PUSLINCH – Sounds of laughter and mooing filled the arena at JohnMel Stables during the introductory cattle sorting clinic here on March 26.
The clinic was led by Samantha McFadyen from Restoration Ranch in Cambridge.
Participant Kirsty Dies brought her five-year-old “off-the-track thoroughbred rescue” Darth Bodhi to the clinic, who she said is really “just a baby.”
It was the horse’s first time working with cattle, and Dies said admittedly the start didn’t go as well as she had hoped, as Bodhi was very nervous around the cows.
The clinic accommodated him by adjusting expectations for the second round, when Dies walked him slowly around the cows in the enclosure, instead of moving them individually from one half of the ring to the other, as the other participants did.
Dies said she came to the clinic because Bodhi is “young, and I want to give him as much experience as possible – give him experience in different environments.”
She added she wants him to “learn he can be stressed and come back down.”
Dies and Bodhi do lots of liberty work together (interacting without any sort physical restraint), she noted, and he even knows how to give her a “high five.”
During the clinic participants paired up into teams of two horses and two riders to sort the cows, and Stephanie Pignoli rode her horse Louie alongside Bodhi and Dies.
Pignoli and Louie took part in a similar clinic in December, a cutting clinic with the same clinician, “Sammy,” Pignoli said.
Cutting is a competition where a horse and rider separate a single cow and prevent it from getting back to the herd.
Pignoli said the “cow thing is new” to her and Louie – they typically do barrel racing – but she’s always been interested in learning cattle work.
“I haven’t taught myself how to rope yet,” she noted.
“I really like this (clinic),” Pignoli added, and “this facility is beautiful,” making it well worth waking up early for the three-hour drive from their home near Kingston.
Dies said the cow clinic was “very well run.”
This was the first time JohnMel Stables has hosted a cattle sorting clinic. Officials plan to organize another one since the first was a success.
