I often tell people that “nobody learns any more at a clinic than I do.” The reason is that I am watching and trying to figure out where each person is with their horse, where they need to be, and what I can do to help get them there.

After two one-week Alvord Experiences and two one-month Alvord Schools I feel we all learned a lot. We had never done the month long schools on the ranch before but with the success of the colt starting schools we have in Texas I thought we should try it.

The week-long “Experiences” were entertaining, and educational for the participants with some historical site seeing, and ranch experience. The month long “Schools” were meant to be educational, with horsemanship, roping and stockmanship.

People are interesting. Some were repeats from previous years, some were previous clinic participants, all of which would have an idea what to expect. Some people who came for the first time were wanting to sign up for next year before their week was over. Then there were the ones that left in the middle of the night after dinner the first night. Never did hear from them again, they obviously experienced something in only a few hours that they didn’t want a week of.

Point being some loved it, some didn’t. What I learned was that we need to better prepare our people for what to expect. Some said they received more pampering than they expected, some didn’t get enough.

Some got more education than others, some obviously were more surprised than others, but in the end what I learned was something I had heard Ray say years ago “the more you learn, the more you learn there is to learn” and another one he said “It takes a lifetime to learn how to live a lifetime”.

The lifestyle on a working ranch is different than other places. Your life is dictated by many variables; nature, weather, animals, adverse terrain, and other more natural elements that have shaped a culture different than what a lot of people are use to. It’s hard to prepare someone for an experience that is like no other experience they have had before.

I also learned that we will have an even better school next year at the Alvord and at the same time make it a better experience for the owners, the Davis’. We have already worked out a schedule and a structure that will make it a better learning opportunity for the students, we will have more control of the day-to-day happenings so we can create even more opportunities to improve on our cow work, roping, and horsemanship.

Although we branded over 2000 calves in the time we were there, having smaller brandings next summer would mean even more roping for the students.

All and all Jen and I enjoyed the last 3 months being in one place, with lots of roping and getting lots of quality time on our horses, and sharing all of it with our students. And of course we didn’t use up a lot of $5 diesel doing it, thank God!