The Rodeo Horse - Having What It Takes for Tana Poppino

After years on the rodeo circuit, two trips to the National Finals Rodeo and a win at the Calgary Stampede, Tana Poppino is doing something right when it comes to picking her mounts. Rodeo is Poppino's passion, and only a select few barrel horses can ever truly become rodeo greats.

"I'm a romantic," she admitted. "Rodeo is rodeo. That's where it all started. There's nothing like running in the middle of the wide open spaces in front of a crowd of ten thousand on a Sunday afternoon."

Rodeo shows who's the best horsewoman over an entire year on all different types of ground, 

weather and arena size, Poppino said. While barrel races require specific types of ground, relatively uniform alleyways and consistently sized patterns, rodeo is always changing, requiring the cowgirl and the horse to stay on their toes.

"Rodeo forces the mental game. When set-ups are constantly changing, you have to deal with it. It forces you to be stronger mentally," she said of her sport. 

Finding a horse to handle all of that is not easy, and keeping them healthy is even harder, Poppino said.

A rodeo horse has to be, first and foremost, mentally tough. The horse has got to want to run barrels.

"Until Amigo came along, I never had one that would run at that top level," she said. "He has grit and heart, and you can't get that from breeding."

Poppino bought Amigo as a four-year-old already broke. She usually buys her horses that way because she does not enjoy the slow work that young horses require. She doesn't mind them making mistakes as they gain their speed, as long as they are trying. 

To keep her horses going, Poppino takes a "hands-on" approach to their health. On Amigo, she uses everything from chiropractics, acupuncture, ice boots massages and joint injections regularly. She also believes in using Adequan on a regular basis. Really knowing her horses is important to her, because that way he can tell when something is off before it becomes a major problem. 

Poppino also counts on her partners at Total Health Enhancement, Equipride and Professional's Choice to help keep her rodeo horses healthy. 

Natalie Overholt - Riding and Ethics - Part 4 of 5

Without vet checks at most rodeos, barrel racers on the rodeo trail can get away with more than those showing futurities or some of the larger horse shows. An unspoken questions is often, "What is that horse running on?" Below, Overholt addresses her thoughts on steroids, her own riding ethics and much more.

Riding and Ethics
How much time do you spent reviewing your runs and going over what you did wrong or right?
I watch the run a few times on tape if it was taped, then think about what went wrong and start on a solution as soon as possible. The sooner I can figure out the problem and find a solution to the problem the better.

What do you do to practice on your older horses if you’re having a problem?
Usually if the horse is finished, seasoned and already winning and I start having problems with it I go to the vet to see if they are sore, and that usually fixes the problem.

What do you do best riding-wise?
Getting the most potential possible out of a horse, and I’m light handed.

What do you or have you struggled with the most while riding?
I have trouble keeping my stirrups. It doesn’t matter what I do I seem to lose them. I’ve also had to start over from square one with a lot of green horses.

What rules do you play by? Any ethics you try to follow when it comes to doing what it takes to win?
I try to see each individual horses strength and build from there. I feed vitamin supplements. I’ve seen too many good horses get wrecked or messed up for life because of steroids so I stay away from using that kind of stuff.

What veterinary technique has served you best (i.e. hock injections, Legend, shock wave therapy, etc.)?
Chiropractor adjustments and having the knees, hocks and stifles injected.

Bleeders - Some Insight from Barrel Horse News

Last month's Barrel Horse News featured a lengthy feature on Exercise Induce Pulmonary Hemorrhaging, or bleeding from a horse's nose, generally after intense exercise.

The article covers EIPH with great detail, listing new treatments not yet widely used amongst barrel racers.

With the middle of summer heating up and our horses running hard each weekend, EIPH can factor into our horse's performances more than we'd like. Though the article says we still can't be sure why horses bleed, there's a lot we can do about it.

Listing Lasics, Premarin, Omega-3s, Seramune and nasal strips as some treatment options. Check out the rest of the article to get all of the great details!

Shoeing for the Ground We Run On - A Lesson Learned

Looking at upcoming barrel races on barrelhorses.com, I stumbled across an event I know all-too-well: The All-American Youth Barrel Race in Jackson, Miss.

After a great year on my horse in 2001, my parents agreed to drive me to Mississippi for this event. If I remember, some 800 other kids ran there that year, and Talmadge and Mike Green raised $25,000 in added money, with saddles given in every go in every division.


I was so excited - other than the Congress, this was the only "big" show I had ever run. It was the first time I had ever traveled further south than West Virginia for a barrel race, and unfortunately, the first time my horse had ever run in deep sand.


In the northern parts of the country, we find ourselves running in harder-packed dirt and clay mixes, sometimes with a bit of sand added. My horse had just slight rimmed shoes on, perfect for running in our northern dirt. BIG mistake.


In the first go, we wrapped one and two, but when we came around three, my horse's back end slipped right out from underneath her. She caught herself, jerked her joints up off the ground and ran home. We ended up in the 4D after all of that, and I qualified for the finals.

In the second go, Onyx couldn't turn at all. She wouldn't even get close to a barrel - completely unlike her. We just couldn't figure it out; I schooled all night in the practice pen but could not get a decent turn. The same thing happened in the finals the next day. At 14, I was devastated. I cried the whole 20-hour drive home.

When we got her home, she was nailing barrels where ever I took her. She won youth classes the whole month of July and never looked back.

Until August, when I noticed something just wasn't right with her back end. I took her to the vet, and low and behold, she had fractured her hip during that run in Mississippi and had been running on it ever since. Luckily, our vets at Fox Run Equine Center got us into a study for shock wave therapy , which healed her in about six months. She is still running today, with much thanks to Fox Run.

Moral of this story - BE CAREFUL WHEN YOU TRAVEL. I try to switch shoes depending on the ground at a particular time of year (much to the dismay of my shoer who thinks I'm a pain). When I'm heading down south like last weekend, I have pegs in my sidewinder shoes. In the good indoor arenas, I have a lot less grab with just a rim shoe.
At right, the sidewinder.

Natural Calming Product - Select At Ease

Sometimes, we all need to take the edge off. In barrel horses, that sometimes may come around more often than not. Instead of resorting to PromAce, which can be expensive and can have nasty side effects, I've found a product that is working wonders for a young horse I have - At Ease, made by Select the Best. 

This young horse had never been off the farm when I bought her, and she was extremely nervous all the time. She had worried away all of her weight, and though she was eating bagfuls of Strategy, she couldn't pick up the weight. She would jump and kick in her stall, and no matter how much we rode her, she never got tired of pawing or screaming. We hauled her to shows and rodeos, and even though she rode fine, she acted like a weanling tied to the trailer. 

So, in February, a friend gave me an old tub of At Ease powder that she had had for years and had never used. She just said she didn't know if it would help or not, but that it was worth a try. Desperate, I gave it a shot. 

I gave her a tablespoon of At-Ease powder for four days before I took her anywhere, then gave her extra a few hours before we hauled. Within a few weeks, she was standing quietly at the trailer, picking up weight and not pawing when tied. She could concentrate on her barrels rather than the other horses, and her times changed dramatically. 

At-Ease has Thiamine (B1), Pyridoxine (B6), Tryptophan (an amino acid) and Magnesium in its easy-to-feed powder, and my horse seems to not mind eating it. Before I started feeding it, I thought that maybe she was getting ulcers and I was really worried about her overall health. Now that she isn't fussing all of the time, though, I'm not so much worried about her stomach. 

I know a lot of people use Ace to calm their horses down before competition, but this product takes the edge off without losing speed or performance. 

Big Dee's carries it, and within Ohio can deliver it within one day.