10/19/2025
Yesterday I took my schedule day off, a day I planned two months ago! A day I had planned to ride and play with some horses. Of course like always the Washington weather wanted to make me a fool, but my friend and I didn’t let that stop us! We decided to go to T90 Ranch to watch a fun horse even called sorting, a high energy team event that involves two riders and 10 cows.
This was the first event I got to watch in almost 4 years! As an avid horse rider and trainer I was extremely excited I still got to do fun horse related things as well. Since I was watching, I decided to make it a study of the fierce competition.
While I have ridden horses my entire life, and got to do some fun sorting play days, I watched to watch it with new eyes. I wanted to watch the body mechanics of every rider, since this is a high energy, fast paced event it can be hard to not control your body effectively to be able to communicate with your horse.
See, a lot of people believe that the horse does all the work, then there are others who think that riding a horse is just with your legs. The truth is, as I taught all my riding students from day one, to ride a horse takes your whole body!
Many of these riders were great and you could see how every muscle in their body was used to ride their horse extremely well. While some rode their horses in different positions it helped me see where some muscles could use some relaxation, or even strengthening in every rider.
I loved being able to go watch something that I have watched for years, but with a new set of eyes!
And after all that fun, I got to work with my own pony, and all of my training horses!