Our First Cowboy Challenge

Our horse club put on a Cowboy Challenge Saturday.  It was postponed from August because of rain.  This time the weather was perfect.  I asked if they needed help running the event or did they need me to bring horses.  The answer was, bring horses.  We had added a Jr. Horse category and they wanted to make sure that there would be several entries so that's what we brought.  

J rode Brother.  This was J's first time showing in anything.  He claimed afterward that he wasn't nervous all but I have my doubts.  I rode Wangler and I was plenty nervous.  He acted the best he's ever done though, not a single whinny the whole day.  It pretty much goes without saying that Brother was a dream.  The event was judged on horsemanship and style.  There was a time limit but time was only used as a tie breaker in the event of a scoring tie.  J went before me and his score was 79 1/2.  He was the only one that they gave a time warning to but he managed to finish all of the obstacles.   E took some videos of him but they are pretty long.  

Wrangler on the other hand flew through the course.  He had never been under a tent like that but the way he was loping I was hopeful that he would just keep going but no, had to stop first.  I got extra points for waving the flag around but lost them when he fell out of the plastic bottle box.  Our score was 84 1/2 which tied for 1st but the other horse ended up about 12 seconds faster.  Oh well.  2nd and 4th out of 6 wasn't too bad.  I count it as a success for our first try.