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May. 26th, 2007 11:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickPlayground equipment has been painted. All of it, even the parts that were not prepped or primed. *sigh* They can paint those parts again next year. We got done with that about noon. I did not have to do the top crossbar on the swingset. Yay!
The horse outing was in Tasha's slant trailer and we went to the fun show at the fairgrounds. I took the IRH and my sportssaddle (it's an open show and they don't care as long as you pay to go in the classes and the redseat western saddle that I like was at pony rides). We went in a lot of classes. We did flag race. We did fifty yard dash. We did straight barrels. We did exhibition barrels. We did exhibition poles. We did ride and run. We did four corner stake. We did raised box keyhole. There was a two dollar ring fee, classes were four bucks except exhibition (those were two) and I chipped in a twenty for gasoline. While I'm not sure that I had the most fun possible for my fifty dollars, I had rather a lot of fun.
Flag race: Three barrels set in a triangle. The apex is distal. On both proximal barrels is a bucket with sand in it. In the right bucket is a "flag". You run up and grab the flag, run around the outside of the apex barrel, and stuff the flag in the left hand bucket. If you miss and/or the flag falls out, you don't get a time.
Fifty yard dash: One barrel set at the far side of the ring. Run up, around barrel, run back.
Straight barrels: You have three barrels in a straight line in the center of ring, parallell to the long axis of the ring. You weave them going up and run straight back.
Exhibition barrels and poles: Like regular barrels and poles except no chance of payback and no placing. They do give you a time, but you don't "win" and it's half price. It's for experience and putting some practice miles on your horse cheaply. Also for schooling sour horses -- if your horse knocks poles or does the first-barrel runaround, feel free to school in a reasonable fashion without facing crowd criticism for holding things up. Don't be all day about it, but you can certainly slow to a trot and force the pattern. (You can also do this in the payback classes but it costs more and if you KNOW that what you'll be doing is schooling, might as well save the money.)
Ride and run: There's a barrel at the far end of the ring. Run up to the barrel. (You must go around outside of barrel.) Stop your horse (if needed), dismount, and lead your horse back while you run alongside. It helps to have a horse that will lead at any speed. Nick leads as fast as I can run. She'd probably lead faster if I could run faster.
Four corner: You get four poles set as the corners of a square. You make three right-hand turns and one left-hand turn and circle each pole once. It's right-turn (around near right pole) left-turn (around near left pole) cross ring diagonally and right-turn around far-right pole, right turn around far-left pole. A diagram might help but I'm not drawing you one.
Raised box keyhole: There's a "box" made out of cones and poles at the far end of the ring. It's not too sturdy. If you hit any part of it, it will fall apart. You run up and go into the box and turn around and run back. Winning times are under ten seconds. (I am sharing this for general information. I do not win anything at these shows and I don't expect to win anything this year. Maybe next year.)
Highlights:
Horse loaded on slant trailer she'd never seen before. This was something I sort of expected her to do but I was still pleased that she did it. Yay IRH! Yay me for all that work on trailer loading long ago. Apparently I managed to install a stable and reliable version of TrailerOS on the horse. Go me!
Horse unloaded. Not really surprising because it's a big enough trailer for her to turn and come out. She's never been in a "back out of it" trailer because we don't have one of those.
Horse stood tied to be tacked up. This was with traffic and commotion going on, so I was pleased that she didn't cause a fuss. Also, bridling is still going quite well and totally lacks nasty head-throwing episodes ever since I beat her up a week or two ago.
Horse DID NOT OFFER TO BUCK AT ALL. Yay! The last time I had the IRH in the ring (at lingenfelters) and asked her to canter, she bucked pretty damn hard. She didn't put me off, but it was a near thing. We've worked on that out on the mountain this year and she has been quite pleasant about it. I was glad to see that the pleasant carried over to ring work.
Horse picked up canter easily and pleasantly. Repeatedly. Lots of times. Wow. Like it ain't no big thing. She's okay with it. Uhm. Good.
