hobbyhorse23
Well-Known Member
I’ve got to tell you- those of you in the NW who did not attend the Beavercreek CDE last weekend (okay, two weeks ago now) really missed out. This was only the third combined driving venue I’ve had the pleasure to compete at and I was blown away by the organizers of Beavercreek. Each one has been different- Happ’s has a very laid-back northwest flavor with lots of large, solid, permanent hazards on a flat course, yaks in odd corners, and ropers competing on opposite weekends from three-day eventers when there aren’t carriages everywhere. Stoneybrook was green and beautiful, the marathon course was a bit repetitive weaving back and forth across the same field in large mowed loops but the hazards were attractive and the atmosphere somehow elegant and fun despite a complete lack of pavilions or snootiness. I haven’t gone to Lincoln Creek yet although I’ve heard good things about it. But Beavercreek! Man.
Let me describe it this way: I drove through some beautiful territory in northern Oregon, four and a half hours into my drive. To get to the Lazy S Lumbermill you turn off of I-205 and wind through some lovely back roads past large fields of golden sun-bleached grass filled with contented shiny beef cows, apple orchards where the trees march up a hill and are silhouetted again a sky so blue it hurts your eyes, and old-fashioned fire stations surrounded by white wood fences and ablaze with colored flowers. Playing peekaboo through the rolling hills is a sharply pointed white mountain elbowing the sky like a finger in the ribs. As I turned onto the final road, rows of baby Christmas trees began to appear everywhere and seemed to grow like a flipbook as I passed them until they towered above me. Suddenly on my left in an open field there appeared something that could only be a marathon hazard, pristine white-painted wood rails with flowerboxes arranged in a slippery maze straight out of the best East Coast combined driving scenes. As my excited gaze was pulled away by the movement of my truck I saw unfolding before me on the other side of a line of trees a cones course full of flowers and white knock-down poles and people I knew walking the course. There was Merridy! And Dorothy! And Ron and Anne and Linda and Peter (the Peter of the pony pair, not the Peter of the VSE’s) and Tish and all the other familiar faces! Oh, the excitement. They knew my truck and waved to me; how wonderful it is to go somewhere you’ve never been and feel a sensation of homecoming.
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I pulled into the sunny field and parked on the edge of the grove of trees that were being used as a shady campsite and waved to Bob, aka “Mr. Hyperbike,†where he was helping someone with their corral. The temperature was absolutely perfect at 6:30PM and the sun bathed the field like a balm.
Once Kody was unloaded and relaxing from his long trip I went off in search of the show office to get my packet and my course maps and find out where to set up camp. With that accomplished and the pleasant news ringing in my ears that the VSE’s would be going last in the afternoon on Saturday due to the way the dressage rings needed to be set up, I sat down and opened my program to scout the competition. There we all were, right at the end of the list as promised. Training Level VSE: Number 54….blah blah blah…and Number 55, Arrowstar’s Dakota. That’s it. What? I flipped the page over a few times and realized that the rest of the list was not hiding on the other side, that, in fact, there was no “rest of the list.†There were only two training and two preliminary level VSE’s. :new_shocked: What the heck was up with that?!
: There were thirteen training level entries at Happ’s and many had expressed their intentions to attend Beavercreek. I know Amy (clickmini) had a clicker seminar she was already committed to attending and Anne’s husband was having knee surgery but where was everyone else? Poor Tish, the organizer, went to so much work to accommodate the VSE’s and then no one entered.
Guys, she is saying she will cancel the VSE division next year due to lack of interest if we don’t do something. Don’t let that happen! If you are in the northwest and you could even possibly come next year, please go to the Beavercreek website (www.beavercreek.org) and email Tish and let her know you want the VSE division offered. Offer to volunteer if you won’t have a horse ready!
: We need to get out there and support our show holders if we want them to continue to undertake the extra work of arranging things for our little horses. Let me show you WHY this event is worth supporting.
Here is the lady who sounded the call to begin in the morning.
Yes, that’s a horn. A real, live horn was used to play real, live horn calls to signal the start of the day. This was followed shortly by the broadcast of the National Anthem, something you don’t hear very often anymore and which lent a distinctly Olympic feel to things. Drivers all stopped their horses and stood immobile and square with heads bowed, and all the beautiful hats were removed from our heads as we listened to the symphonic rendition of the “Star Spangled Banner.†Throughout the day soft music played over the imported speakers lending a classical feeling to the proceedings. The photographer, Tim O’Neil of Action Taken Photography did an excellent job capturing the action; I only wish he could have been in two places at once to get the cones course too. The officials they imported were excellent; the gentleman who did Presentation and Safety Check was from Arizona and a total riot. He was also very thorough- his comment on my vehicle’s brass was to ask if it was plated or solid (how should I know?) because it looked like it was being worn thin from too much polishing! :new_shocked: And here we went to all that work so that he’d notice how clean it was.
