Ropin’ in Reno

Hi folks… welcome to my blog, and I have some interesting news for you!

I just returned from the American Cowboy’s Team Roping Association’s (ACTRA) National Finals in Reno, Nevada, in which I competed and I placed 2nd in one of the rounds, which was my claim to fame. I saw a lot of very interesting people there, there is a spot for everybody to rope. They have a number system that allows everyone to compete on level footing and that’s a plus! ACTRA pulls a lot of people that are not originally horse people, and certainly not big-time ropers, but they practice hard, and they seem to buy some sort of a resemblance to a rope horse, actually a few of them are nice horses.
There are as many as 1250 – 1300 teams that actually rope in one day in one particular roping class. That’s a lot of players, so this is a real important part of our western industry. I totally enjoyed myself, I had a lot of fun, I met a lot really, really interesting people from all types of businesses and walks of life. I saw people that I haven’t seen for many, many years, I wondered where they had been, and they showed up with a rope in their hand, and some of them roped darn good too. I think everybody there had a great time, it was really well-organized, and I never waited in line. When you run that many horses and people through an event and you don’t have any wrecks, I have to compliment Mike Sweeney and the guys, like Clyde Sanders and Jim Waggoner and all the guys from the ACTRA club that put this together.

The thing I noticed a lot of was unbroke horses; some of them go out there in a pattern, that is they’re patterned to go in a position so the rider can rope. But if a steer happens to move irregularly, they’re dead meat because they don’t have broke horses and certainly a good part of them don’t have any mouth on them. I felt like I wanted to help everybody all the time – of course I didn’t and couldn’t. Our Five Easy Pieces program that I teach in Cowhorse U and I also in the single DVD we sell, proved itself to be totally invaluable at this roping finals.

As I unloaded, I know that horses sometimes get a little hopped up on you in altitude, and coming from sea level to 5,000 feet, the horse that I took was amped up more than I’ve ever seen her before! I just started galloping and this mare didn’t even want to gallop right, and I’m thinking I’m probably going to have a little trouble here, don’t know what to do about it, but I need to resolve it somehow. So I thought well gosh Les, you teach people what to do when these sort of things happen, why don’t you do it yourself! So that’s what I did! I stopped and went off by myself where nobody was around and started working this mare on the Five Easy Pieces. I started working her in circles, doing flexions, bending her and walking her to the left until she softened and her neck got soft, bend her around, and then the to the right. I did everything both ways, then I worked her shoulders and then I worked the rib cage, the whole horse, made the hip come up to the eye. As I went along, folks, I found a lot of broken pieces. I found a lot of connections that didn’t exist that this mare needed to have fixed in order to perform. Well I got to thinking; I don’t usually maintain her like I should. I kind of been taking her for granted. There’s certain things that she did when I was roping on her at home everyday that I was trying to fix as they were happening, that is, within the maneuver. Duh… I teach, you don’t fix things in the maneuver, you fix the problem. You go back to the fundamentals and you fix the reason that you have a problem. So the light bulb came on, or as they say in Australia, the penny dropped!
Well, as I went through this mare’s body looking for irregularities or non-connections as far as her body control went I found a lot of leaks and problems! As I searched from the front of the horse to the back, I addressed each one and I worked my way through it, one side of the horse then the other. I worked on it for 45 minutes or an hour, and then I went off and galloped her. Boy, she galloped better than she had in a long, long time. Just the way she moved, she was soft, stayed in the bridle, neck down, Relaxed! So I did the whole process again, still not perfect, but much better, she was operable, I could put her body where I wanted to, when I wanted to, but with a little more effort than I really wanted to use doing it.

Then it comes time to go roping. Well, I backed that mare in a box, and usually in the box she doesn’t do anything bad, but she kind of turns to stone, she’s tense in the box. That mare was mellow as she could be. She was perfect, lots of time she turns her head away from the chute, I don’t like that much, but it’s hard to get her to look back toward the chute. But oh my gosh! That day she was just perfect, she couldn’t have been any better. A rodeo roper would have loved her. She ran the cattle, she was just perfect on the corners and I had people come up to me and say boy that mare sure stops hard, nobody has ever said that before, but of course Les Vogt wasn’t doing what he teaches, I wasn’t practicing what I preach! However, I was so thrilled that the program that we use on our performance horses, mostly on reined cow horses and reiners and all different kinds of horses, was just as valuable for a roper! I just hadn’t really experienced the value of it in a high level competition mode, but I have now. So, for what it’s worth, and it’s worth a lot. Hey folks, this stuff works really good! I’m impressed with my own program, and that’s fun! It sure keeps things from being boring around here! We had nothing but fun at the ACTRA Finals, it was a great contest!

