Totally cleaned up!

I'm beginning to like this snow/cold/bad weather and roads stuff! Apparently it keeps all the good people home from the shows so we can clean up! :-)

Yesterday I did sorting for the first time ever. I've been hesitant to try it out because my horse gets a little amped up around cows and being in a small pen with a bunch of them just never really seemed like a great idea to me. After our work last summer with cows/buffalo and watching the boyfriend sort at a clinic and the last show I was itching though. It looks like fun and I was beginning to really understand it. I hadn't ever really paid too much attention before, but when I actually watched closely and figured out what they were doing it started to appeal to me. So I decided to take a stab at it this weekend. I figured I would either get it or totally suck and never do it again. Apparently I got it. My very first sorting run ever I ended up tying for first place with a couple other teams. My first run was also with the boyfriend so we both came home with pretty first place ribbons and a small jack pot. It was kind of fun!

The exciting part was, Midori was great! She was mostly quiet and went into the herd just fine. She picked it up really quickly and we did awesome for our first time, in my opinion, placings aside. During all three runs she was cooperative and did great shaping to the cow I wanted and cutting them out and pushing them. I didn't feel like a fish out of water trying to get the cow I wanted, like I've seen so many people do. I was thrilled. She wasn't so happy sitting in the gate, but she did alright. Until the big black baldy charged us. She didn't quite know what to think of that on the second run and we ended up letting him thru so we got a no time. But when the same cow tried the same thing on our third run we were able to stop him, twice, and we got 3 cows.

Yes, that's right. 3 cows in 90 seconds. The sad part is, our "winning" run was 4 cows. Love the small shows! I'm still very excited with how well Midori did sorting and I think I may be hooked now. I can't wait til the next one to see if it was just a fluke! :)