Pacific Rim All Arabian Horse Show - Saturday Walk Trot

Part 1

The schedule at the Pacific Rim Arabian Horse Show lists a slew of classes starting Saturday morning with the lunch break to be announced. That means you never know for sure exactly where in that schedule the lunch break will come. Fortunately for us, the lunch break came earlier than they had originally thought and the walk trot class was going to be after the lunch break. That gave us time for our walk trot rider to have a chance to school in the arena before her class.

I wish I had video of the schooling session. It was a zoo in that arena a lunch time. Good old Dandy packed his charge around the ring carefully despite how much he hates traffic. His only concern was Nana.

Now who is Nana, you ask? Well, Nana is the daughter of one of the clients, Chris, in Angie and Richard's barn. I'm not sure of Nana's age but I do know her birthday present was supposed to be getting to show in walk trot at the Pacific Rim All Arabian Horse Show. Then right before the horse show something happened and she lost access to the horse she was supposed to show. (Mom's horse is not broke enough for a young child)

That meant that Nana wasn't going to get to show. When I heard about this I offered up Dandy as a replacement. So one week before the horse show, Dandy got a career change from a western horse (we've been schooling exclusively western for over a year) to a hunter horse, with a new higher head set.

The only problem with this scenario was I'd also been working on freeing up Dandy's right shoulder. That shoulder has been a problem for years. I finally got it free, really free, a couple of weeks ago with something I learned from Richard.

However, using the shoulder correctly made the horse sore. Then moving him out into hunter pleasure made him use that shoulder even more so the soreness had flared up. We were really having to work trying to find a balance between giving the kids, Nana and Rachel, schooling time without making the horse too sore to show. That meant that Nana had only gotten 2 rides on Dandy before the horse show and Rachel hadn't gotten any until move in might.

Rachel didn't have any problem getting Dandy to move out at the trot but Nana did. Dandy just wasn't convinced that his little charge really should be going that fast around the arena. However, Nana was undaunted by the horse's unwillingness to move out. She just kept working at him until he finally gave her what she wanted.........but it only happened in degrees. He'd speed up just a bit, find out she could handle it and then speed up a little more. By the end of her lesson the horse was moving out.

So back to the horse show. Here's the video but unfortunately the first half of the class is not on Nana and Dandy. You won't see them until about half way through so you'll miss seeing the part where the judge reversed the kids at the trot (what judge reverses walk trot kids at the trot??) and Nana turned Dandy smack dab into the wall. That got his attention and he actually trotted off a bit better.

So let me know what you think of Dandy and Nana's debut in walk trot!

To be continued...........

More Saturday

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