I’m getting ready for my one and only clinic this fall, in Ada, Oklahoma, November 20-22, so I’m kind of on vacation, I’m playing! So this week in Paso Robles, California, there is a cutting horse contest, there I will go to and I will study cattle. I am going to visit some of my friends who are expert cutters, and as they bring in fresh cattle, while they are settling the herd, I’m going to get with these people and learn what I can to pick the good cattle and ear mark the bad cattle in your mind, to make a list of them and then try to remember the list so I can watch those cattle get cut by the cutters, see if I’m right or wrong. In today’s herd work or cutting horse world that determines the outcome in many cases as to what your destiny is going to be as a cutter. So I guess I better learn it. So I’ll spend some time in Paso Robles at the cutting. And this weekend we are having a roping horse sale too so if anybody sees me raise my hand there, please hold it down, because I don’t need to buy any more horses.
After that we go into the month of November, which is the following week, we have the PBR – Professional Bull Riders Finals, that’s in Las Vegas, not sure if I get to go, but sure going to try and do everything of course.

Then there is another cutting in Bakersfield, California, it’s a just a regional club cutting, but I think I will take Turbo to it and see if what I learned at Paso Robles is going to work. They have a ranch horse cutting, I need to season my horse a little more, and get sharper as far as the herd work goes. That’s going to be another good practice session, and that will be on November 7. Then on November 14-15 we have our Vaquero Show, where everybody brings old time bits and chaps, spurs, riatas and all the old guys sit around a little fire and talk about how good it used to be in the old days. It’s nice because you get to see a lot of people, it’s very traditional, it’s in Santa Ynez and it’s very, very interesting.
Then of course November 20-22, I go to Ada, Oklahoma, and then comes the highlight. For Thanksgiving I think I will visit some friends in Fallon, Nevada, then the day after I’m going to see Cheech & Chong in Reno, Nevada! Oh boy! Never have!

Anyway, life is good!

Thanks for reading…..

Had a great time in Sweden!

Hi folks, just a little report about my trip last week to Sweden. I was in Sweden long enough to give six days worth of clinics.

The first clinic was not supposed to be quite as advanced as the second, however, both of them came very close to being advanced. I think the groups overall, had more knowledge and skills than most any of the clinics I give here in the United States. I attribute some of that to the fact that I’ve been there for a number of years in the past, so I’ve worked with them before; however, the real reason is that every person that came to my clinics in Sweden (and by the way both clinics filled a month ahead of time) owned a copy of Cowhorse U and had studied it diligently. Everybody there could do 5 Easy Pieces, understood collected sequence stops and definitely understood the turns and lead changes. They understood everything so it made it really easy for me to pick them all up and advance them in the directions that they wanted to go.

We had nice horses, the students were very, very attentive, and they had their bright lights on. They were there to see and hear what they could and get the most out of it, which they did do a very good job. Both clinics were cowhorse clinics, and would you believe we had decent cattle this time! The cattle are soft compared to our standards, however they were fresh. They all looked liked show steers to me, they were fat and kind of gentle, but they worked ok for us and we were happy with that.

The quality of the riders and horses like I said were excellent overall and definitely above many clinics I give here in the United States. It’s is not uncommon when we go out of the country that we sometimes see better students.

The second clinic I gave was advanced cowhorse clinic and we had some advanced riders we had some really good horses in the bridle that could show here tomorrow and do well. The star of the show to me was my friend Hakan Bergh. Hakan had a really, really nice horse and it’s not always the easiest thing for him to do – but he’s the most intense student and he works really, really hard at it – and his little horse got better and better. So Hakan (who by the way put the clinic on along with my other friend Per Larsson) had a great clinic – both of them did some really, really good things. Everybody in the clinic did good, but I was especially proud of Hakan because he had such a difficult time at the beginning and came out so good at the end.

