I believe that I mentioned that my family and I barrel race. I particularly compete in barrel racing futurities.
A futurity is a class or show that only allows horses that are either ages four or five to compete against each other. It is their first competition year. It takes a lot of preparation, practice, and hauling to get these young horses ready to begin their career. Did I mention patience? It takes a lot of that as well depending on how quickly your horse learns and can accept new experiences. Every arena provides its own challenges for a young horse. A banner that is hanging in the arena may be its worst nightmare and it just might attack them when he isn't running sideways in the wrong direction away from it! Horses are a flight animal and new surroundings foster this behavior in SO many ways.
I am attaching an article that covers a lot of the basics of picking a futurity horse to the competition. The article states that a horse's four year old year is the typical but that is for those southern folks that have the ability to ride during our wretched winter months. That is nearly impossible in our neck of the woods so us northern folks typically chose to hold them until they are five years old so they get more time and experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment