I started this blog just to tell you about my Friday and Saturday shower experiences, but then my entire Missouri Fox Trotter Spring Show and 3 Year Old Futurity show experience story demanded to be told. Demanded! This story has morphed into a short book! Stay tuned for the shower story….

Powder and I arrived at the Missouri Fox Trotter Showground complex in Ava, Missouri on Thursday afternoon. Our purpose is to compete Saturday in the Versatility events and to have a great time with friends!

Ava is 200 miles from home. It was hot. My air conditioning is spotty. It blows somewhat cool air if I have it set on defrost. Occasionally, there is no cool air. Driving with open windows helped. Stopping at gas stations to give the freon a chance to recover helped. Driving with windows down wasn’t too bad in the 80 something degree weather.

We found barn 17 and a parking space. I tied Powder to the outside of the trailer while I got her princess royal stall set up for her royal stay. Angel, Chas Young, appeared and hooked up the water bucket in the stall. Thank you Angel, Darrel Martin, who nearby and helped me with getting the water hose set up so it could travel over multiple stall doors to the center water connection. (There are twenty five stalls on one side of the barn.) That job needed a tall person! Thank you Darrel!

I got the stall fan set up. I found an extension cord that reached across the stall door to the electricity plug in. Thank you mounting block! I needed my mounting block to get that electricity hookup completed. (This place is made for tall people!)

Next on the sweat list was carrying the shavings bags from the trailer to the stall. I got the royal shavings set up for Powder’s comfort. After that, my facial sweat glands went into overload production. Sweat was dripping off the end of my nose. I hate that. Powder was getting anxious to be in her stall. She stopped eating grass and started glaring at me.

Finally I got her grain and a bag of hay in her stall. “Get me into my stall!. “Feed me,” she yelled at me as I walked to get her. “Done,” I said as I led her into the royal princess stall.

Chastity Young cooked an amazing dinner for our barn 17 gang. Jenny Vaught arrived and got to eat too. During our time of eating, enjoying the company of great people and sitting in front of the fan, Jenny agreed to team sort on Friday with Ross. We thought it would take a few minutes. I decided not to ride that evening. It was horrid hot and my energy had evaporated in the 200 mile drive and setting up the royal stall. After dinner, Jenny gave Powder an extensive bath. “Get that mane and tail white,” is the battle cry!

Team Sorting Explained: Ranch Sorting is a two-rider team sorting 10 numbered cattle 0-9 and 1 unnumbered cow for a total of 11 head. A run starts with the team members on the opposite side of the start line from cattle. The pen will consist of two 60° equal sized pens with 3 gates. The announcer tells the team the cow number. The team has to get three cows in number order from one pen to the other. Simple. Yes? Ha. Ha. Ha

Early Friday morning came. Jenny got Powder tacked up and headed to the team sorting. By that time Chas and Mindy had begged Jenny to team sort with them too. How could she refuse? We discovered 104 teams had signed up. That is one hundred four teams! You can partner with different people! We don’t know how many people participated, but there was a huge number of teams. Riders can be on one to five teams. Each team got to run twice unless they lost their cows the first run. The times were combined with the lowest times winning. Teams might have had a great run the first time, but if lost their cows on the second run are disqualified from winning. Those that lost their cows on the first run, didn’t get the second run. Still, there were a lot of people that made it to the second run. By the time team sorting was over, it was around 1:00. And it was hot. The shade in the arena kept getting smaller and smaller. Horses and riders had to stand out in the sun.

I sat in the shade, but it was still hot. After sorting ended, Jenny and Chas were “in the money” winners! Powder got her bath, food and water. Jenny and I ate a late lunch while Powder dried. Then it was my turn to practice with expert coaching from Jenny. Wow. She took me up some notches of experience and knowledge to versatility pattern classes. I thought I was fairly good at the patterns. I was humbled. The most fun was practicing the reining pattern. I love reining. See the pattern. It takes a while when you are new to reining to figure out the pattern. It’s easier to read the instructions.

Powder got a rinse and was allowed back into her own personal space with water, hay and feed. Every piece of manure was removed from stall.

That evening, I went to the performance horse show and sat with my barn 17 people.  I started helping the photographer extraordinaire with the winner and reserve  winner pictures.  Oh it is fun to be part of this life!