Very interesting when I go to other countries, it’s always an adventure. My friend Glen (who is the local museum curator and historian for the little town in Sweden that we go to for the clinics) gave me information that just last September there was a gravesite that was uncovered, that contained horses and riders alike. Like a ditch or moat that was filled with mud, and it preserved horses and riders intact! They all got killed in a battle somewhere, like 500 of them, they got dumped in this ditch, and they just recently uncovered them. They don’t know too much about it except that it exists. Even the hardware is still intact. Silver and gold adorned horse and rider armor, and some of the leather, from the year 400 or 500 A.D., like 2000 years old! I get really excited about that stuff, so next year when I go back Glen will take me to go see that.

I learned they have native Swedes as we have Native Americans, which we call Indians, they have a type of Indian in Sweden. I never heard of before. There are not a lot left, but the ones that exist raise reindeer. They herd the reindeer around and put them in a giant round coral to do things like ear mark, vaccinate, and brand these reindeer – well here is the interesting part. They don’t know very much about their Indians, at least they don’t talk like they do, but these Indians rope these reindeer. They head and heal them; they team rope these reindeer with really nice riatas like as in Spanish riatas. This is interesting, they are very skilled with these riatas, they can rope big horns as in reindeer horns and catch them both with one loop, and that’s hard to do, and then heal the reindeer, they understand healing. I always pictured Leif Erickson and the early discovers of Sweden, and I wonder if the Spanish didn’t get there first, you never know. I don’t know where these guys would learn to braid riatas like a Spanish riata and use them. Anyway that’s all interesting stuff.

Other than that, it was cold there, but not unbearable, I got upgraded to first class coming home, loved it, and laid down in my chair just like a bed. Other than that, my thanks to Per and Hakan for putting on a wonderful clinic and taking good care of me which they surely did. I enjoyed it very much, the people at the hotel I stayed knew I liked strawberry smoothies and gave me a one every day for breakfast and dinner, couldn’t do any better than that.
Thanks for reading….

No Finals Doesn’t Mean No Pictures!

We still had some worthy moments!

My take on the 09 Snaffle Bit

Well I made it home from Reno, from the Snaffle Bit Futurity, and the experience I have to say was very interesting at least. The conditions as always were good, the weather was good. Since I hadn’t shown there in four years, I forgot what a grueling experience it is and it’s very very difficult for anybody that takes one horse and has to stay 16 nights in Reno if you make the finals. Whether you make the finals or not, it’s a long long and very very expensive time. I calculate if you bought a futurity horse as a two-year-old for $20,000 its going to cost you at least another $10-12,000 to get him to the Snaffle Bit Futurity; so you would have $30,000 plus in him and by the time you pay for him to go to the Paso Robles Pre-Futurity and then Reno; if you pay entry fees, motels, mileage, and all of the other expenses you’d have right at $40,000 in each one of these colts. Now who says there is an economic recession in the horse business, I think it looks like it’s pretty darn healthy there. The sale looked like there was a lot of good horses that sold for what they were worth and I don’t know how the averages went, but there were a lot of horses that sold fairly expensive.

But speaking of the $40,000 investment, some of the things that were a little bit disappointing to me was one of them was the cattle. The cattle were steers and they were real soggy and slow to cut, however once you got one cut, which was a little bit difficult for a lot of us, some of them ran, some of them ran through you – they did not have a lot of feel, they weren’t fluffy and bright. At Paso Robles at the Pre-Futurity we had heifers, they were cross bred or Mexican heifers, and they were wonderful. Everybody got to show their horse, and I don’t think anybody lost a cow at Paso Robles. However at Reno, many horses lost cattle. The cattle I cut – I cut the shape (in other words, I cut what stepped out in front of me) so that I had the advantage or opportunity to cut and cut safely. The cattle I cut ran pretty hard and were very challenging, but definitely not cattle that I could mark up on. So I wasn’t really, really happy with that situation, you’ve got to have music to dance and there wasn’t much music out there. In other words, the cattle that I cut were not much good, but there wasn’t hardly any good cattle left in my bunch being late in the herd as I was.

Then the other thing was, these same cattle down the fence were – please don’t mistake that I’m crying sour grapes, I’m not – but I do have a complaint and that if you are going to drop a years work into a horse or $40,000 whichever you want, either way it’s still worth $40,000 – if you going to do that, doesn’t it sound like maybe you should have the opportunity to exhibit this horse’s skills on a fair basis? And having really, really sorry cattle for the herd and if these same cattle are even worse down the fence, that doesn’t give you the normal or level playing field that you could or should have for this investment. It just doesn’t seem quite fair. Some of those cattle were pretty decent down the fence; however a whole bunch of the super star trainers got eliminated. I only had one horse, I had all my eggs in one basket which was a foolish thing to do, and I will never do again, because of these factors, where you draw bad cattle, you’re done, load up and go home!

