You can imagine how happy Zany has been to live right next door to beautiful horses. Sometimes when their owner has to go away, we take care of them. Zany is very proud that she knows how to feed these big beauties, though so far her interest in mucking out has lagged behind considerably....
This spring we finally were able to begin regular riding lessons for her, and she has made impressive progress in fairly little time. And then, last week, she got to go to camp for three days. Two hours of daily riding were included, as well as lessons on grooming and care taking. Then, on Sunday there was a horse show at the barn with competitive classes ranging from equitation to sack races.
We drove through misty morning hillsides to arrive at the barn early. Zany got right to work with mucking out (yes, indeed), grooming and tacking up her little sweet pony with the help of her six-year old partner.
She participated in horsemanship, equitation, pair riding, poles on the ground and sack racing and came away with two first and two third prizes. She also came in sixth (out of seven) in stable management points from camp, harking back to this lack of enthusiasm for shoveling poop. No big surprise on that front, cleaning stables is a lot less rewarding than riding itself. The show was a fantastic experience for her as a first competition. She watched others struggle and laugh off horse misbehavior, kept her composure when her horse became nervous and stopped obeying her, won a few ribbons and had a lot of fun. I mean, sack racing? How could anyone do that and not have fun?
And yet. It speaks volumes about this girl of ours that her favorite activity of the day did not offer ribbons. She has fallen in love with the challenge of vaulting, or essentially doing acrobatics on a horse. She now is thinking of taking vaulting lessons, because what could be more fun than sitting on a moving horse? Well, moving on a moving horse, of course!
No comments:
Post a Comment