Saturday morning started out with feeding Powder around 7:00 am. About 7:30, Powder got her bath with a lot of focus on her white mane and tail. Bath was given by Jenny Vaught who knows a thing or two thousand million about getting a show horse ready.

Show was to start at 9:00 am. We arrived at the show ground about 8:30 am. The show started at 9:30am with Showmanship. This is an online ground class. Jenny put Powder’s showmanship halter on and coached me in proper arm position and running strategy. Running? Yes, the human has to run at one point and the horse is to fox trot. The arena had been watered and there were a few uneven furrows in the ground. Running was tough for me on the furrowed ground. I did not look like a sleek gazelle with a beautiful unicorn beside me. Powder always looks beyond beautiful with her long mane and tail, plus those eyes!. I looked more like a broken freight locomotive…. we lined up beautifully for judge. We had the showmanship dance. We do the quarter system dance.see showmanship link below. I backed Powder through the three cones. Sadly,I couldn’t really see the cones when in the proper position with the horse. That was tough. Maybe I should have practiced, but I thought it would be barrels, even though the pattern said cones. I had done this pattern before long ago, with Nova.  It was barrels that we backed through then.  So, my mind ignored the word cone in the pattern and formed the barrel image.  Lordy!  My brain is out of control!

The other thing about showmanship is that all participants have to enter the arena and line up, awaiting their turn. All contestants have to line up when their pattern is finished and await the judge’s decision. The moment you enter the arena until the judge makes the final decisions, you are being judged. There is no relaxing. I did banter a bit with nearby competitors, but I didn’t move my lips nor my focus on the judge. Luckily, it wasn’t hot enough to bake us to a crisp. We all survived. The winners were announced and we got our ribbons.  I had  been standing a long time in the sun with my fabulous black hat to protect my freckles.

Here is more information about Showmanship, how it started and where it is going.

Trail Class
At last I would be a rider! Jenny was right at the gate to take Powder. I staggered over to get water and revived myself. I got my shirt and vest and went into restroom for a clothing change. I love the nice white secluded chairs in the restroom!

The judge gave us a walk-thru after our volunteer helpers set up the trail obstacles. These volunteers are our horse friends who were there to support us and help. They had no idea that they would be setting up all the obstacles in all classes today. Thank you Hope and Angie from your versatility family! When the walk thru was done. I came out of the arena and found Jenny warming up Powder. Jenny helped me get on. I took a few practice spins and it was my turn to shine!

After standing through the long showmanship class, riding Powder Perfect in the trail class was fabulous. Fabulous! I love the trail class. The competition is between you and each obstacle. Also your brain is on task to remember the pattern. You must concentrate on the pattern when you are in the arena. If your brain is allowed to scitter somewhere else, your pattern goes to heck.

I had another nice break after the trail class. The obstacles were gathered up by our volunteers and the next class was walk-trot Western Pleasure. (All classes except reining are Open and Youth. Reining is only OPEN.)

This was the only class that Powder and I didn’t compete in.  It is not a point class and I have a more fun Western Pleasure class in which to ride, one where we get to canter.  I love cantering!

We had plenty of time to revive ourselves until walk, trot and canter Western Pleasure was called. What a great class that was. Everyone did fantastic. No one crowded me and Powder always found an open spot on the rail to fully impress the judge. Again, Powder did Perfect! Again, I had a lot of fun doing the three gaits around the arena on an amazing horse. All the rider has to do in Western Pleasure is get the correct gait and avoid getting penned in by a group of horses.  If you are hidden behind another horse in the class, the judge can’t see how wonderful you are.  The rider always has to be looking at where every horse is in the arena and plan ahead.

Ribbons were handed out and it was time for another class, Western Horsemanship.

This pattern looks simple, but it actually is difficult. Non horse and non canter people can just ignore this next sentence. Firstly, we start out with a counter canter. I hate that. It takes a well educated horse who knows your cue and body position to pick up the “wrong lead”. We have now went from “B” to “C”. Oh but it isn’t that simple. You have to transition from canter to stop. You have to be in a place where ou can turn without stepping on the cone. From “B” to “C” must be a straight line, so you must stop in the exact place in the sand where you can turn and head straight north…no sloppy diagonal line.

