Missing The Fire

Weellll...I did some things right today and one thing wrong. Darned if I didn't pick my hand up off of the horn too soon on first barrel and that always causes Moon to bow between 1st and 2nd. Damn, that's a bad habit. But it's pretty easy to fix. Once I see myself do it (Thanks Mikey for videoing me!!!), I can usually remember to keep my hands where they need to be for that one extra stride. It's one of those weird things I never remember doing until I see it in a video or pictures and I'm like, 'Oh yea...gotta remember to hold that turn.'

Moon was not coming across like he needed to for his 2nd barrel and I almost sat down and pulled, but thanks to working cattle on the fence yesterday (even though it wasn't Moon I was riding), I thought...'Girl, you had better get your butt up there and ride this horse a.r.o.u.n.d. the barrel.'...So I did.  I also remembered to use my legs to drive Moon into the turn instead of throwing my body forward to try to keep him going. I made myself do the exact same thing on the 3rd barrel and lo and behold...a clean run. Funny how that works isn't it? (sarcasm intended ;-)

I loaded this video on Youtube, so you can enlarge it to see it better....



The only thing that was disappointing was Moon really wasn't firing all that hard. He ran...he just lacked that feeling of 'blast off' I have come to expect from him. And I could feel him fading on me on the homestretch. Maybe you will have noticed it in the video. By the time Moon got to between the 1st and 2nd barrel on the way home, his speed just faded.

His attitude was 100% better today though. I should have known his stomach was acting up, but since everybody is feeling extra frisky in this beautiful Arizona weather, I was slow to catch on. I sure knew the way he was acting yesterday at the team penning wasn't right though. It doesn't take much to make him right. I gave him a 1/2 a tube of Ulcergard to start him out and will just give him a 1/4 of a tube a day until I get home and get my powder. It's wayyyyy cheaper to feed the powder form than the tubes.

LOL...I probably made it sound like Moon ran horribly slow...but we placed 6th out of 45 barrel racers and was just 3-10ths off of the fast time. That bow between 1st and 2nd probably cost us a 10th or two off our time, which might have put us in the money (and winning $$ is always a good thing), but my boy sure wasn't firing on all cylinders, so I don't think we would have won the race even with a smooth run. Hopefully we have all the kinks worked out now and Moon will be firing on all cylinders next Friday. It's our first Pro rodeo in Yuma.