: :lol: The President of the Jury was Lawrence Poulin and Debbie Banfield was one of the ground jury. (Yes Bluerocket, the director of the Gayla Center in KY! I asked if she remembered you and said I was thinking about flying out to volunteer in the next couple of years and watch you compete. She thought that was great.) There wasn’t a single official that wasn’t from somewhere that required a plane ticket and most of them were big names. All were friendly.
Dressage was a disaster for the VSE’s. The horse before me had been warming up really beautifully, I mean this horse just looked better than he ever had and I was really impressed. Then on his way into the ring he spotted two white bricks buried in the ground under the temporarily moved letter A (don’t ask why they were there, nobody knew) and he spooked and according to his driver he just never got his mind back in the game. I was too busy warming up for my go to see more than that but his dressage score was quite good so it can’t be as bad as his driver claimed.
Kody’s go was pretty awful, he just hadn’t been quite right all weekend. He was bright-eyed and cheerful, eating and drinking, peeing and pooping, wanted to be hitched and was happy to move fast to get somewhere he wanted to go but he refused to settle into a long rhythmic stride and his attention was clearly elsewhere. He broke into a canter three times which is totally unlike him during dressage. He also had mysteriously bad breath, something I’ve never noticed with him before, so I have to wonder if he had a digestive problem or a dental issue I hadn’t caught. He just had his teeth floated by an equine dentist a few months ago and he wasn’t having any problem with the bit or bridling, nor with eating, but something wasn’t right. So between it being an awful week for his stifles and having something wrong up front I have to assume it was either discomfort of some kind or simply the fact he hasn’t given me a bad test yet in two years and he was due for one! LOL. At least he picked the event where we were guaranteed second as long as we didn’t eliminate. Our show record is intact! Hehehe.
Here are some of those dressage photos you’ve all been asking for, not a one of them showing him actually behaving. These are just the ones where he’s NOT actively throwing his head up, locking his jaw, breaking, or doing his completely choppy short trot!
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And here are some of the professional pictures I bought the CD of. You can see that the brim of my helmet suddenly decided to fall off and rest on my glasses the whole test! I had to rip it off before doing cones; I guess I’ll be buying a new one before Lincoln Creek.
On the plus side he totally pulled it together for cones. I’m learning that if I have a good feeling about the day and we warm up well it will be a disaster (witness Happ’s) and if I throw my hands in the air and say “The heck with it, we’re going to suck†we’ll kick butt! LOL. Maybe it’s because I’m not worried about being perfect so I don’t oversteer him? On the other hand I was really focused on that anyway so perhaps it didn’t make a difference. All I know is that about the time he saw the ingate he perked up and was suddenly very forward and on the bit even while I stopped and saluted the judge, and when the whistle blew, man, he was off! No wobbling this time. We quickly got into a rhythm of corrections and straight-aways and Kody decided that it was much more comfortable to canter. Since he settled into a perfectly straight canter and wasn’t trying to buck or race I decided to leave him alone. At one point I had to make a 90 degree left hand turn for Obstacle 5 and I assumed he’d break to a trot as we made the turn the way he did at Happ’s 2005. Nope. Nada. No way. He cantered the whole thing, zipped neatly through the cones with nary a bobble and only broke to a trot for the 90 degree turn to the other direction for the knockdown L! Silly boy. There was no stopping him after that, he did a great job through the serpentine, the stairstep, the U.
Can you see what’s coming?
Yes.
It happened.
After two years, we FINALLY had our first clean cones go!! Woot! :488:
We may survive preliminary yet.
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Here’s a three picture series of cantering Obstacle 5 and going into the L. You can see the lumber mill in the background.
Cantering in…
Breaking to a trot…
My favorite picture of the show!
We spent the rest of the day relaxing and trying to avoid the sun because my hairy little beast was once again roasting. He got sick and tired of cold hosing by that afternoon, I’ll tell you! LOL. We got quite a few giggles over this little [SIZE=8pt]tiny[/SIZE] horse being held down by two handlers on stretched leads while I chased him with the water! :risa_suelos: Once his paddock was back in the shade and he was once again down for a nap, Bob and I set out to walk the marathon course. I wish I had thought to take pictures of the actual hazard configurations but for some reason it just didn’t occur to me despite the camera in my pocket. I did however take some pictures of various scenes and I will post them here. I promise next year I will get a virtual photo tour of the course so you all can follow along and see what it was like!
This is Hazard 2, which was training level didn’t get to try. It’s too bad, it was a really fascinating hazard!
Another view of it
An example of a hazard that was apparently left over from the previous year and unflagged.
