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. 

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!