02/21/2025
All her life my daughter, Camarie (Camie) Roorda, the CEO of Performance Pony Company, has been a fierce competitor. At three years-old she occasionally made exhibition runs during rodeos at the end of the barrel race. The crowd loved it! If Camie was unhappy with her run, she would plop down on the trailer step, stare at the ground and be mad that she didn’t ride her good old sway-backed horse, Wheels, better.
Nothing we said seemed to make her feel better, so we created the pout rule and gave her a designated time limit for pouting. In that time, she was required to go into the trailer, by herself, and come back out in 10-15 minutes with a smile. We made it her responsibility to recover from her disappointment. Being a social little girl, it usually didn’t take long to see her smiling again.
At sixteen, Camie had an exceptionally bad High School Rodeo day. Her goat got up, her barrel horse blew barrels and a couple of poles went down, too. Then she missed in the team roping and the breakaway. She came to the trailer mad at herself and her horses, ready to give it all up. The 15-minute pout rule had expired and she was still extremely frustrated and struggling to deal with what felt like all-around defeat.
Read more at https://www.performancepony.com/single-post/the-pout-rule