Then there is the confusing language in this instruction describing each lateral movement. Horses have a forequarter (front legs) and a hindquarter (back legs). The instructions were not clear. We were all confused. We had many discussions among the competitors as to which set of legs were to be moved and to which direction. Luckily, I had an amazing mentor in Jenny. She went thru the pattern with me again before the class started.

Horrors! Powder and I were first up. Scream! It is both good and bad to be the first one up in a pattern class. Good is that you won’t watch anyone do the pattern wrong and get yourself confused. Bad is that you don’t get to watch other riders do the pattern correct which sets the pattern in your brain better.

Off we went and of course Powder did it perfectly and my brain remembered everything! When Powder started the counter canter at “B”, I knew thing were going to br “smooth sailing”. Thanks to Jenny for expert coaching and help from the sidelines! Here is the pattern. Try to figure it out!

Let’s return to “C”. Now we need to speed up after we make the sharp turn into a fox trot. Again we have to make a straight line directly to “D”. Our orders are to stop. We must stop at exactly the space in the sand where we can make the turn without stepping on the cone and transition from turn into canter! Whowee!

It is effortless for Powder to canter on the correct lead from “D” to “E”. Now make the turns. One turn is 360 degrees and the other is 270 so you head directly to the judge. Again the point to point has to line up. Which gait to the judge? Don’t blow it at the end and forget to back up!
Powder did the whole thing perfectly.

I remember vividly that Powder and I got the Reserve winner placing in this class. The red reserve ribbon matches my hair and flushed red face! Powder’s mane was braided to prevent her from stepping on it. We did not show with a braided mane. Jenny can braid an entire long mane is about 10 seconds!

Are you ready for the shower story yet! Sorry, it is still a far place away. Heh. Heh

Time for our volunteers to set up the reining pattern! My favorite event. If I were 16 years old, I might turn into a full-on reining competitor. Thank goodness I never heard of reining until my second childhood!

Powder is an experienced show horse. She has competed in many a reining class during her seven to eight years of showing. Once she recognizes that she is in a reining pattern, she loves to speed up. Thankfully this pattern started differently than most of the other reining patterns and it took her a few moments to recognize what we were doing. Zoom! Our pattern was perfect. We nailed it! Thanks to Jenny who stood at a critical spot outside the arena and said “go left”. In many years past, few people entered the reining class and I was always assured of a ribbon. I’ll be double darned that a ton of people entered this class. My class. I own this class. Sigh.

Powder and I won Reserve Reining Champion and got that beautiful red ribbon! Those other people are going to practice reining and make my life holy hell. Drat them! If they don’t practice, the versatility bench crowd will help them. We had one young handsome rider on a beautiful dun palomino. Jeff got confused on the first spin. The horse is to do a 360 turn, four times. It is really tough to keep track of the number of spins you are doing. During my first spin, I didn’t know if I had completed 3 or 4 spins so I went another 360. Thank goodness it was needed. Back to Jeff. Jeff had a tough time on the first set. So the marvelous crowd counted his spins the second set of 4 360 spins. The crowd counted loudly 1, 2, 3, 4! The crowd is a great group of people!

I had to get off and move my body around on the ground. My body is not used to sitting on a horse all day. Powder is not used to me sitting on her all day either. Her back needed a break from me.

Barrel racing

Back in the 60’s and my life with horses as a young thin girl…. ahem. Back in the 60’s it was time for me to graduate from large pony to horse. Unknown to me until I was in my 60th life decade, I found out that my mother did not want me to become a barrel racer. She thought it was too dangerous. That is why we bought an American Saddlebred horse instead of a quarter horse. Amazing!

I was never a real barrel racer and now I’m in the 70+ age group. I never considered explaining this to Powder. I had no idea she was a 100 mph barrel racing horse in her heart.

Let’s take an experienced barrel horse and put Susan on her. Ha! Fall out of your chair! Of course, I have run a thousand barrel patterns myself, long ago. After much aging, I have changed into a casual barrel person. I love to canter between barrels and make those turns with amazing Horsemanship. I failed to mention the casual canter part to Powder.

