I did my first driving competition this weekend- a competitive trail drive in the pine barrens of NJ. I’ve done this as a ride several times and it’s one of my favorite places to go. We ended up only signing up for the 15 instead of the 25 because my friend wanted to go too and her horse wasn’t ready for 25. It ended up working out well though because it got us home last night before those nasty storms hit the east coast.
Anyway- things went really well overall. My biggest worry was that I was going to forget something between all of the harness and cart and the required gear to have with you on trail plus all of the regular endurance stuff but amazingly I didn’t forget a single thing. Penny was super good for the first 9 miles and it was sooooo much fun flying through the trails on sand moguls. With 6 miles left to go though we had a couple things that got into her head- a free range herd of goats that decided to go with us for a short while and some of the riders passing us and she started in on race brain. She has a ton of endurance miles with her previous owners and I think she was having trouble understanding that she was in a CTR and not an endurance race. But we finished and got her through the vetting and ended up with top placing Saddlebred.
We’ve got another one at the end of April at our home park and we’re definitely doing the 25 which should help chill her out a bit, between the longer distance and all the hills.
Thank you so much for all the help that you guys have given me
