Tuesday, July 2, 2024

The Cowhorse competition part 1- sliding stops

 As I warned in my last post, I dropped my Nikon camera and the autofocus, which I use when panning action shots, was acting up. Ideally these would be much clearer... but it is what it is. So here is a photo drop for you! Too many photos for one post so I am featuring the reining portion, in particular the sliding stops. If you ever get the chance to ride a reiner doing a sliding stop- do it!

My friend (and country music artist) Mark Parsons singing the National Anthem










You can see that some of the horses were bracing in the stop and not being smooth and supple. I thought the girl in the green shirt had the nicest stops. Not every horse was bred to do reining patterns- these horses are all around cowhorses. This competition includes 4 parts- herd work (think cutting horse) reining, steer stopping, and going down the fence with the cow- that's the most exciting part both to do and to watch, and I will feature that in my next post.

4 comments:

Far Side of Fifty said...

That would be fun to see, I bet you had a good time!

Linda said...

Great shots! I would love to watch something like that.

Val Ewing said...

I've seen a few demos of sliding and reining. Those horses are amazing athletes.
You photos turned out great!


aurora said...

Sorry to hear about dropping your camera/lens :(( I also use auto focus for action shots. No time for manual adjustments. The good thing about shooting action is it is frequently shot at infinity, at least for me.

A friend of ours switched from showing Ranch to Reining. I will never forget her saying sliding stops are better than sex....lol!

Your shots are great and so is the cowboy action. Fun!!