Turn Back Help

I have watched cutting but never participated in it before. I was just asked to come out and be turn back help for a guy I work with while they practice on the weekends. Anything I should know before heading out there? I would really like to do it and perhaps get some education on cutting while Im there. I realize that the cutting horse does the work and your job is to hold on but just wondering what I should be most concerned with doing turn back help.

Good for you. It is a great way to learn how to handle cattle. Are you turning back in a round pen for horses in training or for a 'finished horse' working out of a herd in a square pen like a show pen? You handle each one a lot differently.

Generally, If a cutter is having trouble and not in a good position compared to where the cow is, you 'back off' and give the rider room to fix the problem. You never want to run a cow over or past the rider.

You need to ask the trainer how much pressure he wants you to put on a cow. Ask him to give you some signal (like nodding his head) when he wants you to move in and 'bump' a cow that is standing still. It will be best to start out not trying to do too much and 'over-work' the situation.

Good luck with it. It is a great way to get a handle on a horse and learn how to work cattle at the same time.

It will be basically a full sized arena as this is basically his prep for shows. From what I gleaned the horse we are working with is basically finished and requires essentially no help once the cow is selected.

Im looking quite forward to learning this. I think cutting is fascinating. I fell like Im getting to learn a bit of a lot of things right now. I am learning to rope currently where I ride normally and now I can learn a bit about cutting as well.

Its fun times for sure.

You also will want to make sure you pay attention when the horse and rider are in the process of cutting one cow out of the herd. Your job will be to help push the other cows back towards the herd at the back of the pen, so that the rider can get to work on cutting their one cow. You don't want there to be two or three straggler cows hanging out in the way of the cutter. Watch a few cutting viedoes on youtube and pay attention to the turnback riders. Pay attention to how much pressure they put on the cows to get them to move, and how they push on the "straggler" cows to get them to go back to the herd and get out of the way of the horse and rider.

Well I had myf irst day doing it on saturday and after some quick pointers on weather to press or hang back they felt I was doing pretty good.

The mare they had me on has some good cow sense so most of my job was pretty straight forward and the mare helped my inexperience in it a lot.

I went out with another turn back rider the first few times to get the feel of it. Or just being in the arena on your horse can help when starting, since you learn so much more being out there instead of just watching from the sidelines. Have fun!