Bob was as usual amazingly patient about me physically running each hazard a hundred and one times until the route is drilled into my head and I’m pleased to say this time he was testing out ideas of his own. He says he still can’t harness a horse but I think he can run hazards as well as anyone now! We even got him decoding the little directional signs with all their colored squares and codes within codes. Remember: “We want black T’s on little purple plates!†:lol: Only in marathon.
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It took us a good long time to walk 5km as it was mostly some variety of uphill or down but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d feared from descriptions of “no flat ground anywhere†and “huge long hill after the creek,†etc. I got to the creek, looked at the hill, and said “That’s IT? THAT’S the hill?†It was the kind of thing you would have sent a riding horse galloping up and they would have been to the top in a few short strides. No it wasn’t going to be easy for anything hauling a load, especially not the little guys, but it was doable. The whole route was gorgeous, the hazards were attractive and challenging, and I was thoroughly looking forward to the next day. I went to bed that night with alternate routes running through my head and dreamed of preliminary where I can finally canter without penalty.
The next morning I was up on time and got everything ready to go while Kody was eating breakfast. I put pads on his harness because of the hills, got my spares kit packed and loaded, got the timer on the ‘Bike, put some Vetwrap on the shafts to quiet the clinking of my breeching buckles, marked my maps and figured my times and put them all in my greencard holder where I could get at them easily. I was on time and all set to harness when the upset stomach hit. Oh no! I prayed in the RV while Mom got Kody’s blankets off and groomed him and by some miracle at the last possible minute I was okay to go. Which was good- 5km of bumpy trail uphill and down with no Porta Potty in sight and a timer running did NOT sound attractive!
We made it through safety check (got a raised eyebrow over the Hyperbike but he passed it with much interest) and off we went. We got a time penalty in Section A because Kody absolutely refused to move faster than an Amish-buggy jog on the paved street that constituted the entire 1km section (it was the walk section for the big horses). It was rather funny actually- I had time to wave and have an entire conversation with the people manning the hazard at the far end of the lane because he was just ticking along. Do-ta-de, la-te-da….â€Come on Kody, move it!†La-te-da….::sigh:: On the plus side that meant he had no trouble with passing vet check as he certainly hadn’t exerted himself yet.
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He wasn’t any happier trotting through the concrete lumber yard that constituted the start of Section E but he was awfully good about all the spooky sights and sounds. And despite insisting on walking across the large rocks that formed the exit lane from the mill he made up time with a vengeance the minute his feet hit dirt- he was off like he’d been shot from a cannon! He blew through Hazard 1 exactly as we’d walked it, whipping around tall pine trees and over roots without stumbling. He picked up a lot of speed going down the hill beyond the exit and I thought for sure I was going to get him over the plank bridge at the bottom without breaking gait but it’s amazing how fast he can put on the brakes when he wants to.
: The moment his hoof hit hollow-sounding wood he was at a walk.
: At least all he does is slow down and look! That’s much better than trying to leap to the side and ending up in the drink.
We passed the fascinating and picturesque hazard shown earlier that only preliminary and up got to do and I was pleased to see that Kody not only noticed it but was pulling towards it and wanting to go in. This is good! This means he enjoys what we’re doing even though we haven’t added speed as a component yet. We went on and jogged up a hill, around a bend, down a hill, up another hill, through one more tree hazard, around a bend or two by the colored poles I showed earlier, and then we burst through the gap in the hedge to enter Hazard 4.
Let me share a diagram of the hazard so you can get a feel for what I’m describing.
Try tracing it yourself and see how many different ways there were to go through A, B, and C in order. The dark dots represent the red markers and must be on your right as you pass through the gate. I had a lot of fun choosing alternate routes for this hazard and was quite pleased with how my final choice worked out. So, back to the story!
Since this is where the professional photographer had stationed himself I’ve got plenty of pictures. I encouraged Kody to pick up speed and really go for it but the hazard was on a slope and the lil’ man simply wasn’t up to zooming up hills at that point without being allowed to canter. We found out earlier this week that he probably has a virus of some sort so it’s a measure of his heart and enjoyment of the sport that he was making time at all. Still, he maintained a working trot up the hill as I called out my number and the volunteers ran to man the starting line with their timers held in the air above their heads. As timing started and their hands swooped down to mark the beginning of our run we headed for “A†around the outside of the fence but inside the poles.
A fast cut to the left through the opening and we were off. Down the hill curving around a post in a wider arc to maintain momentum, we drop into Gate “B†at the bottom of the hill. I carefully push him up before making the turn to avoid losing momentum as we swing around uphill, make a split-second decision about whether to take the tight route or the wider flowing one. He indicates he’s willing to take the tight route but I judge it will cost us time to get straightened out so we go wide. He obediently pulls up the hill and left through a chute of white fencing and around a pole on the outside edge of the hazard.
