alright.
you think your quarter horse is good? take a look at my walker. :]
nobody start saying that gaited horses cant barrel race. please! i have a 11 year old Tennessee walking horse [bum's master of disaster] and that's what i do with him! we've competed in little britches, high school rodeo, and local speed shows. we rock. my time is usually around 15.467 and that's with the full spread barrel pattern. chasin' cans is what we do, and any horse can do it. It all started when i had my old skinny quarter horse justice. he had the west Nile virus, and never gained weight back, but he recovered just fine. i tried barrel racing him when i was a young gun, but he just didn't have it in him. That's when my dad got a horse. a crazy jet black Tennessee walker. untrained. un-trusted. he was abused, and nobody could get close to him; but me. It took two long cold winters to get the trust back in him. we connected. and when my parents would not let me barrel race, that's what made me start. i rebelled. every time i got dropped off at the barn, I'd start training him. It took a whole spring of "gaiting" the pattern before i brought him up to a canter. I showed my mom one day, and that's when i made her jaw drop. we were good; real good. The competitions started coming at us, and i was cleaning up at local speed shows. i was taking that horse to state level, and We were getting good, when all hell broke loose. the day before the 2008 Michigan state finals, when he came up lame. he had an abscess in his right back hoof, we broke it open and we were winging it. we brought him there, and sure enough i competed. he wanted to run, i could see it in his eyes, and we ran. he was definitely not competing to his fullest, but we ended up sixth best in the state. coming around that third barrel, i felt him switch gears, and usually he kicks in another gear after that, but i didn't feel it that day. and i didn't push him, i let him run for his sake, not mine.
any horse can run barrels, they just gotta have it in there blood. they have to have the right mindset, and the ability to trust the rider, my horse and i, we fly together, as a team. and that's how it will be till the day i die.
So; Goes to show that gaited horses can race. right up there with the long lean quarter horses "built to race."
god bless.
samanthachadwick
