SCCHA Obstacle Play Day Pt 1

At the last minute, I signed up for a schooling show! It was perfect timing because we'll be competing for real at this facility in July and we also have our first official ETS this weekend. The horse hasn't done obstacles since last fall and we haven't traveled much since then either. 

It was so fun!

It ended up being a great day! My truck and trailer both needed new tires this spring, so that was a bummer for my bank account, but I'm glad I could stop worrying about their age. They felt great hauling over the hill in the morning to get to the facility. 

We got there about a quarter of the way through the course walk. I left TC in the torture chamber trailer and got us registered, then I walked the course. 

Look how cool this covered wagon is!

I had signed us up for Intermediate because Advanced sounded hard and Novice sounded easy. There were no descriptions, I just decided that arbitrarily. The Advanced was hard but even the Novice was no joke! These are some hardcore obstacle people in comparison to the local ranch competitions TC and I did last year. 

After walking the course and deciding that as long as TC didn't get too enthusiastic, it would be fine, I went to get him out of the trailer. He unloaded, saw the obstacles, and lost his ever loving mind wanting to go over to them. 

I took him on a walk around the property that wasn't blocked off for the event. I realized that this was going to be the first time we didn't get to practice the obstacles beforehand. Hmmm. TC tried very hard to yank me over to the obstacles and I had to drag him back to the trailer to tack him up. 

Why must the horse be contained

Now, there was definitely a lot of sass radiating out of this animal that made me realize that he was going to consider launching me so that he could get to the obstacles sooner. You'd think the best plan would be to ride him down, but this horse doesn't ride down or longe down. He just gets chock full of adrenaline and audacity and is an actual nightmare the more he does. This is the type of day where at home, I would have immediately turned him out and watch him gallop around and around. 

So I decided to not ride him. We did ground work and then I got on him about 3 minutes before I was supposed to go out on course. 

Except that the judge wasn't ready so we had to stand and wait pace in small circles because someone thought that standing still may require rearing, which I think is a feeling he's learned that he can give me so that he can keep moving. 

Reining Back Serpentine

Obviously the first obstacle included reining back, so we did not do particularly well on this one. Normally the horse is quite decent at reining back, but he was all bunched up and wanting to poke the obstacle we were reining back along. When I wouldn't let him, he figured his butt might be able to poke it, so he swung his hips around and then refused to do anything but walk directly backwards toward the obstacle. I had to take a step forward to get him to not hit the obstacle. But then he figured it out and it ended up okay. 

The first three obstacles

One Rein Weave

The next obstacle included weaving around plants while only holding onto one rein. I knew this was going to be tough since the horse doesn't neck rein and it turns out I should probably teach him. I ended up picking the wrong rein. I decided that I loved pulling on the left rein that I may as well use that one. Except the first obstacle was to the left so when we went to turn back away from it, he was like nah and tried to drag me to it so he could finally touch it. At least he didn't snatch a plant like this one horse did, it was so cute!

Side Pass Speed Bump

For some reason, there was a tiny speed bump headed into a grob, which had some water in it and was fenced off. We were to straddle the bump and side pass across it. The horse is shockingly good at side passing for an animal who was convinced that his legs would get permanently tangled if he ever went sideways as a young horse. But what he is not good at is ground textures, they elicit a lot of skepticism. When I did finally get him over it, he thought I might want him to jump the fence into the grob and I probably overreacted like NO YOU WILL NOT BE JUMPING THAT and he sat back like I TOLD YOU THE SPEED BUMP WAS DANGEROUS and put himself back on the safe side. We did eventually get through the obstacle though! 

Hated this thing, there were too many different
ground types

Step Up & Turn

We had to wait for a little bit after the speed bump, so we walked in small circles trying to get him to stop trying to mow down the competition so he could do more obstacles. There are always a few obstacles that remind me how gigantic my horse is. This was one of them. We had to walk up the soft side of a bank complex and then stand on top and turn around. Now, my animal is not an event horse, but at the very top of the bank complex he was certainly ready to leap off the (very small) double down bank and head off to Kentucky. But I did somehow get him turned around and he walked back down pretty quietly. 

Descriptions!

Covered Wagon

We had to walk over these narrow logs heading toward this big covered wagon made out of two gate panels and I guess some netting? It was super cool. The logs proved to be very confusing to TC, who is wide enough at his base to step to the side of each log, which was hilarious and not the point of the obstacle, I will be getting small logs to practice over. He then is a very claustrophobic horse, so I was SO PROUD of him for walking through the covered wagon and not losing his shit about it, especially on a day like this day where he didn't have a lot of shit to lose. 

Concerned horse, but he was so good!

Barrel Roll

I thought this would be a shoe-in for this horse, but it turns out his chaotic nature was dialed up and about a third of the way down the chute for the barrel, he thought it was hilarious to twist the barrel around, which is how he plays with poles in the arena. I didn't want to give up (or have him think that the point of barrels is to twist them) so I had him shove the barrel down sideways. He thought that was kind of stupid because why shove the barrel down when you can stand on the logs that are containing it? Or on the barrel itself which I had to yell "NO" at him lest he squash their barrel and/or hurt himself. 

Before he twisted the barrel

But by this point, he was pretty relaxed and having a great time. But this post is getting insanely long, so I'll post the second half of the course and day tomorrow!