Horsemanship Extravaganza

Otoelene and I attended our first real clinic on Saturday.  A friend had asked J when we were stopped at a gas station last week if we wanted to go.  We thought Brother might not be ready for something like that but I decided to take Otoelene.  Our friend stopped by and picked me and Otoelene up and off we went.  I had no idea what to expect.  The facebook ad just said that the clinic would prepare you for the competition the next day that would consist of taking your horse through obstacles from the ground, maneuvering your horse through obstacles from horse back and maneuvering cattle through a course.   I was really looking forward to that last part but of course that's the part we didn't work on.   

 We started off with basic ground work, yielding the hindquarters, backing, moving the front end over, side passing, lunging and sending your horse onto a trailer and backing off.

 It was cold but a sunny nice day.

 Some horses were a little reactive.

 The grey didn't want to lunge.

 So the clinician took over and with the help from his dog got things going.  At one point, after some frustration, when asked to move the front end around the owner asked, "Where do I hit him for this one?"

 We even had a few spectators.  There were 17 horses there all together.

After the ground work we saddled up for the same thing on horse back.  The people I went with have a very nice 6 year old mare.  I think they made a lot of progress with her.  They let me ride her at the end and she as very soft and willing to try.

 Some people were anxious for their horses to do the maneuvers with a lot of speed,

 while others were content to let things happen at a slower pace.

 Sort of looks like I may have fallen into the second category.   I was pleased to see several others wearing helmets.  One women started out wearing hers for the same reason I started wearing one, to set a good example for our children that were in 4-H.   My Da brim helmet brim got a few comments as usual.  I might need to get some extras to sell.

 Otoelene did perk up on occasion but for the most part was quite and listened to me great.  I even got a compliment from the clinician on how pretty her spins were. (that's something I've been spending a lot of time at home working on)

 Then we moved inside to work on some obstacles.  Otoelene actually walked over that tire pyramid next to a tarp on the first try.

When I got her to stand with her front feet on the tire, I asked someone to take our picture but they couldn't get their horse to stand still long enough to not make it blurry.

I'm not sure I learned anything really new, maybe some different ways to do some things.  But we had fun and Otoelene was sure exposed to a lot more goings on.  I was very proud of her.  When I told J how well it went he said him and Brother were going to the next one.