And I was not alone; most of the trainers that I know that have been around for a while, and are big names that are always at the finals with two or three horses, and I could name five or six quickly – (Jake Gorrell, John Roeser, Doug Williamson, Bob Avila, Russell Dilday) on down the line, there were a bunch of us that just didn’t make it for the sake of sorry cattle. Those guys all had between 4-6 horses to show, I think Doug Williamson had 7-8, but there’s just one reason they didn’t make it, and it wasn’t because they’re poor hands, it was because the cattle were really sorry, and they drew bad cattle.

If it is a drawing contest – if you draw the right position and the right cow, then you have more opportunity to win – then don’t you think it would be just as well for you to take your $40,000 and put it on one of the tables in the casino in Reno, and you wouldn’t have to go through the stress, you wouldn’t have to stay there for 16 days, and you would either win or lose, and your odds would be about the same! Well anyway, I don’t mean to be crying sour grapes, that’s not what I do, however, fair is fair and good conditions are good conditions, and this really wasn’t a good situation.

The finals were very good, there were some stoppin’ horse there that’s for sure! Everybody rode really, really good. I saw a couple of guys that were going to win big slip in the dirt, I don’t know if that’s anybody’s fault or not, but the dirt gave away, once for John McCarty in the Non-Pro, and once for Todd Bergen in the Open finals. Both guys were on their second circle and within less than a second of finishing up a winning run, and their horse fell, in that case they get a “zero”. That would be a real heartbreaker, having gone through the luck of the draw and been very lucky and rode really good all the way through and then get to the end and have a disaster like that happen.

There are lots of new trainers, young trainers, they looked really good. This crop I always talk about it like a water wheel turns when it turns it picks up water and takes it to the top and then starts down the other side and starts dumping water, it’s starting to pick up some new guys and it’s kind of dumping some old guys, it doesn’t mean they’re done or through forever, it just means that they are not just as hot as they once were, at least at this show. You’re only as good as the livestock that you got; this is something that a lot of people don’t really think about. When they see the show and see the contest going on, they attribute a lot to the trainer, of course the trainer has to be at the top of his game and riding good, and understand how to win. There’s a whole bunch of trainers that do understand how to win and ride really good, both the young and old guys, but the big criteria there is who has the magic horse. There were some magic horses, trust me, it was a good show. I was somewhat disappointed in the lack of attendance that we had at the futurity. We’ve seen other years where there were a lot more people at the finals and I wonder if all the time devoted to the sales over the last three days is making the finals weekend less appealing to pure spectators. All in all it was a great futurity, but I think it could be better with better cattle. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Next I’m headed to Sweden for a couple of clinics with all my good friends there!

Thanks for reading …

Building the Perfect Arena

If I were to build my perfect training arena, it would be about 300 to 325 feet across and perfectly round, except there would be a 100-foot flat wall inserted into it. It would look like tire on your car when the air is let out. That flat wall would be 100 feet. The distance from the middle of the flat wall across the arena would be 300 feet.

That means if you put the crosshairs (like in a telescopic rife) the second line would be longer than 300 feet. Behind the flat wall there would be a 100-foot-wide by 200-foot-long square pen – adjacent to the arena. The whole arena, including the square pen, would have a 6-foot high solid wall.
The square pen would be used for working cattle. The cattle are going to work differently against a flat wall than they do on a curved wall. The 300-foot pen leaves so much room for a horse and cattle to “go somewhere”, as we say.
Small 100-120-foot round pens are ok, but you can’t get up and get going. The cattle tend to sour a little more quickly because you are in close proximity to them a lot. You can turn cattle easier in a small pen; however, you have to be careful not to over rotate.

Final Days before the Futurity!

I’m all excited about the Snaffle Bit Futurity, this is Thursday, tomorrow I pack and Saturday we haul to Reno. My purpose of this blog is to tell you how my thoughts have been in the past on this emotional roller coaster. I’m going to tell you the snaffle bit thing is a real roller coaster. There will be times when you feel like your horse is real, real, real good and then things fall apart, and you think, “Oh my God, do I have enough time.” Then the next thing you know you say, “I have too much time, I wish it would hurry up and get here”. I’m on the high right now – on the peak of one of these roller coaster rides because right now my horse Turbo looks really, really good.

