You already know my name so here's some more about me.   I am thirteen years old and I live with my mum.  I have an older brother, Cody.  If you look at lots of rodeo sites, you may have already learned a bit about my brother.  He's Cody Tapp and he's a bull rider.  If you click on his name, you will be able to have a look at his web site.  

Did you notice the picture on the side of these pages?  One day, I hope that will be me!

As well as poddy riding, I like riding horses.  Actually,  I'm a bit too old for poddies now and I'm starting to ride Juior Steers instead.  Sometimes I enter the barrel races at rodeos and this is really good fun.   How do you like my rearing horse picture here?  Don't know that I'd want my horse to do this though!

I have quite a few friends who do poddy or steer riding as well.  Some of them are John, Jesse, David and Sam.  Sam and me want to travel around to rodeos together in a huge gooseneck when we're older.  A gooseneck is a kind of combined horse float and caravan which gets hitched up behind a truck.  Sometimes we might meet Sam's sister, Jessica at the rodeos.  She's planning to be a vet so if any of our horses get hurt, she'll fix them up.  Right now, we have lots of fun at the rodeos and usually all go to the same ones.  They are all good  riders and we learn a lot from each other.

I live for the next rodeo and think this is the reason I was born.  There's nothing like the thrill of being on the back of a bucking poddy or steer and staying on to ride time.  In case you didn't know, poddy riders have to stay on for six seconds, while steer or bull riders must stay on for a full eight seconds.  This picture shows ribbons I have won at poddy riding.  

 
I got a real nice surprise when I won Katherine Junior Sports Star of the Month in May 2001.  I won a trophy from the Katherine Times, $10 from the Katherine Town Council and 3 months subscription to the YMCA Sports Facility.  

When I'm not messing around with poddies or steers, I like soccer, swimming, exercising, running and other physical activities.   If I'm indoors, I like playing on my Nintendo and have lots of different games for it.  When my friends come over we all play on it.

I have had two ponies and a horse so I'll tell you a bit about them.  My first pony was a gorgeous little dark brown mare with the longest coat and bushiest mane you've ever seen.  She was about ten hands high and we think she might have been a Shetland/Timor pony cross.  She had perfect manners and the sweetest nature and shocked us all by producing a foal the day after we got her!  Nobody had realised she was in foal.  Because she had this great shock of hair, we called her Whoopie and named her foal Cadillac.  That's me and Whoopie in the photo when I first got her.  It was taken a long time ago now, and I've grown up a lot since then.  I was very sad when I got bigger and we had to sell her, but she went to a really lovely home.

The next pony I had was a pretty little grey mare called Jezabel.  She sure lived up to her name!  She was about twelve hands high and I learned to barrel race on her.  The first time I rode her in a competition, she trotted into the arena, spotted a patch of sand and laid right down and rolled!  Told you she lived up to her name.  I still loved her, though.  I haven't got Jezabel any more, but it had nothing to do with her 'orneriness'.

I had a beautiful little chestnut mare, about 14 hh with a big white blaze and 3 white stockings until recently.  I called her Blazing Glory but that's a bit of a mouthful so she got called Blaze for short!  I hoped to learn to campdraft on her and I reckon she would have been good at this because she was very nifty on the turns.  My nana took some photos of her and here's one of them with me riding Blaze.  We were just mucking about having fun here.

I'm keen to do some more with horses as well.  Here's another picture of ribbons and a trophy I've won. 

Page last updated
05 Feb 2006 10:56 PM