This weekend, I think Clifford and I finally turned the corner and started to put our barrel hitting issues behind us. For the first time since mid-September, we made two clean runs in the same weekend, and they were actually somewhat decent runs. He won the 3D (16th overall out of 50) on Saturday, running 6/10ths off my rodeo horse, and was in the 2D (maybe 9th or 10th) Sunday, about 17th or 18th overall out of 72. He was just over a half second off Chance. Here's our Sunday run - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e78l_IW9aLM&feature=youtu.be The first barrel is our new problem area - he likes to RUNRUNRUN into the pen and forget about the first barrel until we're down the pen & out of position. Saturday was horrible, so Sunday I switched from a Jr. Cowhorse bit to a short shanked bit with the same mouthpiece but no gag and a little more shank. Worked better, and I think with more runs, he'll start hunting it more and I'll get my timing down so if he decides to be a freight train, I can do some damage control. Time to be a jockey instead of a passenger, but I feel better about us as a team now than I have in probably 6 months.
Chance got in on the action with a pair of very solid, though not spectacular, 1D runs. He was 8th out of 50 on Saturday and 4th out of 72 on Sunday. Sunday's run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tVuL6cgi9U&feature=youtu.be The ground both places was a little deceptive and maybe even shifty in spots, so I'm not upset with his second barrel in this video at all. The video is from Sunday, but his Saturday run was a carbon copy of it with a little worse second barrel. He did what he could with the ground so I'm happy with him.
1 weekend, 2 clean runs on Clifford - woo hoo!!!!!
