Checking Out Sport Horses at Heritage

This week the first Arabian horse show of the season in our area began at the Tacoma Unit. That made the horse show about a half hour from my farm and about as accessible as a horse show can get. You'd think that right there would be enough for me to show at this show but somehow my mind is always geared towards the Daffodil show that's at the end of the month.

I don't know how long it's been that I've gone to a horse show just to watch classes. Seems if I'm not showing, I can't justify the time away from here. There's so much to do with this many horses. I am always behind so going to shows as a spectator has taken a back burner for years.

Since my truck has been in the shop for two weeks, I haven't been able to do much riding so I've managed to get some of my other back log cleared up. Towards the end of the week, I actually had the awareness the show was starting and I might even manage to attend. I've been wanting to attend for a while now so I could check out the sport horse in hand classes yesterday.

I've been thinking about showing Reflection in sport horse in hand for several years now. I actually got the horse all ready to go one year only to have him cut himself in the trailer on the day of move in. Due to the nature of the cut, we missed the show.

I've kind of been dragging my feet about getting this done because I just couldn't seem to get the idea of showing on the triangle down in my head. I hate doing something I don't understand so I have kept putting off showing in sport horse because of my fear. I figured if I could just see others showing it would make more sense.......and maybe I'd get motivated to give sport horse a try so I headed off Friday morning to the Heritage All Arabian Horse Show to watch the sport horse in hand classes.

Now I've taken a couple of seminars about sport horse in hand classes. I "get" what type of clothing needs to be worn and how the horse needs to be groomed. It was just showing that horse on the triangle that had me stumped even though I'd been told over and over again how simple it was.

I must admit when I got to the arena and watched the first exhibitor I felt pretty darn stupid. The concept of the triangle just is not the scary thing I was making it. I guess in my mind I thought the exhibitor did something different on each side of the triangle but that's just not the case.

You walk the small triangle and then trot on the second larger one. Of course, that's after walking in to the judge at the apex standing your horse square and waiting for his signal to proceed. After the walk phase and trot phase the handler stops the horse again for the judge's inspection. Pretty darn simple.

Now if I can just find clothes, get my horse fit and trotting straight instead of turning his head towards me like most exhibitors horses did, I might just take on sport horse at the Region 5 All Arabian Horse Show Championships Pre-Show. Oh, and one more minor detail would be coming up with the bucks to enter in the first place.

I will say I found watching the sport horse in hand classes to be quite boring. From what I was told they had scheduling conflicts so people were given designated times to show and those times didn't keep the exhibitors in order according to class. I never knew if I was looking at a purebred, a part-bred or for that matter the sex of the individual unless it got close enough for me to see. Also, we didn't hear scores or how classes were placed. So we had no idea what the judge did or didn't like. That part wasn't fun.

After two or three hours of that, I was done. They took a brief break and were going to resume with another ten in hand horses before the beginning of the sport horse under saddle classes. I really wanted to see if what those classes were like but it was getting late so I headed on home instead.

I went back Saturday to get a look at the junior horse western pleasure and hunter pleasure classes to see how my youngsters might compare. Not that any of them is ready for the ring yet, because that just isn't the case.

Tag, Percy and Louie are far from understanding about frame even though Louie went to a show last year. Richard and Angie thought Louie was ready but it was really obvious the horse was in over his head......... not to mention the horse was affected by being there before he was really ready so it will probably be a while before he recuperates from that mess.

Tag and Percy haven't had nearly the time worked that Louie has. They hadn't been worked since before regionals last year until I began riding Tag in Dec. Percy's only been ridden a few times since then so that means none of the three is ready. Still I wanted to see what "the competition" looks like in those classes because it's been so long since I really watched any of them.

It's always informative to watch the early shows each year. I have such a high standard of what I think a horse is supposed to do. Yet few of the horses are really meeting that standard early in the season. It's a good reminder that a horse showing at the B or A level doesn't have to be doing the same job as the horse at the regional level and the regional horse doesn't have to be as good as the national one.

There were lots of rusty horses at the show among the seasoned horses. In the classes of younger horses there were some that weren't nearly as broke as I'd like but even so mostly seemed to understand their frame much better than my three geldings. I'm hoping if the weather will ever give me a break, I might make the Daffodil Summer Show with at least one of them.

Some of the horses at the show were a bit on the wild side. I saw two young riders get dumped and one rider just lost her balance and fell off. One of the dumped riders came back in another classes and managed to ride her naughty bucking horse all the way through the class. I thought she made a great effort and I hope she feels proud of herself for her accomplishment even though I'm sure she's pretty frustrated.

The classes were running way behind schedule. It was after 5 when I got an emergency phone call from Dave about Solidare so I headed home. The show was about a third of the way down the list of classes for the afternoon session when I left. I don't know how late they showed horses last night.

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

A Hasty Deaparture



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