Horse turned and rated better than I thought she would. She has some steering (not great, but better if I use my legs -- I gotta work on that) and some brakes at the canter. As is to be expected, my control goes down when her speed goes up -- so we need to practice this in order to do better. There's another fun show in two weeks or so. I don't think it would hurt us to go. I also need shorter reins for this. I'm torn between (permanently) shortening the blue reins or buying a new piece of rope for game reins. I really like the slobber strap thing but with one headstall, swapping out reins is a bit of a bitch. *sigh*
Horse acted like an experienced show horse. Didn't whinny or fidget outside ring. Stood quietly, head down, and dozed off between classes. No pulling, no wandering, no dancing, no nothing. I figured she might be kind of dumb because we didn't bring any friends for her (horses from her field) but she didn't care at all. She had better ground manners than Country (Tasha's horse) did... and Country has been more places and done more things and is totally more-broke than Nick.
Horse also displayed more under the hood than I had suspected was there. I mean, I knew she was quick. She's quicker than that. A lot. Not only does she offer speed (Hey, ma, wanna run? You want to go faster? Look, I'll just run a little faster for you. See? Isn't this fun? Want more? There's plenty more -- it's no trouble at all.) but she offers more speed than I thought there *was*. I discovered this pretty much by accident. We were coming back from (possibly) straight barrels and she'd had a good run and was cantering in-control but as we passed the judges stand, she accellerated suddenly. I wasn't asking her for any speed so that was kind of a surprise. Then, she didn't listen to anything I did -- like you're driving down the road and the steering and brakes for your car suddenly cut out. Not good, you know? I had nothing and the fence was coming up way fast so I leaned down and grabbed the rein about two inches from the bit and put her head on my knee and spun her to a stop. (I also ripped out a smallish hunk of mane but she's got lots and didn't seem too pressed to lose thirty hairs or so.)
Post-mortem analysis for the run suggests that she saw something that scared her -- Tasha and Mary (Tash's friend) were watching and they both felt that she boogered right at the judge's stand. When she boogers (scary stuff or cars) it's like her brain leaves. Nothing works until you get her back. So yikes, but she didn't buck and she DID stop and we had control in the other classes that we did after that. I just discovered rather more accelleration than I'd been expecting. See, I always figured that Nick was a sports car. I was okay with a sports car horse. I'd made my peace with that. It came as something of a shock to find out that Nick isn't a sports car. She's a Formula One. Eep.
The horse outing was in Tasha's slant trailer and we went to the fun show at the fairgrounds. I took the IRH and my sportssaddle (it's an open show and they don't care as long as you pay to go in the classes and the redseat western saddle that I like was at pony rides). We went in a lot of classes. We did flag race. We did fifty yard dash. We did straight barrels. We did exhibition barrels. We did exhibition poles. We did ride and run. We did four corner stake. We did raised box keyhole. There was a two dollar ring fee, classes were four bucks except exhibition (those were two) and I chipped in a twenty for gasoline. While I'm not sure that I had the most fun possible for my fifty dollars, I had rather a lot of fun.
Flag race: Three barrels set in a triangle. The apex is distal. On both proximal barrels is a bucket with sand in it. In the right bucket is a "flag". You run up and grab the flag, run around the outside of the apex barrel, and stuff the flag in the left hand bucket. If you miss and/or the flag falls out, you don't get a time.
Fifty yard dash: One barrel set at the far side of the ring. Run up, around barrel, run back.
Straight barrels: You have three barrels in a straight line in the center of ring, parallell to the long axis of the ring. You weave them going up and run straight back.
Exhibition barrels and poles: Like regular barrels and poles except no chance of payback and no placing. They do give you a time, but you don't "win" and it's half price. It's for experience and putting some practice miles on your horse cheaply. Also for schooling sour horses -- if your horse knocks poles or does the first-barrel runaround, feel free to school in a reasonable fashion without facing crowd criticism for holding things up. Don't be all day about it, but you can certainly slow to a trot and force the pattern. (You can also do this in the payback classes but it costs more and if you KNOW that what you'll be doing is schooling, might as well save the money.)
Ride and run: There's a barrel at the far end of the ring. Run up to the barrel. (You must go around outside of barrel.) Stop your horse (if needed), dismount, and lead your horse back while you run alongside. It helps to have a horse that will lead at any speed. Nick leads as fast as I can run. She'd probably lead faster if I could run faster.
