Delta Barrel Series

Remember to LOOK

by Lisa Woodland

One of the most important things you can do for barrels and poles is LOOK.

The idea behind LOOKING is that you look with your entire body. When you shape your body as if your eyes were in your shoulders a number of things occur. Your shoulders are rotated in the direction of the turn. Your hands follow your shoulders and are in the most effective position to control the horse. Your weight is shifted on your seat bones and they move in the saddle in a way the horse can feel. Then if you notice your inside leg becomes active at the cinch, making it easy for you to ask for flexion. Your outside leg is in a great position to apply holding control to the hindquarters.

You need to practice this at a walk, trot, and lope, this trains you and your horse to communicate. In barrels and poles we tend to want to go fast but just as a roper must rope the dummy for accuracy a barrel racer and pole bender must slow things down and gain accuracy before asking for more speed.

I would also recommend using other things such as cones, (My favorite) sage brush in an open field. You can teach the same things as you can using a barrel and pole and your horse doesn’t associate it to just that event. This opens up better communication because he knows that when you LOOK know matter where or when he is expected to follow your lead.

Communication is the key ingredient for running poles successfully. Because you are human and will not be in perfect position every time. By communicating to your horse what is expected of him, hopefully he can compensate for your mistakes and you can compensate for his mistakes. Consistent communication is the secret to success in pole bending.

Remember to LOOK!

Barrel Tip - Keeping Your Stirrups

If you keep loosing your stirrups while running barrels and poles, you can use rubber bands to help hold your feet in the stirrup. Rubber bands will break if you need to get out of the stirrup quickly but they are strong enough to help keep your feet in the stirrup while you are running. You can see the bands across the top of the boot. It goes around the back and on top of the spur.

Barrel Racing Question

How does the 4-D barrel racing format work?

All riders, regardless of ability, run in the same barrel race. The four divisions are then determined by time brackets. With the 4-D format, the OVERALL fastest time of the race is used to set the time brackets for the 4 divisions.

1st Division or 1D: These are the competitors with the fastest time.
2nd Division or 2D: These are the competitors who ran 1/2 second slower than the fastest.
3rd Division or 3D: These are the competitors who ran 1 second slower than the overall fastest time.

4th Division or 4D: These are the competitors who ran 2 seconds slower than the overall fastest.

This allows the beginner to compete with a more experienced racer and still have a chance to win.

Fixing Problems At The Gate

by Kendra Sagers

No matter what barrel race we attend there are always a hand full of horses that refuse to go in the gate. Some whirl circles, others rear, and still others run backwards faster than a lot of horse can run forward. We all dread these horses, many of us have had a problem gate horse, and all of us know that this behavior is neither fun nor safe. So, what do you do if you have a horse with a gate problem?

There is no simple solution, but first and most important I that you know your horse. When trying to find the cause and then the cure for a gate problem, there are several areas I like to cover and in order to come up with the right answers I have to know my horse. In my opinion, the reasons for gate problems can usually be lumped in to one or more of three categories.

• Training or Respect Problems
• Pain or Injury
• Conditioning

The first thing we need to ask is “Why am I having a gate problem?” In general, horses do not disobey just to be “bad”. There is almost always an underlying issue. Has your horse always had a gate problem? Or is this a new issue? The following is a short version of the process I go through to help identify the source of a problem.

Training and Respect Problems
Your horse must respect you. If you don’t have the respect of your horse, you can’t begin to fix any problems. When you are not entering a gate, do you always have control of you horse? If the answer is no, this is probably the best place to start. Horses get excited and nervous, this is normal, but if your horse is not listening to you when he is at home and you are working then you are asking for gate problems.

There are a few exercises I do to check for control.

Brake Check
No matter where I am or what speed I am going, when I want to stop my horse I need to be sure I can. To do a brake check, start at the walk and periodically ask your horse to stop. If from the time you say whoa and ask him to stop until the time he actually does is more than two or three steps, you need to work on your whoa. Gradually speed up this exercise until you are at a good paced lope. Even with speed, I expect a horse to stop within a few steps.

Give Me Now
Second, check to see how responsive your horse is to the bit. When you ask for his head either to the side or to give straight back, does he give willingly? If you ask and he quickly gives at the pole and follows the bit, then you are probably ok. If you have to use a great deal of force to get a little reaction, your horse is not listening and you need to spend some time softening your horse.

Move There Now
When you ask your horse (no matter what speed) to move whether it is forward, backward, or to the side; does he do so quickly? If the answer is yes, you are probably ok on this exercise. If he takes time to move then you have some work to do. This is a good indicator of both respect and training level. If you can not get your horse to move off of your legs and other cues at home, it makes perfect sense that he would not want to do so under stress conditions.

I suggest you check these skills as one of the first steps in identifying a gate problem.

Pain or Injury
Pain and or injury can also be a major reason a horse does not want to go in to a gate. Think about it, if you knew you were going to do something that was going to really hurt you would you be really eager to go and do it? Likely not, and your horse is no different.

Make the Gate A Happy Place
Also, it is so important to make the gate a happy place. I suggest you haul your horses to a lot of practices before actually running especially if you get nervous or the horse is new to the sport. Spend a lot of time going in and out of the gate with no pressure at all.

When you are done practicing or competing walk the horse back to the gate. Dismount at the gate. Loosen their cinch and take off their boots. This will make them look forward to going to the gate.