STICK-IN-THE-MUDS GET UNSTUCK

Your Dad and I have decided we must shake ourselves up and get out of the house. Our default setting is to sit around listening to talk radio (both of us), obsessively read blogs (me), and power-nap in the recliner (him). I am not as bad about this as he is because I do my dog-walking, visit Margery next door, and go to the library with my lady friend Ted. But he is a major-league slug.

We pulled the weekly "Get Out" section from the newspaper and stuck a pin in it. It landed on "National Cutting Horse Competition." For those of you who are ignorant Yankees or effete Eastern liberals, this is not some bizarre Texas Panhandle thing where you chase down horses and slice them up with a Bowie knive. A cutting horse is one that has been trained to go into a herd of cattle and "cut" one of them out to be branded, vaccinated, ear-marked, dosed, sent to the sale barn, or whatever. Since cattle have a strong herd instinct, this is no easy job. The steer or heifer has but one thought in mind--to get back in there with the gang.

We went to the arena where this was happening. It was a fascinating competition. The herd was at one end of the arena, and the rider guided his horse into the middle of it. Other riders were there as well, to keep order when the whole herd might get rambunctious and bolt for the fences. The rider would somehow (we could never actually spot how) indicate to the horse which steer he wanted, and then the horse would take over on his own. He would squeeze in among the cattle and nudge a few to one side, then force the chosen one out into the open.

Once it dawned on the steer that he was out there on his own, all hell would break loose as he tried to get back--and this is where the cutting horse's skill comes in. The steer runs this way and that, dodges here and there, always angling to get back to the herd. The horse stays between him and the herd and matches him step for step, feint for feint, turning on a dime. The rider is just along for the ride. If he touched the reins and tried to guide the horse, they would both be disqualified. The rider's only duty is to stay aboard a bobbing, weaving horse that, to make matters more difficult, is hunkered down on its front legs most of the time.

Each rider has two minutes and thirty seconds to perform, and judges score them on some scale I can't begin to understand. But this is serious competition, and it brings horse people from all over the country, pulling expensive trailers and flashing big diamonds and saucer-sized belt buckles. Some of these trailers have plush living quarters at the back for the horses, and slightly-less-plush quarters in front for the humans. There is big money involved here. If your horse is a winner, his or her value has just soared and so has that of the offsping.

Mostly, however, what we were watching was an anachronism. Very few ranches use cowboys and cutting horses this way any more. Like everything else, they have become mechanized and routinized, and if they need to do something to the cattle, they herd them along into a chute and have a vet deal with them there. But horse people have a strong sense of history, and they still prize a good cutting horse. Even if it's just for show.