To give you an idea of what has been going on here, as usual most everybody has – we’ve detected along the way some minor soreness in Turbo’s hock and stifle, it comes along with these baby three-year-old horses doing what they do. I’ve been very, very careful not to stress Turbo and keep the dirt just right. You want to keep the dirt fairly light, you don’t want too much water in it, because the heavier it gets the more difficult it is for these horses to use. So, anyways, we’ve been staying sound.

So now Turbo appears really sound, the veterinarians have checked him out, Dr. Van Snow has been looking at him, and Van is the guru as far as soundness goes in this area. Van said he’s the soundest one he’s seen this year, so that makes me feel pretty good. But last week I did take him to a friend’s house and worked down the fence and I was not happy. He’s been kind of at Club Med here, he’s had an easy life, so I said that we are going to have to push a little bit and see if I can get this fence work fixed up. He didn’t want to commit to the ground, he did not want to just dig in, the natural instinct of course is to just go practice some more fence turns. Well good lord, you take so much out of them doing that, you teach them to roll into those turns instead of stop and stop straight and then turn, you teach them to anticipate the turns cause sometimes cattle slip under their neck, which is a penalty. It’s the wrong thing to do and it harbors the urge any of us have, to directly confront the actual maneuver. Well I thought, “ let’s just do it like you would tell somebody else to do it”. And that would be to go back to FUNDAMENTALS, go to fundamentals and try to fix it.

So I talked to my friend Cody Morrow who helps me on a daily basis, he’s my ground man and is very, very valuable to me because he’s got really good eye. So Cody said he thought I was on the right track when I mentioned it, he said let’s bring in some big old fat mother cows in, I mean some old cows. These cows will run. But their moves when they gallop are lot more lumbering and bigger strided, so they’re not particularly quick but they will run. They have enough stamina that they will go across the pen and make a couple of laps, where some of these younger cattle just kind of go into a corner and run into the fence, where mother cows don’t seem to do that. For three days we didn’t do any short work or end work or boxing on the end, just turned a cow in with me, and went right ahead and got right to that cow’s hip with Turbo’s nose, just a little further up than the hip and probably 5 or 6 feet out from the cow. We went around and around, and across and around, if a cow went out across the middle of the pen, Turbo circled them. If a cow even blinked his eye like he was going to stop or slow down, boy we parked Turbo right then. So he got kind of checky by the third day if one was going to slow down a bit, he would slow down even more. So on that third day I said “well here we go!” I sent the cow down the fence fairly fast, I would say 2/3’s speed wide open, not completely, so it was more like 65-70% of full power, the arena had perfect dirt, all the conditions were right, and I sent him by the cow once each way, and boy ole Turbo committed, I mean he really got on his butt!

But you see the theory is he thought he was so dominant, he was so comfortable running up there. I didn’t like the feeling he gave me, when I went up to my friend’s house to work, he ran up a little strong and was more tuned into me than he was the cow, just didn’t have that real cowy dominant feeling that a fence horse needs to have. So anyways, lesson for you folks you always go back to fundamentals. If your horse isn’t stopping you don’t go to the stop to fix it, you go to the approach. If he’s not turning or changing leads, you go to the approach or the fundamentals or the ingredients that make that particular maneuver happen, as we did with the cow work.

After that I feel really safe, so yesterday I worked some fresh cattle and I went out of the herd, you know I don’t think I worked him over 4—5 minutes at the most, I don’t think it was that long, more like 3-4 minutes, I worked two cattle and he was so crisp and so willing and he had lots of draw to him, and picked himself up and came across so good, and he was so cowy, incredibly cowy, more so that I felt he ever has been, I had to quit! Of course my nature is you want to keep doing it, but I got just a little bit and I could feel the rest was there so I quit. Now today I’m going to put one of those smaller cattle in and gallop around the pen behind it, and just rate that one. I stopped him once yesterday and I did circles and transitions and lead changes, just had to do it once each way, and he got straight A’s all day. He stopped one time. My weakest stop when I showed him last was in the center of the arena, so I just stopped him once in the middle of the pen and not going real fast, he was great.

