Did the trail obstacle course at the Alabama Horse Council "Horse Fair"

http://youtu.be/c9uZMoy2Nrs

SUCH a fun course

  1. work the gate
  2. ride over a water box. when you stepped into it, a floating panel would sink, allowing water to come up through holes in it. Packing peanuts were in the far end.
  3. Ride up between two bales. Sidepass R, get tennis ball, sidepass L, set ball back on cone. Sidepass to the middle, walk on ( I messed him up!)
  4. All four on pedestal and whoa. I just asked for two :wink:
  5. Work the garrocha pole and replace it back into holders. Short holders :wink:
  6. Drag the ring and don’t lose the ball. switch at cone and pull it to you to the pole, then hang rope on pole.
  7. push ball down lane and score a goal.
  8. get the styrofoam sword and spear all six rings, drop rings in bucket, sheath the sword.
  9. over the teetertotter bridge ,18" wide, maybe 10’ long?
  10. Pick up the PVC and ride a circle. It’s not attached to the ‘base’ barrel at all

if you have time remaining you had 2 bonus opps:
dismount on spindle, send horse around you from up there and remount from spindle

back through ‘tent’. It had squisky footing, and shredded tarp pieces being blown into it.

I had a total blast, just went to have fun :slight_smile:

I’m not totally sure of my score but I know I didn’t win LOL :wink:

Awww what a good boy Chippy! That course does look like fun- I wish they had more around here.
I can really see the dressage work you’ve been putting into him in between the obstacles.

I was there! It looked pretty scary to me! None of my horses would go near that stuff, especially the water box!

Very cool. Thanks for sharing. I have done one cowboy/obstacle challenge and plan to do a few more this year.

Happy riding,
Jessie

Impressive. No way mine would do most of that.

Looked like fun. Very impressive. Most of that stuff looks very scary.

My horse would have entered the ring, taken a look and backed out at twice the speed. My TB, when he was rideable was very good for handling gates and such.
But he would not touch water with his tippy toes. He liverpooled puddles in the ring eek

The same horse, last Summer- see, he can behave :slight_smile:

Ronald “Slick” Sullivan
designed the course and I thought it was a thoughtful, interesting course. Nothing was dangerous, everything made you think.

Thank you for the kind words- Chippy hates these things, he dials up all of his responses to everything I ask. When Archie, my coming 4YO gets out of stifle rehab he’ll be my future ‘obstacle horse’. These tests are always so interesting to do, and again I thought this was a way-cool course.

OMG, that teeterboard! That was amazing! Great ride!

How was the horse fair this year? In the past it’s tended to be a little grungy and poorly attended, both by spectators and vendors. But I think they’ve been doing the trail competition for a few years now and seems like that’s a big draw.

Also, your horse has a beautiful topline!

Well, it was a lot better than past years, but I’m not sure how well attended it was. They likely could have promoted the Richard Winters, Julie Goodnight, and Larry Whitesell clinics more effectively. They had room for 100 Trail competitors but only 42 adults and 12 kids signed up. This year’s trail course designer did a GREAT job- I would do a course of his again in a second, and he was a true gentleman and horseman about the whole thing- really good guy.

The vendors were good this year compared to last year.

They do try hard, every year, but as with anything there’s 10 people doing all of the heavy lifting and everyone else saying what should be done :wink:

Thank you for the compliments, dressage has been good for the boy :slight_smile: we ended up 14th out of 42 :slight_smile:

That’s a nice list of obstacles. My mare would have been willing for about half of them, convinceable for another quarter, and said NO WAY to the remaining quarter.

Oh, and she would have pooped in the water. Because that’s a Thing She Does.

That looks super fun! We watched the Charles Wilhelm Super Horse Challenge at the Pomona Horse Expo this year and one of the neighbors is setting up a course at her house for us all to ‘play’ with. :slight_smile:

Thanks for sharing your video. Your horse is a cutie!

What a wonderful team the two of you make! I love your adventures together. The dressage work really agrees with Chip- he looks BEAUTIFUL (you look great, too!).

Thank you, AA and Tabula, you know the freaky string bean he used to be. Totally different animal now. totally :slight_smile: