Cutting Saddles "Red River Cutter"

Cutting Saddles "Red River Cutter"

If you’ve ever seen a cutting horse in action, you know what a high-energy event it is. In this horse class, the horse and rider enter a herd of cows and the rider indicates to a judge which calf they are going to “cut out” from the herd and drive out into the arena. The rider then adopts a loose set of reins and turns the job of preventing the calf from rejoining the herd over to the horse.

Cutting Saddles

“When the cow runs and stops, the horse has to run and stop and, when the cow turns, the horse has to mirror the cow and make the same kind of turn or even a more aggressive turn, which derives more points,” Richard Herr, a horse trainer in Gainesville, Texas, says. That’s a lot of action, all crammed into a short two minutes.

In order to do this kind of work, these horses must be in excellent physical condition. “Basically every muscle in their body is used while they are working the cow,” Al Dunning, a cutting horse trainer in Scottsdale, Ariz., says. “There’s probably not another equine athlete that expends this kind of energy in such a small amount of time.”

Facts

FINISH: Heavy hand oil. Floral tooled roughout half-breed design. Lasaunt skirts
TREE: Dina Special cutting tree. Rawhide covered. Quarter horse bars and gullet
RIGGING: Double dee rigged. Drop front style rigging. Stainless steel dees

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