SCCHA Obstacle Play Day Pt 2

Here's part 2 of our fun at the obstacle play day! Last we left off, we were halfway through the course and the horse had only just started to calm the fuck down. 

Walking Over Logs

There was a woman in the course walk who was pointing out how unfair this log pile was for short horses to walk over. And another woman pointed out that there are obstacles that were unfair for large horses too. TC conquered the log pile easily with his giant feet and big stride. I had a moment of thinking he might get claustrophobic in there and try to jump out, but he was pretty relaxed by this point in the course. 

Most of the time it isn't great to have a large horse
for these shows but for this obstacle it was

Standing On a Tire

But then the next obstacle involved him having to stand on a platform (a filled-in tire) and he is so giant that it felt like sitting on an elephant who was standing on a ball. He didn't quite understand that I wanted all his feets on the tiny tire but he did make an effort and I took it and praised him quite a lot

These are not large

Photo Booth

This was such a cute obstacle, they had us stand off to the side and get some pictures of the other riders on course. TC was an absolute pro and pretty smug about it. 

Had to catch this smug horse when I put my phone
away and he thought I might have cookies

We had another minute to wait but TC had settled in finally. We hung out until the next judge was ready for us. 

Ring Toss

We had to trot around some plants with a hula hoop and then stop and toss the hula hoop over one of the plants. TC was fine with the hula hoop and the tossing, he did some head shaking in the trot but I think by this point he'd settled enough to not murder me. Excellent. 

I love it, I will eat it - TC

Not fussed

Windmill

I forgot to say that it was kind of cold and windy this day so when we had to side pass around a little windmill, I didn't know how TC would handle it. Would he spook? Apparently not. He didn't spook, but I've never had to hold a horse back from stuffing his face into actual whirling blades. He was ADAMANT that he poke it with his nose and I was like... my friend... this is a metal windmill. 

Begging me to let him touch it

Duck Pond

This last obstacle was ADORABLE! We had to take a net and fish two little rubber ducks out of the makeshift pond with it. I picked up the net and TC was NOT okay with it for some reason. WTF. I have carried around my archery stuff with him, carried around my tripod, carried around a shrieking toddler... but a pvc pipe with a little net on the end? Terrifying. What was even more terrifying were the ducks. I did NOT expect him to spook but as I grabbed for my ducks, he sat down and ran backwards. I stuffed the net in front of his nose and he was like OH THE DUCKS OF COURSE and calmed right down. But I only got one duck, oh well! 

Skeptical about the net

Very concerned about the ducks in the net

I walked him out and as per usual, the horse is a celebrity. I think he just sticks out like a sore thumb and has this super chaotic-good type of personality. I got a lot of compliments with how I handled the duck situation too, which was really nice. The vibe is so different than at dressage shows, I'm kind of getting used to how friendly everyone is. I am definitely the kind of person you have to come up to and force your friendliness on, especially lately with work being so insane, I've needed way more alone time than usual. But everyone was so sweet and easy to talk to! 

I took him back to the trailer to hang out after letting him graze a lot while chatting with the person who won the advanced division the day before! He and his horse have been doing this for 18 years together! And his horse is Rico's age, 27! I think Rico would have loved the obstacle shows, maybe I'll let him play with some of the obstacles I'm making for TC at home. 

Back at the trailer, I ate some lunch and TC told me all about how much it hurts his soul to be tied to a trailer with a hay bag. He got a lot of carrots for his suffering. The woman next to me came back and we chatted about how it went, she does some pretty cool western stuff that went over my head and I just kind of gestured to my pawing machine and was like "yeah this thing was a bolter in his youth so I signed him up for bombproofing clinics to try to chill him out but instead I just discovered that the only thing he likes more than bolting is chaos so now I bring him to these events?"

Making sure the ducks are safe

I then decided to take TC on a walk to give him a break from the horrible plight of being tied for twenty minutes. It was lunch time, so we got to explore the part of the property that wasn't being used for the competition. There were some bridges and steps that we walked over and TC was REALLY EXCITED that obstacle time wasn't over. The first bridge he flung himself onto in a really dramatic way.  Then he actually took off trotting and dragged me over another bridge that he promptly ate shit trying to get onto. He did this several more times before I finally got him under control. 

We even ran into another person who does clicker training, I apologized because her horse was looking at me like he wanted to get paid too. But it's so cool to just casually run into other clicker training people in the wild. I really love this sport. 

I used the clicker to help him learn how to do the teeter totter backwards for the first time! Stepping up on the tall side and bringing it down. I was super proud of him for that! He also walked over a suspension bridge for the first time. He thought hard about jumping onto me (I was to the side) but then thought better of it and continued. 

Your life is the worse (he had water
but was flinging it all over so I took it
down for a bit)

Trails through the campground!

I also decided to walk over to the campground to see how it looked. It's SUCH a nice campground! There are four little pipe pens to every picnic table/campsite and most of them were accessible enough to get your truck and/or entire rig near. I'm definitely going to camp next time we do something like this. TC thought it was great and had a blast walking through the more wooded area. 

I stayed a little longer to watch some more of the competition and say goodbye to everyone. I wasn't going to wait the entire day for the awards. I figured we'd been last in our division due to my animal being so feral. It didn't bother me though, I'm glad we challenged ourself with the Intermediate division and I'm glad we had this outing before we head to our first real ETS this weekend. 

Look how cute these campsites are! This one was
a bit overgrown (didn't want to post pictures of
peoples' setups)

It was great to see how he was at a brand new facility for the first time... I guess since October, but still. It was also great to get my rig out for an outing before hauling a lot longer. And it was good to see how TC did over obstacles he'd never seen before. 

We'll definitely try to make the next one of these! And hopefully we'll be camping next time too! I got a few more things to make my trailer camping situation even more comfortable. Hopefully this will be the last year I camp out of it because at the top of my list is to buy a camper for my truck so that I can do more comfortable horse camping adventures.