Sunday Afternoon in Some Places

Me, yesterday. On a horse. In a barn. At an amateur team penning event. It wasn’t one of my horses–I was there with a friend and it was her horse. I went to watch, really, swear. She talked me into getting on the horse, then she talked me into going in the pen. I think she just wanted a good laugh. For those of you who don’t know (which included me till yesterday), the way this works is there are like 10 steers in a chute. Two riders go in on their horses and move the steers from the chute out into the pen. (I was great at this part!) Then you team up to move the steers back into the chute one at a time in the right order. The steers have numbers on them. The one at a time thing didn’t work out so well for me. Neither did the “in the right order” part. I was completely out of control of the situation, and I think my partner just gave up. The steers put themselves back in the chute three or four at a time. I announced I was multi-tasking! And luckily the horse was really calm and put up with me. I won’t even go into the story about what happened when I rode that same horse bareback the night before. It would be too embarrassing. (As if the story I’m telling here isn’t embarrassing enough.)

I didn’t really get any good pictures–it was inside and there was a lot of motion going on. But this will give you the idea, with some people doing it right.



I don’t know if I’ll try that again–I wasn’t sure I’d try it the first time! But it was a fun way to pass a Sunday afternoon. And different! I surprised myself that I tried it. I texted Morgan later and told her about it and she wrote back, “WHAT?”