The horse is really a finalist – he’s a really, really good snaffle-bitter if he gets the breaks – so pray for me folks, if he gets the breaks then he will be. Today I’ll follow him around a little bit and I’m thinking what am I going to do tomorrow – tomorrow would be my last day for riding and you know what, he’s on vacation tomorrow! Because he hauls for 9 hours on Saturday and he won’t get his 2 days off like he normally gets. If I ride him tomorrow he’ll have only 1 day off and he’ll spend that one in the trailer, and then I expect him to be a show horse, give me a break! So the smart thing to do is keep him sound just keep it on ice, everything that is working really good, and tomorrow we’re going to do the same thing that he gets every day.

Which by the way, I’ll tell you what he gets every day, I go out at 10:00 am out to the ranch and I put the therascope on Turbo, which is a machine that keeps this horse really sound. It’s what we call a pre-event treatment, this machine oxygenates all the cells, I don’t know exactly how it works, all I know is that it costs a whole bunch of money and so he gets the royal treatment with this. I know it works because I’ve used it in my bath and it really works good on me! I feel great the next day. So it’s a preventative and if there is anything that is starting to happen as an injury goes, it helps to fix it quicker. I put the therascope on him every day, and I have this big vibrator, it’s a massager for horses, so he gets the therascope then he gets a massage, then he gets brushed, and a bath. He pretty much gets the Club Med treatment like I say! So anyways everything is looking really, really good I’ll ride him today a little, and try to make it short and I don’t know what else to do. Tomorrow he gets to relax and Saturday I’ll haul him to Reno and hopefully everything will go right!

So now you know a little bit of what we are doing, so thanks for reading folks!

Snaffle Bit Draws

Hi folks! Got my draws for the SBF! You can tune into watch live via the web, by going to NRCHA.com – my herd work will be next Monday – I’m slot 35, in the third set; my reined work will be in the second set on Thursday (draw 140), and my fence work on Friday (draw 133) in the 12th set. Turbo has been working great! Was having a few issues last week, but I really thought about it and decided to go back to fundamentals for a few days just tracking cattle – and I think it paid off in spades! Ready to load up the trailer and head to Reno on Saturday!