We make another left turn around the second pole and dodge neatly through Gate “C†on the inside of it. And then in one of my rare fits of common sense, instead of confusing the horse by switching reins and going right through the center of the hazard we stay left and turn our circle into a tight spiral which spits us out on a straight line for the outgate.
Brilliant! Kody cheerfully picks up a fast trot now that he’s downhill and I let him break into an illegal canter once we’re past the out gate because I know the photographer is watching. I’m hoping he’s taking pictures as I bounce off into the sunrise and lo and behold- he is! Score.
: I love these shots the best despite the way I’m slouching and the fact that Kody appears more than slightly rotund. Well, honestly he is right now!
One of the volunteers from that hazard found me later and took the time to tell me that she thought Kody and I had done a wonderful job, flowing smoothly and quietly through the obstacle with no wasted movements. I took that as the highest form of compliment since hazards are one thing I know we've really needed to work on.
Kody did an awesome job zinging through the forest after that and he picked up so much speed going downhill towards the water I was sort of hoping to run him right into it since the creek was around a blind corner. Again with the super brakes though! Just as we burst around the bushes at full run and I caught a glimpse of Bob and my mother and Peter (of the VSE’s this time, waiting to watch his wife) Kody slammed on the brakes and came to a screeching halt by the water’s edge. Gotta love him.
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I felt like I was in a slow-motion cartoon as we painstakingly picked our way across with the cameras flashing repeatedly. After a thumb-twiddling eternity we reached the other side and I was able to encourage him to get up some speed for the hill. By then, of course, the cameras were recovering from their flashing fits and weren’t ready to take a picture. Kody made me very proud of him with the way he willingly picked up a trot past the scary crouching people in the bushes and then lunged up the hill at a run. What had seemed so long and hard when you looked at it on foot was over in an eyeblink and I was left feeling like “That was it? Hey, that was easy!†Granted the little guy had his Hyperbike and only nice tiny me to haul behind him and I don’t know how much harder it would have been with a regular cart or more weight, but still. He did a great job. :aktion033:
When we crested the hill we found we were at the end of the marathon and the only thing left in front of us was one last hazard called the Squirrel’s Whirl. It was a series of chutes set on the side of a hill so your horse had to make time up a slope, turn sharply, then within two strides try to control the cart going downhill and then make another sharp turn at the bottom and make another loop up and over for C.
Here’s a diagram:
When walking it I’d assumed Kody was going to be exhausted by this point and had planned a lot of alternate routes I could choose from depending on how much get-up-and-go he had left and how agile he still was. As it turned out, while I think his muscles were aching from going constantly uphill with only a small break after The Hill he was actually still quite forward and game when we hit Hazard 6. We were a little slow and wobbly going up the first chute but there’s enough room for VSE’s that it wasn’t a problem, and then he did great going down “B†chute. I managed to drive exactly the line I had planned to be able to pick different routes for the upward loop at the last minute and as we hit the bottom of the hill it was my judgment that this time we could do the tight route. So with a teamster-like “Kody, get right! Get right! Hup!†we spun hard to the right and took off uphill with all the momentum of our downhill run behind us. By the time it ran out we were halfway up the hill and it was easy to make it the last couple of strides. And from there all we had to do was trot straight downhill through “C†chute and out the outgate, then across the field and into the final vet box. Of course I almost missed the eighth route marker in a foolish mistake which would have eliminated me, but I realized it at the last minute and Kody dodged neatly sideways and through it in a move that would have done us proud in cones.
What a horse!
Here is a picture of the only four-in-hand in attendance doing the same hazard. It’s immensely humbling to watch them!
We took it easy the rest of the afternoon relaxing in the hot sun and packing up lazily while waiting for the results. We already knew I’d gotten second of two thanks to that dressage go but it’s always fun to see what everyone else gets. Bob’s family was able to come spend the afternoon and they were given rides on minis of appropriate sizes and took rickshaw rides pulled by their dad on my Hyperbike. Of course Kody and I had to take another nap.
I’m making a summer bookmark out of this one.
When it was finally time to leave Kody hopped on the trailer quite willingly despite the fact he surely knew there was a five hour drive ahead. We got home around 9:30PM and managed to get the trailer cleaned out and unhitched, the RV unloaded, barn cleaned, and horses fed before we collapsed. I’m afraid Mom went to work with the cart still in the back of the truck the next morning though! :lol:
We are finally enjoying some well-earned time off after a very busy summer. We did Stoneybrook in OR, then Happ’s two weeks later, then a couple of weekends later it was the AMHR show and the very next weekend all the way down to Oregon again for Beavercreek. Only one of those was less than two and a half hours away. Kody and I sure enjoy the competitions and the chance to get out and socialize but it gets tiring after awhile and we’ll be glad to stay home and recover until Lincoln Creek the second week of August. Kody’s got an awful barking cough right now and is on some meds so he needs the time off to get back to his old self and while he’s recouping I will take some time for me and go see Pirates of the Caribbean in the air conditioned quiet. Ahhh….air conditioning….
