puts me in a better position to stop.

I need to also work on more rollbacks, without so much hands,  I tend to force her around and it makes it look horrible.  I tried and makes a big difference.  He told me to think of it as a sidepass around her tail.  Kind of a interesting way to but it, but made it easier to work on.

I also need to do more counterbending.  I know she is not very good at them, but that is very important in cutting.  We use it after turning with the cow, to press away from the cow we are cutting back to the herd but still facing the cow we are cutting.

I also do need to work on mirroring the cow more,  I tend to make a full turn, even when the cow only turns to face me.  I guess I was thinking of working the flag we always need to be straight with the flag,  but the flag can't turn only half way around.

There was a lot of stuff to work on, but by the end Razz was turning with the cow and starting to stop with them as well.  It was pretty cool.  We need to work more on cattle and we are thinking of taking a few lessons from Doug Reinhardt who is in Irricanna or from Guy Heintz who is in High River. Both take haul in lessons and I think we would improve greatly with more lessons on cattle.