Les Recaps the Paso Robles Futurity

Hello again folks, I have just returned from the Paso Robles California Snaffle Bit Futurity, hosted by the National Stock Horse Association. This futurity was a wonderful futurity, very well run, very efficient, and I personally felt that this association can very easily and probably will become “the association”. One of the main reason is that they very carefully avoid any political structure or responses so it seems a little more like the “good old days” flavor of futurities and horse shows where more people had a lot of fun.
Saw a lot of new faces, a lot of young guys and girls coming on and they definitely are talented, and some are really riding good horses and doing wonderful things. I showed Turbo, the horse I worked with all year, his real name is Nic It. I’ll take you through Turbo’s experience in the futurity.
For the herd work, I took Turbo to Morgan Cromer’s and Kate Neubert’s, my cutting horse friends down the road, two days before the herd work. At Morgan and Kate’s he schools pretty good. Morgan’s very critical and says it like it is, she said “Show him he’s ready to go, he’s just right”. So I went with a lot of confidence and I thought I would work him in the practice pen which I like to do before I show. I was up in the first set in the morning and he was going to be number 7, which meant he would go at about 8:30 AM. So I was in the practice pen at 6:30 AM, it was still a little dark and that’s not my favorite thing to do at 6:30 AM! We had really fresh cattle in the practice pen and that was a good thing because Turbo schooled GREAT. When you go in the practice pen you buy five minutes of time on the cattle, and I didn’t stay in the pen over two minutes – I liked what he was doing and didn’t know what else to do. In the practice pen, I try to keep in mind, not to try to show my horse no matter who is watching. Just get lots of draw – in other words, take a few steps back – lots of bend, slow turns, and then make him jump and catch up to the cattle. Stop him straight, back him up, lots and lots of bend and go catch a cow. He was right on, very “flexey”, very soft and definitely wanted to work a cow.
As I showed him the first two cattle, they were really good cattle, I marked pretty good on the first two cattle, had a lot of plus’s going. With the third one, I had 45 seconds when I looked over my shoulder and saw the clock, and I didn’t really want that much time on my third cow. I planned on going back into the herd and picking out some that I spotted before, and this little steer just jumped out of the herd, he split off by himself out of the herd and cut himself out of there for me so I almost had to take him. So I thought this was ok, he looked good to me. But darn it if that steer didn’t work the turn back men a lot more than he worked me, and we didn’t get anything done on that one. There are no penalties in the whole run, however that last animal that we cut just killed our chance for a GREAT score, we still marked very well, and had one of the top ten scores out of 130 horses. We were about 12 points off the lead when the herd work was done.
Then we got ready for the reined work, I came home for a couple of days because its only an hour’s drive and he felt great here at home. So I went up the night before to Paso Robles so I could run him across the arena there. I don’t really go there to teach one to stop the night before, because it’s just a little too late, I go there to make them familiar with the arena and make sure they run straight and they have confidence. You don’t want them stopping much in there, because you don’t want them stopping too short and plus the dirt is pretty heavy there and you sure don’t want to take a chance of stressing the legs. I didn’t like the way he schooled very well.
I can remember when I showed Tucks n Tails there a few years ago, he schooled terrible the night before and still ended up winning third overall. He was great and in fact he was second or third in the rein work. Turbo schooled fair at best. I didn’t feel good about it, but when it came time to show him the next day I didn’t do a thing to him to change him, I just wanted to make him soft and relaxed in preparation, and do the 5 Easy Pieces on him, and a few sequence stops. I decided to just go for it and run him. Either he stops or he doesn’t. So his circles were good and he got plus’s in almost everything but plus half’s. He got a plus 1 in one of his spins, but mostly halves all the way through which is great. When it came time to run him across the arena, to do my run down and stop, I ran him pretty hard for a green horse that has never been shown. He went to the ground, and I mean he did stop pretty good. I was very happy with his stops. And his turns were great and I really liked that. I have to work a little on his transitions, they were good but they got plusses, but they can be better. So for the rein work I was very happy with him they marked him 218 ½ which was very close to 73’s all the way through and that’s very good. There are 3 judges so that would be 2 73’s and a 72 1/2.
Then I came home before the fence work. I didn’t do any preparation I just galloped him the day before, because that’s been his best event here at home, all his fence work, he loves it. I saddled up early, two hours or more before my turn came. I like to get warmed up then, then put the horse away until my go, just kind of keep him on ice. I got him warmed up and he was really fresh because I gave him the day off before the cow work, he didn’t even get ridden. So he wanted to go all directions at once when he’s fresh, and so I galloped him quite a ways. I noticed that he was acting weird, not bad but just felt kind of antsy as far as they way he galloped kind of high, just not himself. I didn’t think too much about it, and just galloped him some more. I put him away for an hour got back on him and went to go work my cow down the fence. When they turned the cow out to me, Turbo was switching his tail big time, moving it around and this is a lesson learned. He was moving his tail around big time during the end work, and when I sent the cow down the fence, Turbo is a speed horse, he likes to run he can get it on, but this time I had to punch him with my spurs and I still couldn’t hardly catch the cow, it felt like he just didn’t want to go! Then the first turn, if I hadn’t pulled him with one rein he’d still be going, he didn’t care if he turned with the cow or not, the second turn was about the same, the circles weren’t much either as far as I’m concerned. However, the judges seemed to like it a little better than I did and they gave him a 213 ½ that means one judge gave him 71 ½ and the others gave him 71’s. I was hoping for just 70’s when I walked out of there, but I’m used to bigger and better things from that horse!