I know these writeups are long so thank you for taking the time to read them. My hope is that those of you considering CDE’s will get a feeling for what they’re like and how they are run and will be more confident when you finally decide to attend one yourself. I know I sure would have appreciated the same thing two years ago! I also save these for Kody’s virtual scrapbook and I really love rereading all the comments you leave. Thanks so much for your support!
Speaking of support, remember that Beavercreek is in danger. If this venue sounded like somewhere you’d like to compete PLEASE tell Tish that you’d like to see the VSE division offered next year. The only thing that will actually keep it open though is entries. Get your horses out, get them in shape, and email her and let her know you’ll be coming in 2007!
Leia
Let me describe it this way: I drove through some beautiful territory in northern Oregon, four and a half hours into my drive. To get to the Lazy S Lumbermill you turn off of I-205 and wind through some lovely back roads past large fields of golden sun-bleached grass filled with contented shiny beef cows, apple orchards where the trees march up a hill and are silhouetted again a sky so blue it hurts your eyes, and old-fashioned fire stations surrounded by white wood fences and ablaze with colored flowers. Playing peekaboo through the rolling hills is a sharply pointed white mountain elbowing the sky like a finger in the ribs. As I turned onto the final road, rows of baby Christmas trees began to appear everywhere and seemed to grow like a flipbook as I passed them until they towered above me. Suddenly on my left in an open field there appeared something that could only be a marathon hazard, pristine white-painted wood rails with flowerboxes arranged in a slippery maze straight out of the best East Coast combined driving scenes. As my excited gaze was pulled away by the movement of my truck I saw unfolding before me on the other side of a line of trees a cones course full of flowers and white knock-down poles and people I knew walking the course. There was Merridy! And Dorothy! And Ron and Anne and Linda and Peter (the Peter of the pony pair, not the Peter of the VSE’s) and Tish and all the other familiar faces! Oh, the excitement. They knew my truck and waved to me; how wonderful it is to go somewhere you’ve never been and feel a sensation of homecoming.
I pulled into the sunny field and parked on the edge of the grove of trees that were being used as a shady campsite and waved to Bob, aka “Mr. Hyperbike,†where he was helping someone with their corral. The temperature was absolutely perfect at 6:30PM and the sun bathed the field like a balm.
Once Kody was unloaded and relaxing from his long trip I went off in search of the show office to get my packet and my course maps and find out where to set up camp. With that accomplished and the pleasant news ringing in my ears that the VSE’s would be going last in the afternoon on Saturday due to the way the dressage rings needed to be set up, I sat down and opened my program to scout the competition. There we all were, right at the end of the list as promised. Training Level VSE: Number 54….blah blah blah…and Number 55, Arrowstar’s Dakota. That’s it. What? I flipped the page over a few times and realized that the rest of the list was not hiding on the other side, that, in fact, there was no “rest of the list.†There were only two training and two preliminary level VSE’s. :new_shocked: What the heck was up with that?!
Guys, she is saying she will cancel the VSE division next year due to lack of interest if we don’t do something. Don’t let that happen! If you are in the northwest and you could even possibly come next year, please go to the Beavercreek website (www.beavercreek.org) and email Tish and let her know you want the VSE division offered. Offer to volunteer if you won’t have a horse ready!
Here is the lady who sounded the call to begin in the morning.
Yes, that’s a horn. A real, live horn was used to play real, live horn calls to signal the start of the day. This was followed shortly by the broadcast of the National Anthem, something you don’t hear very often anymore and which lent a distinctly Olympic feel to things. Drivers all stopped their horses and stood immobile and square with heads bowed, and all the beautiful hats were removed from our heads as we listened to the symphonic rendition of the “Star Spangled Banner.†Throughout the day soft music played over the imported speakers lending a classical feeling to the proceedings. The photographer, Tim O’Neil of Action Taken Photography did an excellent job capturing the action; I only wish he could have been in two places at once to get the cones course too. The officials they imported were excellent; the gentleman who did Presentation and Safety Check was from Arizona and a total riot. He was also very thorough- his comment on my vehicle’s brass was to ask if it was plated or solid (how should I know?) because it looked like it was being worn thin from too much polishing! :new_shocked: And here we went to all that work so that he’d notice how clean it was.
