Calgary Western Riders - Annual Spring Horse show / 16 June 2002

Chico and I entered in the Calgary Western Riders Spring show, we entered in 5 classes.

The Egg and Spoon Race and the Barrel race were for fun only, and although I hoped to repeat the success of the Egg & Spoon race, from the Park Stables School show (Where we came first), we only got somewhere between 7 and 10.  The Barrel race was fun, the time of 29 seconds was mainly due to Chico not liking to cross the white chalk line, and we therefore got a bad start. (The winner in the Senior Barrel race had a time of 16.5 seconds)

 

"Older than Dirt"  Western Pleasure:  this class earned us a 2nd of about 10 (Some of them looked very sharp, and had all the right gear for entering this kind of competition.

 

Senior Western Pleasure:  again we came 2nd of about 15, the main reason for not getting 1st was that I did not ride one handed, as is required with a horse older than 5 years. (I beat the teacher, Christina came 3rd, and she got a lot of stick for that)

 

Senior Western Equitation: this class being a lot harder yielded a 4th place of 10. Christina (the teacher) had her revenge with a perfect pattern, and came 1st. It was a straight line pattern with 3 points and 8 elements (Walk to A, Halt, Trot to B, Lope (Canter) left lead to C, Halt, Reverse 6-8 steps, Halt, Walk away), the judge told me afterwards that we had a little bit of a problem getting into the the lope, but did get on the right lead, we also did a little bit of a wiggle in the lope. the Halt at C was perfect, but I forgot to wait the 3 seconds required.

 

It was a great day out, and I got a lot of comments about Chico (Everybody seems to know him), and how well he looked.

Chico does not like the water hose while he is having a bath, and he positively rebels at me using the spray bottle for the de-tangler and the show-shine. All in all it was quite an experience for me to give a horse a bath for the first time, and obviously Chico had forgotten it too.