Most people haul to an exhibition hoping their horse looks perfect. Jordon Briggs does the opposite. With her four-year-olds a year out from their futurity season, she uses exhibitions to make the holes show up on purpose, so she knows exactly what to fix before it costs her down the road.
Briggs broke down her plan on Awesome Arlo, a four-year-old at the time, by Blazin’ Jetolena out of a Dash Ta Fame mare she has owned since he was a yearling. He is bred like Rolo, built like Rolo, and has been through a lot of the same training process, so the expectations are high. It is June, and she is hammering on her three prospects before she turns them out for the summer to rodeo. She has not clocked them on a pattern yet, just run them against each other to see where they stand.
Three exhibitions, three jobs
Briggs gives each horse three exhibitions, and every one has a purpose.
The first is a mental check. She trots and lopes, works on weaknesses, and reads where the horse’s head is that day. “If they’re focused on the barrel, if they’re focused on everything else around them and don’t even know I’m up there,” she said, that first trip tells her which horse showed up.
The second is where she goes looking for trouble. She cruises the horse through on a loose rein and lets him do his job. “If you’re constantly controlling and manipulating every move that they make, then you don’t know what you need to work on at home,” she said. She wants the mistakes to surface. “I want to show my horses doing bad exhibitioning so I know what I need to work on at home. And I also know where they’re going to fall apart next year.”
The third depends on what the first two showed her. A horse that handled its second trip gets trotted through the pattern and told how good it is. A horse that did not gets cruised again. Arlo is the second kind. “He kind of misses the barrels the second exhibition, doesn’t really pay attention very much, and then he’s super sharp the third exhibition,” Briggs said. Her goal is to keep chipping at that until she can cruise him through clean on the very first trip.
Set them up to fail
The mindset is the whole point. “Don’t go to your exhibitions in the mindset that they have to look perfect and you don’t want to be embarrassed in front of your friends,” Briggs said. “Set your horses up for failure a little bit so you find their holes and know what to work on.”
She takes it a step further this time of year. “I kind of almost want to blow them up a little bit this time of year so I can put them back together and hopefully be able to skip that step next year.”
Arlo’s hole, and the fix at home
Arlo is getting hot from all the exhibitioning, so Briggs is only running him through a couple of times a week and doing the rest of the work at home. His problem is a familiar one: he is getting strong to the first barrel and wanting to pull out of her hands instead of staying soft.
The catch is that she cannot lope a circle to settle him at an exhibition the way she can at home, so he has to learn to leave from a standstill and pick up the correct lead without jumping into it and running off. Her homework is exactly that, keeping him soft and in her hands, bumping him lightly until he bends at the poll and quits bracing, then loping off with his front end up and no anticipation of the turn.
She also has a tie down on him for the session to help hold that softness, and she is matter-of-fact about it. “I’m not a big tie down person, but I do believe that tie downs, bonnets, martingales, anything, it’s a training aid to teach them to get off of things,” she said. “Every horse, whether they need him or not, they need to wear them at some point of their life.”
What she is feeling for
The standard Briggs rides toward is a horse that answers her seat before she ever gets to her hands. “I want him to sit on my seat first before I have to go to my hands, because that’s what I’m going to want to do when I’m running full blast,” she said. When Arlo does not stop with her, she backs him and makes him pay attention. When he sits with her seat and stays connected without diving at the turn, she leaves it alone.
Her last check is one you can steal for any horse: drop to one hand and see how he handles it. Riding one-handed is one more honest way to find the holes before they find you.
Watch the full session
Briggs walks through all three exhibitions and rides Arlo through the homework on Ride TV. Watch the full exhibition game plan and see how she finds a hole and fixes it, one ride at a time.
About Ride TV
Better horsemanship, a stronger mentality, faster and smoother runs—BarrelRacing.com’s Ride TV channel offers training videos from beginner to advanced barrel racing instruction from the most respected voices in the industry. Cut time, gain confidence and win more with the best training tool for barrel racers. Subscribe now for just $19.99/month to learn from top hands like Jordon Briggs, Ryann Pedone, Cheyenne Wimberley and Danyelle Campbell.