Dressage was a disaster for the VSE’s. The horse before me had been warming up really beautifully, I mean this horse just looked better than he ever had and I was really impressed. Then on his way into the ring he spotted two white bricks buried in the ground under the temporarily moved letter A (don’t ask why they were there, nobody knew) and he spooked and according to his driver he just never got his mind back in the game. I was too busy warming up for my go to see more than that but his dressage score was quite good so it can’t be as bad as his driver claimed.
Kody’s go was pretty awful, he just hadn’t been quite right all weekend. He was bright-eyed and cheerful, eating and drinking, peeing and pooping, wanted to be hitched and was happy to move fast to get somewhere he wanted to go but he refused to settle into a long rhythmic stride and his attention was clearly elsewhere. He broke into a canter three times which is totally unlike him during dressage. He also had mysteriously bad breath, something I’ve never noticed with him before, so I have to wonder if he had a digestive problem or a dental issue I hadn’t caught. He just had his teeth floated by an equine dentist a few months ago and he wasn’t having any problem with the bit or bridling, nor with eating, but something wasn’t right. So between it being an awful week for his stifles and having something wrong up front I have to assume it was either discomfort of some kind or simply the fact he hasn’t given me a bad test yet in two years and he was due for one! LOL. At least he picked the event where we were guaranteed second as long as we didn’t eliminate. Our show record is intact! Hehehe.
Here are some of those dressage photos you’ve all been asking for, not a one of them showing him actually behaving. These are just the ones where he’s NOT actively throwing his head up, locking his jaw, breaking, or doing his completely choppy short trot!
And here are some of the professional pictures I bought the CD of. You can see that the brim of my helmet suddenly decided to fall off and rest on my glasses the whole test! I had to rip it off before doing cones; I guess I’ll be buying a new one before Lincoln Creek.
On the plus side he totally pulled it together for cones. I’m learning that if I have a good feeling about the day and we warm up well it will be a disaster (witness Happ’s) and if I throw my hands in the air and say “The heck with it, we’re going to suck†we’ll kick butt! LOL. Maybe it’s because I’m not worried about being perfect so I don’t oversteer him? On the other hand I was really focused on that anyway so perhaps it didn’t make a difference. All I know is that about the time he saw the ingate he perked up and was suddenly very forward and on the bit even while I stopped and saluted the judge, and when the whistle blew, man, he was off! No wobbling this time. We quickly got into a rhythm of corrections and straight-aways and Kody decided that it was much more comfortable to canter. Since he settled into a perfectly straight canter and wasn’t trying to buck or race I decided to leave him alone. At one point I had to make a 90 degree left hand turn for Obstacle 5 and I assumed he’d break to a trot as we made the turn the way he did at Happ’s 2005. Nope. Nada. No way. He cantered the whole thing, zipped neatly through the cones with nary a bobble and only broke to a trot for the 90 degree turn to the other direction for the knockdown L! Silly boy. There was no stopping him after that, he did a great job through the serpentine, the stairstep, the U.
Can you see what’s coming?
Yes.
It happened.
After two years, we FINALLY had our first clean cones go!! Woot! :488:
We may survive preliminary yet.
Here’s a three picture series of cantering Obstacle 5 and going into the L. You can see the lumber mill in the background.
Cantering in…
Breaking to a trot…
My favorite picture of the show!
We spent the rest of the day relaxing and trying to avoid the sun because my hairy little beast was once again roasting. He got sick and tired of cold hosing by that afternoon, I’ll tell you! LOL. We got quite a few giggles over this little [SIZE=8pt]tiny[/SIZE] horse being held down by two handlers on stretched leads while I chased him with the water! :risa_suelos: Once his paddock was back in the shade and he was once again down for a nap, Bob and I set out to walk the marathon course. I wish I had thought to take pictures of the actual hazard configurations but for some reason it just didn’t occur to me despite the camera in my pocket. I did however take some pictures of various scenes and I will post them here. I promise next year I will get a virtual photo tour of the course so you all can follow along and see what it was like!
This is Hazard 2, which was training level didn’t get to try. It’s too bad, it was a really fascinating hazard!
Another view of it
An example of a hazard that was apparently left over from the previous year and unflagged.
Bob was as usual amazingly patient about me physically running each hazard a hundred and one times until the route is drilled into my head and I’m pleased to say this time he was testing out ideas of his own. He says he still can’t harness a horse but I think he can run hazards as well as anyone now! We even got him decoding the little directional signs with all their colored squares and codes within codes. Remember: “We want black T’s on little purple plates!†:lol: Only in marathon.
It took us a good long time to walk 5km as it was mostly some variety of uphill or down but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d feared from descriptions of “no flat ground anywhere†and “huge long hill after the creek,†etc. I got to the creek, looked at the hill, and said “That’s IT? THAT’S the hill?†It was the kind of thing you would have sent a riding horse galloping up and they would have been to the top in a few short strides. No it wasn’t going to be easy for anything hauling a load, especially not the little guys, but it was doable. The whole route was gorgeous, the hazards were attractive and challenging, and I was thoroughly looking forward to the next day. I went to bed that night with alternate routes running through my head and dreamed of preliminary where I can finally canter without penalty.
