Flirting with the dark side
In case I never mentioned it, I board Ro at a barrel racing barn.
There are two of us who ride dressage and a third who sometimes rides hunter.
Everyone else? Barrel racers.
This is awesome. There is no warmup ring in the world that will worry Ro, because she’s already accustomed to horses, well, barreling past her.
They are actively trying to convert us, especially since they went to a race recently and saw an Arab kicking ass. They are even more convinced than ever that Ro wants to run barrels.
My “but she’s a dressage horse!” defense lost any semblance of solid ground today when my instructor, watching us gallop around a little (we were supposed to be cantering, but I digress…), pointed out that Ro was going faster than anyone else in the arena and could probably run barrels.
So I give in.
Ro’s first event, her debut into competition, is going to be a barrel race.
The barn is having a party in early February and running a barrel race as part of that, so we’ll at least go trot the barrels. We might canter them if I’m feeling brave. I hear that at barrel races, people win money instead of ribbons. The idea is appealing.
They are also bringing in some cows to do some roping, so it’s possible we may not make it into the arena at all. Ro has seen cows before, but I’m not sure what she’s going to think of them in the chute by the arena. Hopefully she’ll be interested and not freaked out by them.
If she’s ok with them in the chute, I’m going to try and get her into the arena with the cows. No roping for us—I don’t have the eye/hand coordination, and the cow would probably pull Ro over—but I think it would be fun to herd some cows around. At a walk. A slow, sedate walk.
Cross-training is good for the body and mind, right?
Let’s see what happens when a dressage queen and her princess pony go western for a day…
Barbara says 24 January 2011
Many years ago I took my jumper to an open show (we didn’t really GO to the show, we were out hacking and there was a show at a local park) and asked if I could run barrels in my english saddle, they said sure so we did. He put in a decent showing a several people said they were amazed that a ‘English’ horse could turn like that. Obviously they had never seen some of the turns required in show jumping. It was fun, have a blast!