Guest Blogger: Tracey Westbury

As a child I would spend early spring in anxious anticipation of the Saturday before Easter.  This was the day of the big hunt.  My great grandmother hosted an egg hunt at her farm, where children swarmed the grounds in search of those little hidden treasures.  When my kids were small, I resurrected the great egg hunt on my own little farm, where I had just as much fun hiding as I'd had hunting as a child.

This past weekend I went out on another hunt, but instead of eggs, I was hunting cows.  Perhaps hunting isn’t really the right word, as the cattle were right there in plain sight, but we were learning how to track them…and that’s a form of hunting, yes?  

Allison Trimble of Coastal Equine had advertised this introduction to cattle clinic earlier in the month and I’d been chomping at the bit to get my mustang, Sandy, over there.  He’s never worked cattle before…not live ones.  We worked the Hydra Bull a couple of times last summer, but since then he’s been packing my daughter around on trails and over little hunter jumps.  Nothing cowy at all.

Sandy wasn’t the only newbie to the cattle game; many of the horses there had never been up close and personal with a living, breathing bovine.  So when they were asked to walk out of their little horsey herd and into the middle of the cow herd, it wasn’t much of a surprise when there was some hesitation.  After all…cows stink!  At least that’s what the horses said.

But despite their trepidation, each of the horses managed to listen to their riders and build confidence in what was being asked of them as the day progressed.  They discovered getting bossy with a cow turned out to be a lot of fun.  Even more than hunting Easter Eggs.