The next morning I was up on time and got everything ready to go while Kody was eating breakfast. I put pads on his harness because of the hills, got my spares kit packed and loaded, got the timer on the ‘Bike, put some Vetwrap on the shafts to quiet the clinking of my breeching buckles, marked my maps and figured my times and put them all in my greencard holder where I could get at them easily. I was on time and all set to harness when the upset stomach hit. Oh no! I prayed in the RV while Mom got Kody’s blankets off and groomed him and by some miracle at the last possible minute I was okay to go. Which was good- 5km of bumpy trail uphill and down with no Porta Potty in sight and a timer running did NOT sound attractive!
We made it through safety check (got a raised eyebrow over the Hyperbike but he passed it with much interest) and off we went. We got a time penalty in Section A because Kody absolutely refused to move faster than an Amish-buggy jog on the paved street that constituted the entire 1km section (it was the walk section for the big horses). It was rather funny actually- I had time to wave and have an entire conversation with the people manning the hazard at the far end of the lane because he was just ticking along. Do-ta-de, la-te-da….â€Come on Kody, move it!†La-te-da….::sigh:: On the plus side that meant he had no trouble with passing vet check as he certainly hadn’t exerted himself yet.
He wasn’t any happier trotting through the concrete lumber yard that constituted the start of Section E but he was awfully good about all the spooky sights and sounds. And despite insisting on walking across the large rocks that formed the exit lane from the mill he made up time with a vengeance the minute his feet hit dirt- he was off like he’d been shot from a cannon! He blew through Hazard 1 exactly as we’d walked it, whipping around tall pine trees and over roots without stumbling. He picked up a lot of speed going down the hill beyond the exit and I thought for sure I was going to get him over the plank bridge at the bottom without breaking gait but it’s amazing how fast he can put on the brakes when he wants to.
We passed the fascinating and picturesque hazard shown earlier that only preliminary and up got to do and I was pleased to see that Kody not only noticed it but was pulling towards it and wanting to go in. This is good! This means he enjoys what we’re doing even though we haven’t added speed as a component yet. We went on and jogged up a hill, around a bend, down a hill, up another hill, through one more tree hazard, around a bend or two by the colored poles I showed earlier, and then we burst through the gap in the hedge to enter Hazard 4.
Let me share a diagram of the hazard so you can get a feel for what I’m describing.
Try tracing it yourself and see how many different ways there were to go through A, B, and C in order. The dark dots represent the red markers and must be on your right as you pass through the gate. I had a lot of fun choosing alternate routes for this hazard and was quite pleased with how my final choice worked out. So, back to the story!
Since this is where the professional photographer had stationed himself I’ve got plenty of pictures. I encouraged Kody to pick up speed and really go for it but the hazard was on a slope and the lil’ man simply wasn’t up to zooming up hills at that point without being allowed to canter. We found out earlier this week that he probably has a virus of some sort so it’s a measure of his heart and enjoyment of the sport that he was making time at all. Still, he maintained a working trot up the hill as I called out my number and the volunteers ran to man the starting line with their timers held in the air above their heads. As timing started and their hands swooped down to mark the beginning of our run we headed for “A†around the outside of the fence but inside the poles.
A fast cut to the left through the opening and we were off. Down the hill curving around a post in a wider arc to maintain momentum, we drop into Gate “B†at the bottom of the hill. I carefully push him up before making the turn to avoid losing momentum as we swing around uphill, make a split-second decision about whether to take the tight route or the wider flowing one. He indicates he’s willing to take the tight route but I judge it will cost us time to get straightened out so we go wide. He obediently pulls up the hill and left through a chute of white fencing and around a pole on the outside edge of the hazard.
We make another left turn around the second pole and dodge neatly through Gate “C†on the inside of it. And then in one of my rare fits of common sense, instead of confusing the horse by switching reins and going right through the center of the hazard we stay left and turn our circle into a tight spiral which spits us out on a straight line for the outgate.
Brilliant! Kody cheerfully picks up a fast trot now that he’s downhill and I let him break into an illegal canter once we’re past the out gate because I know the photographer is watching. I’m hoping he’s taking pictures as I bounce off into the sunrise and lo and behold- he is! Score.
One of the volunteers from that hazard found me later and took the time to tell me that she thought Kody and I had done a wonderful job, flowing smoothly and quietly through the obstacle with no wasted movements. I took that as the highest form of compliment since hazards are one thing I know we've really needed to work on.