Usually the contestant canters a few circles before starting the barrel pattern. I thought, “nah, we don’t need that. We’ll just canter to the first barrel when we get into the arena.” I asked Powder to canter to the barrel, but she understands the concept of barrel-racing gallop. We compromised on some sort of stick-legged gait where every leg was out of rhythm. We made the first turn and found the canter gait. Smoothly we slid into barrel #2 and floated to barrel #3. Whe the barrel horse goes around barrel #3, they are supposed to gallop to the finish line. Powder and I had another slightly heated discussion. She wanted to go at warp speed and I wanted a fast canter. Finally she agreed and off we went. I believe we won the least fast-barrel time!

I was thinking, only the poles are left. Soon this long wonderful hot day will be over. I told my body that news. The body had been complaining. The body had been riding this horse for about 30-60 minutes a day for the month I had Powder. There was no riding in the winter as I lacked a horse. My “core muscles” were rediscovered the day after our Kansas City Spring horse show when Powder had just arrived from Florida. Those muscles were a surprise!

Someone asked about the stake race class. I told them that there was no stake race class. Oh, I was wrong. Powder and I were then up for pole bending. There was little change in my pathetic warm-up plan. Sad. Powder and I stick-leg cantered again down the pole path. It was jarring. We sliced our way through the poles. It wasn’t pretty. We arrived at the end of the pole path and Powder told me we should gallop home. I explained again that I did not want to gallop home and after a few trotting strides, we cantered. We cantered speedily. Done! Whew

The Stake Race was next. I knew the pattern. I did not look at it or chat with anyone about it. I was called first again!. I floated through the pattern and was on my way to the gate when the crowd yelled at me! The crowd yelled at me! Huh? The “crowd” told me we were not done and to circle back through the pattern. Oh! It was a full figure eight, not a half figure eight.

Thank you crowd! We got a ribbon. We were not disqualified for breaking the pattern. “Thank you Lord,” said my body, riding was done! I dismounted on my bleacher unmounting block. Jenny led Powder away. I was standing on top of the bleachers and my lower legs started quivering. My brain screamed, “my legs are quivering. I’m going to die up here!” I was able to yell out loud. “Jenny! My legs are quivering! HELP!” Jenny got to me immediately and helped my quivering-leg body down the bleacher steps to the sacred ground. My lower legs immediately stopped quivering! I have never before experienced lower-leg quivering!

I walked on the sacred ground to get my Stake Race ribbon and then my Versatility overall ribbon. My body refused to get back on a horse.

Eight classes with a ribbon in each class. Two reserve championships! A ribbon for the overall placing in Versatility. Nine ribbons came home and are still decorating the truck!

Powder and I posed for our final ribbon picture. Jenny had braided Powder’s mane. She put all the ribbons in Powder’s braided mane. Some of them are hiding, but all nine are there.

Hold on! We are within spitting distance of the shower story now. Hang in there!

Her royal princess was escorted back to her living quarters and given a bath to rid her body of all sweat and sand. She received a full scoop of wonderful feed. She was given a hayfield of hay. She was worshiped and thanked. Jenny and I went up to food vendor row. I had eaten a biscuit and gravy way early am. We met friends, one of who had an ice cream chocolate cake Sunday. I immediately left my friends and arrived at the Taco Shop where I got an ice cream Sunday. It cooled my 1000 degree temperature down and made my tummy very happy. The tired Versatility obstacle team arrived, got food and ice cream. We chatted about their work in the arena that day. We owe these two women an immense amount of thank you! Thank you Hope and Angie!

Jenny and friends left. The two friends and Jenny went to Springfield where they got to ride in a lesson with Jenny. I visited the sacred air conditioned restroom and went to my seat area on the north side of the performance horse arena. There I watched one of my my best friends, Chasity Young, get the 2018 Sportsmanship Award. It was awesome!

The Saturday night championship horse show started. I have a job. At the end of every class, I help the fabulous photographer, Marty Maynard, get the best picture of each winning and reserve champion horse. My job is to get the horse to put their ears forward. I failed only once, a new record. The evening weather was fabulous. It was something seventy. Perfect.

The 2018 Spring Show and Three Year Old Futurity ended around midnight. My body was worn out. My body made its way to the truck. The truck went to check on Powder. Her water was refreshed and another hayfield of hay given to her. I thanked her and told her she would be going home to her beloved Caitlyn soon. Powder was gracious.

