ITREC October 27

As I think back on the weekend, I believe the tone was set two days before when we had the sudden change in temperature. Wednesday’s mid-80’s gave way to rain and upper 40’s on Thursday. The cold weather had all the horses rip snorting around the pasture. I should have been more sensitive to my horse’s mood and spirit. He was feeling good to say the least and I should have made a better plan and gone slower in my last training ride.

Friday night was cool and it was still muddy from the rain so my riding options were limited. I wanted to give Scamper a good workout to lower his energy level for Saturday and work on a couple of possible obstacles from the ITREC list.  But I got things out of order. I should have worked him–lots of trotting circles, transitions, loping, giving, yielding and then moved on to the obstacle schooling.

But I didn’t. I got in a hurry to see how my “Don’t feed the bears”  brainstorm would work. Word of warning: throwing a rope over the bracket on the basketball hoop and then attaching a backpack to the end of the rope and just walking up on your horse and pulling on the rope is not the place to start. Scamper took exception to the noise the rope made as it was pulled over the bracket. He took exception to the backpack flying up in the air, especially as it got as high as his eyes and then over his head. It took a good 45 minutes to  restore some level of trust. All because I was excited to try a new toy! There are so many things I could say about that mistake but I’ll save them for another day.

Saturday morning dawned as I drove to Camp Wesley Woods. It was cool again and Scamper’s head was up. As our group headed out past the small animal pen, I could hardly get Scamper to walk out. He acted as if he was waiting for the sheep, goats and llamas to attack. Unfortunately, our first obstacle was not far enough to have the chance to work out his reluctance to move.

Obstacle 1 Tragedy at the Black Lagoon. As I said, Scamper was balky, fearful and watching everything as though it might turn into a pouncing cougar (or maybe a flying backpack). So as we passed through the trees and neared Horseshoe pond, Scamper tried to make sense of three people around the pond. The judge was seated at a small table. The photographer was standing out on a small pennisula of the pond and the judge’s assistant was standing ankle deep in pond holding onto a rope that was attached to a white lifesaving ring floating in pond. Meanwhile up on the hill behind us, three ponies ran laps back and forth.

Our task as Finesse riders was to “walk into the water until all four feet were in. Turn 180 on hindquarters (back foo to stay stationary) to face the shore. Take the rope from assistant/judge. Pull lifesaver to the shore.” Scamper did not want to walk through the mud and put his feet in the pond. After much kicking on my part (maybe I need to learn how to wear spurs) I got close to having all four feet in the water. We turned around. It wasn’t a pivot. We quickly pulled the lifesaver to the shore. Not a good start. But at least we completed the task.

We did have a nice little ride to Obstacle 2 Red Solo Cup! but it wasn’t far enough. Again, the setting was near a pond with quite a few of visual distractions besides the cowboy curtain made up of 12 rows of 20 bright redsolo cups tied between two trees.

Our task was simple. “Walk horse through curtain.” Simple but not easy. Scamper walked up somewhat warily but when he sniffed at the cups and they made noise, he was pretty sure he didn’t want to go through. I, however, felt differently. And in the end, I won because he went through. He may have scooted through pretty quickly as the rustling cups passed over his rear end but we went through.

Red solo cup!

We had a longer distance to travel to Obstacle 3 Come Into My Web and took the opportunity to have a nice trot to try to burn off some excess energy on the way. Down in the meadow we were to “Pick up one web from barrel. Carry to oak tree at a walk to the end of the CENTER pole….Sidepass to tree, hang web on stubby branch. Leave area at a walk.” The finesse part of this obstacle was the sidepass. Scamper can sidepass well in both directions usually. This time, again, he was reluctant and did not cross over in the front. Maybe it was the witch plastered to the tree or maybe it was the judge in the black robe and white wig that distracted him. Maybe he was waiting for a backpack to come flying out of the tree.

Obstacle 4 Creepy Crawly was a spider leg gate made out of jump standards and pool noodles. “Walk horse through spider leg gate. When clear, turn 180 on forehand. Walk through gate again.” In the rider’s meeting, Tracy stressed that we would have deductions if we touched the noodles. I should have paid more attention to my feet. We hit the noodles going both directions. I’ll blame it on Scamper’s rotund stature.

The judges got into the spirit of Halloween.

Obstacle 5 Capture Casper was our worst obstacle for the entire year. I did not expect this to be a problem but we were not in sync for this one. “Take rope from assistant/judge, make loop in rope. Drop loop over barrel and pull snug….Wrap rope around barrel once by walking horse around barrel. Unwrap rope by backing horse around barrel (my emphasis). Drop rope. Leave area at walk.” Scamper acted like he’d never seen a white plastic barrel with a big smiley face drawn in black before and he was sure it was a backpack waiting to fly to the sky. But we got the rope looped over the barrel and wrapped, awkwardly, but done. The breakdown in communication occurred at the backing up part. He just could not seem to understand what I wanted him to do. We were able to get the rope unwound partially but it was a big struggle and not pretty.

Obstacle 6 I Vant to Bite Your Horse’s Neck was our last and best obstacle of the day. “Walk to cape, pick up. Rider to place cape fully over shoulders. Take cape off and rehang.” The tricky part was that we were not to drop our reins as we put the cape on. By this time in the ride, Scamper was a little tired and ready to stand, even when the hen turkey flew out the tree behind us! He gave a small flinch but didn’t move his feet. Good boy!

So our ride ended on a good note but all I really wanted to do was have a 2nd chance at about half the obstacles. I wanted to call Mulligan on the pond, the red solo cup cowboy curtain and the spider leg gate. My only hope to place well rested on the chance that everyone else had problems with those obstacles, too. Now it was time for lunch and then awards after all the groups finished the ride and the judges totaled the scores.

While we waited for the awards, we were entertained by a costume contest and a design an obstacle contest. You should check out picture of the costume contest on the ITREC Facebook page. We were the judges and it was tough to pick a favorite. Then one of our fellow competitors, Susan Lowe, gave us a mounted archery demonstration. She has been working for the last year or so with her horse, Jesse, and can shoot and hit a target with her ‘horse bow’ and wooden arrows as she lopes past. It was awesome!

At last it was time for awards and my suspicions were confirmed, Scamper and I finished 4th out of 5 in our division. Not what I’d hoped for but I have to give credit to the other horses and riders. My guess is that they hadn’t subjected their horses to flying backpacks the night before the ride.

Isaiah 40:31 (NIV)

but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.