Cutting Horses

Another surprise from the desert. It seems we are so far from just about everything, and yet today we found another event just a few miles away. The horses you see here are called "cutting" horses as they are trained to cut cattle from a herd to be branded. However, this coral holds riders that are preparing to compete in a cutting competition. They are paired up with another rider and have 60 seconds to move 10 heifers from one coral to another.It's not as easy as it sounds. Here's the hard part. There are 12 heifers in one coral. The two riders enter and try to get the heifers, one at a time, into the other coral. To make it even harder each heifer has a number and they must move them in numerical order. Oh, and they throw in 2 with no numbers, so they always have to "cut" right down to their last move. Here you can see the rider on the left has "cut" her heifer and is sending it into coral 2, while her partner heads off to get the next number.

He got his heifer and will now block the entrance, so only the next number will get through and none of the others.

This is very fast riding as they only have 60 seconds. Here you see Number 6 coming through, and the second rider heading off for number 7.

It was a beautiful day, probably around 75, so we had a great day for watching this event.