The truck then took me to the non air-conditioned shower facility. On Friday night after a full day and horse show evening, I came to this shower house to get clean for horse show Saturday. I disrobed the bountiful body and leaped into the shower. A paltry drizzle of cold water came out. It was barely enough water to wet the body and rinse off soap. As I exited the shower house, I noticed that the water guys were filling the water truck. Note to self. Check the shower water before disrobing.

Saturday night had turned into 1:00 am Sunday. My skin was dirty, but dry. I did not stink. I was getting up in 6 hours to get Powder fed and watered to prepare her for her long trailer ride. I decided to skip the shower. I took my night time essentials into the restroom/shower facility. I walked in and experienced the hot sticky air. What the heck. I’m taking the shower. I leaned into the shower and experimented. Lordy, full stream of cold and hot water happiness. I took off the stinky dirty clothes. I watered, soaped and rinsed. Ahhhhhh, that feels great. I turned the water off and looked for my towel.

Towel? You weren’t going to take a shower. There is no towel. I’m in a campground filled with people. There is no way I can sneak out to my truck and get the towel. I stood in the shower dripping wet. My brain had long ago been fried and now I have no towel. I was the only one in the shower facility. No help. Scream!

I put my night time sleeping clothes on my wet body! Can you imagine pulling clothes onto a dripping wet body? I had no idea that was even possible. Ick. Imagine putting a wet pillow case on a bountiful dry pillow. That is the only comparison I can think of.

Powder’s departure came too soon some hours later . I cleaned her stall. I don’t remember dumping the manure. Oh Lordy, I left the manure in the tub.

I loaded everything into my truck and trailer except for Powder’s hay and water bucket. It became time for Powder to load into her royal transport. She had hay, her own water bucket and two male companions. Her transport also had a camera so she could be watched the entire trip to Florida. Thank you Craig and Jayme Conklin and Ross Harper for taking Powder to Florida! Fox Trotter barn 17 friends are the best! They also supplied us with cold bottled water and pop during the show. They are a treasure!

I hopped in my truck and left the sacred grounds. My truck is blowing semi cool air if I run it on defrost. Somewhere near Springfield, the temperature climbed into the upper 90’s and my defrost air was not cool. I lost the cool. I was tired. I noticed some unsteady driving. I pulled into the PFI parking lot in Springfield, lowered the windows, put the seat back and took a nap in the nearly 100 degree weather. It was noonish and no shade existed. Good gracious!

When I awoke, I staggered into the store. To avoid having the greeter call an ambulance, I apologized for looking dead and explained I had been to a horse show. The greeter said, “You don’t look dead. you look great”. I looked around to see who she was talking too. Good grief, it was me. I tried to walk straight and be attentive to Western clothing and boots! Soon, the air conditioning revived me. I perked up and started shopping. I was able to find some bargain Western shirts for the home people. My checkout helper lives in Ava. We told everyone how amazing fox trotter are! Big PR there.

On the way home I stopped at Smith’s to eat that fabled good food and chatted with the Wilson and Stangl family. I revived myself at several gas station air conditioning on the home. I made it home! I had a great adventure! Powder is a most amazing horse. Thank you to to the Vaught family for developing such an amazing horse.

Tuesday… Powder arrived in Florida and has been united with her true love, Caitlyn. All is well! See the love Powder and Caitlyn show. Powder is a much loved horse. She told me about being loved quite a bit during our month long time.

Boy Howdy! All the riders in the show were top notch. Our youth riders are amazing and we adults always dread when they turn 18. How can we compete against perfect! The friendships gained in the Versatility Show is very tight and last a lifetime. We compete against the obstacles and the patterns. We share and help each other out.

The Spring Show Versatility and Performance classes were filled with entries. The Missouri Fox Trotter Breed future is looking great! In September the Ranch Horses classes will return with Open, Amateur and Youth classes in Versatility.

Thank you Jennifer Vaught for taking care of Powder and I. I told Jenny during the later parts of the long day that I wouldn’t be able to do this had it not been for her. She said, “You could do it.” I might have been able to do it, but my suffering would have been epic. Next year I will have a strategy where I get off the horse a lot more. I’ll carry a portable mister or fan into the Showmanship class with me too!

Get your Missouri Fox Trotter and join me in the Versatility and ranch horse classes. I’ll be watching my new horse, Fancy, and Tony Vaught Show at the 2018 Celebration! Then I take her home! There will be many more stories when that happens!