I was frustrated and really discouraged and I couldn’t understand after all the hard work and the promises this horse made to me at home, why the promises weren’t fulfilled at the show as far as running down the fence and turning the cow. Well with my tail between my legs, I loaded up and came on home. Even at that, the total aggregate score was high enough that he placed in the top 20 horses and he stilled made $1,650. However, had he made that fence work count like he should of, he could have turned that into $10-20,000!
So I was kind of discouraged I didn’t know what to think. Then on the way home I really thought about it. Something had to be irritating, agitating, or hurting this horse – he acted like something was burning him. I thought what could that be, when you go down the fence you pull that cinch a hole or two tighter than when you are home schooling and I remembered when I pulled that cinch up, something really got to him.
So when I got home and started inspecting my equipment and everything looked fine. Then I started inspecting the horse with a fine tooth comb. You couldn’t even see it unless you felt it with your fingers, but under the hair he had the start of girth itch. It was like hundreds of little specs of scabs starting in the cinch area on both sides. If you pinched it he would try to bite you or kick you, it was that sore! You know darn well that he couldn’t extend – it hurt him! And for him to get into the ground and turn, when they fold up their whole body expands, so that would make it hurt even more. So that’s why he wouldn’t stop and turn the cow and he switched his tail.
I’ve heard people ask me many times, “Les you’ve shown for many years and many times, I bet you don’t have any anxiety at all when you are getting ready to go show”. But I tell you, the real truth of it is just like this episode here, the more you show over the years, the more bad things you learn that can happen and so you got a lot of things on your mind to defend, you learn to check more things. I have never run my fingers around the cinch area to check to see if they had the beginning of girth itch, in which case this was and it was a costly error on my part. I don’t think this is a common thing we do, if it doesn’t show physically a lot of times you don’t touch for it. It’s been two or three days now and we’ve got the girth itch under control, he’ll get ridden today and he goes to the veterinarian tomorrow to get a check up, to see what else is going on if there is anything. We want to get him ready as we can for Reno Nevada. So that was Turbo’s story.
We finished just where we started. After the first round we were 12 points off the leader, with three judges, each judge had me two points below the leader after the herd work. It stayed that way through the reining and then the total aggregate score still put me in exactly the same spot; I was still two points behind the leader per judge. This is no big hill to climb at all, so I have my hopes up for Reno! I really think there is a good chance if we draw right. At this show in Paso Robles I don’t think we drew that good. Being in the first herd group is not good, however at Reno we are in the third group.
Today we have a guest here from Sweden, Hakan Bergh is here to visit with me for a week to learn a little about what we do and I’m sure he’ll have some tales to tell. We’ve enjoyed Hakan a lot, he’s a wonderful guy that is a good horseman and we enjoy having him. I’m very fortunate and looking forward to having fun with Hakan all week.
One thing about Paso Robles Snaffle Bit Futurity, they have what they called the World’s Richest Stock Horse class and that’s for bridle horses, and folks if you want to go to a futurity and have some fun, you come to that futurity next year that’s the real deal. It’s what California is about – what the snaffle bit, and bridle horses are about, and it really projects the flavor of tradition and fun!
The World’s Richest Stock Horse class had 17-18 horses in it and I personally have never seen a stock horse class that strong, that good! It was incredible! They had three events, herd work, rein work and fence work. To do the herd work here, you better have an open cutting horse, a horse that would go and show in Texas and place in the open cutting – a big time cutter. In the rein work, that arena is 450 feet long and within 3-4 strides they had those horses going flat out as fast as they could run them. They ran them down the arena and stopped them in deep dirt; it’s a rodeo arena not a reining arena, so picture the dirt! They hit the ground and they were sensational! Dirt flew everywhere, and they turned really fast. These horses were literally giving their heart and soul! Cow work down the fence in that big arena is sensational ! It was awesome! The quality of cattle that we had at this horse show can’t be beat, can’t be any better than they were. If you ever want to see the best there is, you come to this futurity next year at Paso Robles in August.
That does it for today, I’m off to go rope, and I’ve been practicing my roping I went to two roping schools during this futurity while I had the extra time. I went to a roping school put on by Mike Beers, he was awesome, he was great and then I went to the Woodard Roping School, he was also very good. In seven days I went to two roping schools and showed my horse, so I think I learned a little about roping and had a lot of fun. I’m off to go ride my pony in a few minutes.
Thanks for reading folks!

Here’s the photo-waiting for the blog

Pulling together Les’s blow by blow of the Paso Robles event but thought I’d share a photo I just got from the show. Turbo had some awesome works and we got some great footage for both our Sept 21 Wide World of Horses show on RFD and for the Cowhorse U Cow Work Level!

Les and Turbo at Paso

Update from Paso Robles

Update from Paso Robles:

They’ve completed two out of three events in the National Stock Horse Association Futurity here in Paso Robles and Les is right up there with the best of them. Although Les felt like Turbo might have been a little sore the night before the reining he delivered a solid 218 score, and combined with the 215 that he got in the herd work, Les feels confident that a solid fence work performance can put him up in one of the top slots. Les has been tickled pink with how he’s been performing and we’ve captured some great footage on preparing for a show for future tv shows and training programs. If you go to the Horsetrader.com website ( in the news section) it looks like they will be broadcasting tomorrow’s goes live. I believe that Les will ride in the 69 slot. For more info on the show and the rider’s scores go to the National Stock Horse Association Website: http://www.nationalstockhorse.com . Linda B