Four corner: You get four poles set as the corners of a square. You make three right-hand turns and one left-hand turn and circle each pole once. It's right-turn (around near right pole) left-turn (around near left pole) cross ring diagonally and right-turn around far-right pole, right turn around far-left pole. A diagram might help but I'm not drawing you one.
Raised box keyhole: There's a "box" made out of cones and poles at the far end of the ring. It's not too sturdy. If you hit any part of it, it will fall apart. You run up and go into the box and turn around and run back. Winning times are under ten seconds. (I am sharing this for general information. I do not win anything at these shows and I don't expect to win anything this year. Maybe next year.)
Highlights:
Horse loaded on slant trailer she'd never seen before. This was something I sort of expected her to do but I was still pleased that she did it. Yay IRH! Yay me for all that work on trailer loading long ago. Apparently I managed to install a stable and reliable version of TrailerOS on the horse. Go me!
Horse unloaded. Not really surprising because it's a big enough trailer for her to turn and come out. She's never been in a "back out of it" trailer because we don't have one of those.
Horse stood tied to be tacked up. This was with traffic and commotion going on, so I was pleased that she didn't cause a fuss. Also, bridling is still going quite well and totally lacks nasty head-throwing episodes ever since I beat her up a week or two ago.
Horse DID NOT OFFER TO BUCK AT ALL. Yay! The last time I had the IRH in the ring (at lingenfelters) and asked her to canter, she bucked pretty damn hard. She didn't put me off, but it was a near thing. We've worked on that out on the mountain this year and she has been quite pleasant about it. I was glad to see that the pleasant carried over to ring work.
Horse picked up canter easily and pleasantly. Repeatedly. Lots of times. Wow. Like it ain't no big thing. She's okay with it. Uhm. Good.
Horse turned and rated better than I thought she would. She has some steering (not great, but better if I use my legs -- I gotta work on that) and some brakes at the canter. As is to be expected, my control goes down when her speed goes up -- so we need to practice this in order to do better. There's another fun show in two weeks or so. I don't think it would hurt us to go. I also need shorter reins for this. I'm torn between (permanently) shortening the blue reins or buying a new piece of rope for game reins. I really like the slobber strap thing but with one headstall, swapping out reins is a bit of a bitch. *sigh*
Horse acted like an experienced show horse. Didn't whinny or fidget outside ring. Stood quietly, head down, and dozed off between classes. No pulling, no wandering, no dancing, no nothing. I figured she might be kind of dumb because we didn't bring any friends for her (horses from her field) but she didn't care at all. She had better ground manners than Country (Tasha's horse) did... and Country has been more places and done more things and is totally more-broke than Nick.
Horse also displayed more under the hood than I had suspected was there. I mean, I knew she was quick. She's quicker than that. A lot. Not only does she offer speed (Hey, ma, wanna run? You want to go faster? Look, I'll just run a little faster for you. See? Isn't this fun? Want more? There's plenty more -- it's no trouble at all.) but she offers more speed than I thought there *was*. I discovered this pretty much by accident. We were coming back from (possibly) straight barrels and she'd had a good run and was cantering in-control but as we passed the judges stand, she accellerated suddenly. I wasn't asking her for any speed so that was kind of a surprise. Then, she didn't listen to anything I did -- like you're driving down the road and the steering and brakes for your car suddenly cut out. Not good, you know? I had nothing and the fence was coming up way fast so I leaned down and grabbed the rein about two inches from the bit and put her head on my knee and spun her to a stop. (I also ripped out a smallish hunk of mane but she's got lots and didn't seem too pressed to lose thirty hairs or so.)
Post-mortem analysis for the run suggests that she saw something that scared her -- Tasha and Mary (Tash's friend) were watching and they both felt that she boogered right at the judge's stand. When she boogers (scary stuff or cars) it's like her brain leaves. Nothing works until you get her back. So yikes, but she didn't buck and she DID stop and we had control in the other classes that we did after that. I just discovered rather more accelleration than I'd been expecting. See, I always figured that Nick was a sports car. I was okay with a sports car horse. I'd made my peace with that. It came as something of a shock to find out that Nick isn't a sports car. She's a Formula One. Eep.
