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One thing Jess and Riley Routier have instilled in their children is to have a never give up attitude. Each of the Routier's five kids can ride, rope, race, ranch, and even trick ride, with the best of them!


“[In 2018] I drove from the Calgary Stampede


to Cheyenne Frontier Days to Nampa, Idaho, then back to Canada, then back south to the Utah rodeos. Looking back, that was unnecessary. This year we didn’t do Nampa, Edmonton, or Cheyenne, but I added Salinas, California,” Jess explained. A rodeo cowgirl’s job description is long and varied, but “strategic scheduler with meticulous attention to detail” is one of the most important lines on the application. Each cowgirl has their preferred system for entering rodeos, and Jess sticks with her paper-based method that has served her for decades. She starts with a yearly planner containing monthly and daily calendar pages. Next, she picks out the rodeos she’d like to attend and carefully writes down the dates of each rodeo, the times of the performances, and the times of the slacks. She acknowledges that getting “drawn up” correctly at key rodeos is important, however she keeps the ups and downs of her rodeo business in check with a healthy, balanced perspective. “I try to schedule around my kids’ things, and yes, it can get complicated. But it’s a matter of finding what works for you,” Jess noted.


Raising the Next Generation When Jess isn’t on the rodeo trail, she’s at home working with the next generation of superstars. Jess and Riley own several young up-and-comers, and they continue to train prospects for Westergren Quarter Horses. Before introducing a young horse to the barrel pattern, Jess looks for correctness and softness throughout a horse’s body. “I want them to be able to lift on a dime, and I


74 WESTERN RUNWAY


need to have that before I ever let them go around a barrel,” Jess said. “One of the things I teach is shape not rate. I feel like if you teach them shape, then they naturally learn how to rate on their own.” To keep their minds fresh and ready to learn, Jess


aims to take her young horses through the pattern 3-4 times per day. She often starts off with a pasture ride (takes the edge off a bit) and then moves to the arena for work on the pattern. She seeks to develop roundness in all of her colts and often uses the “Four Barrel Drill,” an exercise where four barrels are placed in a square, and horse and rider work a circle around each of the barrels in the same direction. This drill is helpful for keeping a young horse round and moving forward with strong momentum. Jess acknowledges that it’s difficult to keep all of their young prospects going while she’s away as rodeos. Yet she knows they are progressing as they learn important life skills through daily ranch work. “A huge part of my barrel training program is the ranching that we do on them. Now that I’m not home a lot, I know that as long as they’re being ranched on, they’re getting life experiences and becoming more broke. As long they have a job and are doing something, I feel like the barrel racing should come pretty easy to them,” Jess said. “Most of my barrel training program is ranch miles, so then when I am home, I can get on and take them around the barrels a little bit and they’re in shape to handle the training.”


Another important facet of Jess’s training and hauling program is letting her horses just...be horses. She favors turnout time over consistent


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