THAT is what I want to do someday !!
This is in my area and I have been to watch it many times. It is very elaborate and takes quite awhile to set up. They allow the public to come in for a small fee after the actual competition and use it.
That’s at Oregon Horse Center, where I board. They set up an amazing mountain trail course and have 5-6 big shows and a few clinics per season. Its always fun to watch them set up the “trails”, which have large ditches, bridges, ponds, and even waterfalls. The crew there is awesome, the whole process from removing footing, adding features (including digging and placing huge rocks and logs), decorating the course (real trees, painted backdrops, etc), holding a 3 day show, and then removing everything and replacing the footing only takes about a week. Every time the course is slightly different so that it doesn’t get boring. I highly reccommend checking it out if you’re ever in the area when they’re holding a show.
that’s Checkers, he’s a very talented horse!
I took my TWH there last fall for the show. We had a great time! She did great for her first show ever and it IS a LOT of fun!
She’s not nearly as impressive as Checkers, but I was pleased with her overall. She was pretty green when we went…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHqOnCviAXM
We will probably go again this year…
Foggy, your mare is very nice and willing! She did a good job.
How long does it take them to set it up/tear it down?
i got to find out how do these trail courses, my horse could totally do that… lol not bridleless, but she’s good with trail stuff!
That was so neat! I’d love to get involved with something like that in the southeast.
[QUOTE=spotnnotfarm;6364832]
Foggy, your mare is very nice and willing! She did a good job.
How long does it take them to set it up/tear it down?[/QUOTE]
Thanks! She gets better all the time… I really like her attitude!
I think another poster said it takes them a week…
there are some places with permanent courses…more all the time!
[QUOTE=foggybok;6364628]
I took my TWH there last fall for the show. We had a great time! She did great for her first show ever and it IS a LOT of fun![/QUOTE]
what a NICE mare you have!
I want that course in my backyard.
Nice horse, and I really don’t want to be negative, but looked like he blew a few obstacles including the bridge. Hard to say for sure because it wasn’t really clear from camera angles what exactly was involved on some obstacles. However the sequencing shows this one was '09, speed class in 2010 more impressive although the swishing tail detracted for me personally.
Happy to say I have that ‘course’ not at the barn, but in areas I routinely ride. Though I do stick to the arena for the bridleless fun!
[QUOTE=threedogpack;6366626]
what a NICE mare you have![/QUOTE]
Thank you, I like her more every day!
I wish trail classes resembled what horses need to do on the trail. The stupid stuff in typical “trail” classes is pretty unrelated to what horses need to deal with out on real trails (e.g. picking their way through big rocks, inclines, declines, going through water, navigating fallen logs etc. And my pet peeve is that I have a 16.2 hand TB who is not a dressage horse, so collecting her stride to fit courses designed for QHs can be a challenge. Oh well. She won two trail classes today so she does OK.
When my warmblood mare is done w/ her dressage career, this trail stuff is what we are going to do next! What fun it would be to have something like this in the area! But we may have to settle for the more “normal” things.
Watching Checkers on the first run was exciting as watching paint dry. If I had a mare that walked that slow, it’d take me all day to go 3 miles. Granted she’s a nice mare and very well trained, just not my cup of tea. I like a horse that steps out a little more with a little more “life.”
I’d love to do this on my old gelding, I think he’d have a blast.
Wow! they went all out to set that up!!
(But are they supposed to go through there this slow?)
My horse is an OTTB and on the trail we need to go faster which she does. She would hate me if we poked along like this. We have places to go!!!
[QUOTE=Mtn trails;6371180]
Watching Checkers on the first run was exciting as watching paint dry. If I had a mare that walked that slow, it’d take me all day to go 3 miles. Granted she’s a nice mare and very well trained, just not my cup of tea. I like a horse that steps out a little more with a little more “life.”
I’d love to do this on my old gelding, I think he’d have a blast.[/QUOTE]
They are supposed to pick their way through, not blast through (except in the times course, where speed matters more than accuracy). They get higher points for acknowledging the obstacle and hunting the trail. Of course, speed is fine, as long as you don’t sacrifice accuracy. My mare is much faster than Checkers and as long as she’s paying attention that’s fine, but sometimes she’s too forward and isn’t as clean as she should be… out on trail, she’s going to cover your 3 miles in no time at all… When she walks out, the quarter horse we ride with has to canter… And even her regular walk is fast enough that most horses will need to trot to catch her… For a trail horse, I’m like you, I want to cover some ground!
Alagirl: No they are not necessarily supposed that go slow, but they need to be careful and clean… slow is OK, as long as they maintain forward momentum…
Mukluk: My mare likes it. We certainly don’t poke along the trails, but she seems to like the puzzles and thinking about stuff when we do these courses… It’s helped her trail work too. She’s more careful on difficult trails (we have a lot of e-ticket trails here), so this stuff has been good for her (and doesn’t keep her from covering a lot of ground when we need to…)
