Smokin' Fast hahaha

Okay, so actually NOT smoking fast. :p

We had our second double header jackpot at our place this past Monday and gave Lefta the night off and just rode Voodoo.  I hadn't rode him in the first one because he had a fresh cut.  Considering he's running and playing in the pasture and it's healing well I didn't feel too badly about entering him this time.  What I did feel badly about is he is sooo out of shape after a couple weeks on pasture without any riding.

Since I knew there was no hope at all of a competitive time and we just needed a jackpot the only game plan was to work on his gate antics and tune our pattern.  He could cruise through the barrels however "fast" he wanted, heck he could walk/trot if that's what he did nicely lol

I am lucky enough to have a fairly large outdoor arena, the pattern at my place is a full set... standard size pattern, standard distance timers to barrels, standard size timers to gate.  I joked that I'd be happy with anything faster than 25.0 ;)

Our first run he threatened to pop up a bit when I went to go in the arena.  I just kept my hands forward and squeezed my legs asking for forward and suddenly in he went (although he felt a little pissy about it).  Our "run" was okay.  *I* really need to work on ME and second barrel though.  We just loped through and our time was 24.31 haha

I mentioned to my friend KD that I may need help getting in on my second run and she laughed and said "Do you just want me & Tiz to ride up behind him again?" and that's when I found out she rode toward us when he started farting around and we joked Voodoo must have thought "I don't want to deal with those blondes" lol 

My second run came and KD was off to the side visiting so I tried going in on our own and what do you know... he went in just fine!  Again I rode with my hands forward, squeezing with my legs and thinking *forward*  and we walked quickly toward the gate.  He had a brief moment when he hesitated and I thought he'd skitter off or threaten to pop but instead he picked up a trot and swung into the arena without any helpers :)
This run was smoother, funny how going in nicely can do that ;) again I just let him cruise through but we picked up our time a bit... to a blazing 23.46 lmao

For the record, the fastest times for the day were 18.38 on the first run and 18.22 on the second.