Kody did an awesome job zinging through the forest after that and he picked up so much speed going downhill towards the water I was sort of hoping to run him right into it since the creek was around a blind corner. Again with the super brakes though! Just as we burst around the bushes at full run and I caught a glimpse of Bob and my mother and Peter (of the VSE’s this time, waiting to watch his wife) Kody slammed on the brakes and came to a screeching halt by the water’s edge. Gotta love him.
I felt like I was in a slow-motion cartoon as we painstakingly picked our way across with the cameras flashing repeatedly. After a thumb-twiddling eternity we reached the other side and I was able to encourage him to get up some speed for the hill. By then, of course, the cameras were recovering from their flashing fits and weren’t ready to take a picture. Kody made me very proud of him with the way he willingly picked up a trot past the scary crouching people in the bushes and then lunged up the hill at a run. What had seemed so long and hard when you looked at it on foot was over in an eyeblink and I was left feeling like “That was it? Hey, that was easy!†Granted the little guy had his Hyperbike and only nice tiny me to haul behind him and I don’t know how much harder it would have been with a regular cart or more weight, but still. He did a great job. :aktion033:
When we crested the hill we found we were at the end of the marathon and the only thing left in front of us was one last hazard called the Squirrel’s Whirl. It was a series of chutes set on the side of a hill so your horse had to make time up a slope, turn sharply, then within two strides try to control the cart going downhill and then make another sharp turn at the bottom and make another loop up and over for C.
Here’s a diagram:
When walking it I’d assumed Kody was going to be exhausted by this point and had planned a lot of alternate routes I could choose from depending on how much get-up-and-go he had left and how agile he still was. As it turned out, while I think his muscles were aching from going constantly uphill with only a small break after The Hill he was actually still quite forward and game when we hit Hazard 6. We were a little slow and wobbly going up the first chute but there’s enough room for VSE’s that it wasn’t a problem, and then he did great going down “B†chute. I managed to drive exactly the line I had planned to be able to pick different routes for the upward loop at the last minute and as we hit the bottom of the hill it was my judgment that this time we could do the tight route. So with a teamster-like “Kody, get right! Get right! Hup!†we spun hard to the right and took off uphill with all the momentum of our downhill run behind us. By the time it ran out we were halfway up the hill and it was easy to make it the last couple of strides. And from there all we had to do was trot straight downhill through “C†chute and out the outgate, then across the field and into the final vet box. Of course I almost missed the eighth route marker in a foolish mistake which would have eliminated me, but I realized it at the last minute and Kody dodged neatly sideways and through it in a move that would have done us proud in cones.
What a horse!
Here is a picture of the only four-in-hand in attendance doing the same hazard. It’s immensely humbling to watch them!
We took it easy the rest of the afternoon relaxing in the hot sun and packing up lazily while waiting for the results. We already knew I’d gotten second of two thanks to that dressage go but it’s always fun to see what everyone else gets. Bob’s family was able to come spend the afternoon and they were given rides on minis of appropriate sizes and took rickshaw rides pulled by their dad on my Hyperbike. Of course Kody and I had to take another nap.
I’m making a summer bookmark out of this one.
When it was finally time to leave Kody hopped on the trailer quite willingly despite the fact he surely knew there was a five hour drive ahead. We got home around 9:30PM and managed to get the trailer cleaned out and unhitched, the RV unloaded, barn cleaned, and horses fed before we collapsed. I’m afraid Mom went to work with the cart still in the back of the truck the next morning though! :lol:
We are finally enjoying some well-earned time off after a very busy summer. We did Stoneybrook in OR, then Happ’s two weeks later, then a couple of weekends later it was the AMHR show and the very next weekend all the way down to Oregon again for Beavercreek. Only one of those was less than two and a half hours away. Kody and I sure enjoy the competitions and the chance to get out and socialize but it gets tiring after awhile and we’ll be glad to stay home and recover until Lincoln Creek the second week of August. Kody’s got an awful barking cough right now and is on some meds so he needs the time off to get back to his old self and while he’s recouping I will take some time for me and go see Pirates of the Caribbean in the air conditioned quiet. Ahhh….air conditioning….
I know these writeups are long so thank you for taking the time to read them. My hope is that those of you considering CDE’s will get a feeling for what they’re like and how they are run and will be more confident when you finally decide to attend one yourself. I know I sure would have appreciated the same thing two years ago! I also save these for Kody’s virtual scrapbook and I really love rereading all the comments you leave. Thanks so much for your support!
Speaking of support, remember that Beavercreek is in danger. If this venue sounded like somewhere you’d like to compete PLEASE tell Tish that you’d like to see the VSE division offered next year. The only thing that will actually keep it open though is entries. Get your horses out, get them in shape, and email her and let her know you’ll be coming in 2007!
Leia
