AVA VERSATILITY DAY- MORNING DEMONSTRATIONS

Friday morning at Ava, I got to watch the great versatility demonstrations put on/arranged by Duane and Sally Scott.

SALLY SCOTT AND EQUITATION

Sally was 1st up with a demonstration of equitation. Erin Stevens was one of the examples along with a man warming up a horse for his daughter. At the beginning of the demonstrations, Duane picked this man out and made him enter the arena. He did really well as did Erin. I wanted to be picked from the audience too, so I quickly saddled Velvet and watched the demonstrations from very near where Sally was talking. Unfortunately, Sally wasn’t struck by the fine example of equitation and balance that my imitation one-legged hippopotamus look-alike presented as I slouched on the saddle waiting for the cue that never came.

None-the less, I enjoyed the demonstration. Sally had the two subjects ride around and described the good equitation that they were presenting. She picked on some little technical points here and there and soon there were two perfect riders going around the arena. Not happy with that, she made them ride with poor equitation. She made them relax their shoulders into a bouncing slouch, put their toes down and heels up; stare down at the horse’s ears and bob their heads. Our two demonstrators had to be sternly “talked to” by Sally before they could mimic this style of riding. Our two demonstrators admitted that they were in pain to ride like this. Sally gathered them in and talked about equitation and balanced riding. She said there was “no excuse” to ride with bad equitation. She answered questions from the audience. Our two demonstrators gradually recovered from the painful ordeal of riding like a bumping sack of unbalanced potatoes.

THE BARREL RACER

Next was a barrel race demonstration. I was shocked to find an older woman champion barrel racer riding a fox trotter. I was shocked that she wasn’t 17-23 years old, I was shocked that she appeared to be almost as old as I was. I was shocked that she was many times a grand champion and I was even more shocked to have her riding a fox trotter. She was a good speaker and took the audience into the palm of her hand. Then she demonstrated the pattern and explained positioning and several other technical important details about running the barrels. She finished up giving pointers to our youth barrel racers..you know-the 17-23 year olds. Although there were another couple of older women (by older, I mean 30 and above) who participated. By this time Velvet had enough and made me take her saddle off and tie her up to the trailer. Otherwise, I’m certain that we would have been in there doing our best imitation of a barrel racer.

THE PACKER

The pack demonstration was next. The packer was a former forest ranger and had been using fox trotters in the mountains for many years. I’m not at all interested in packing, so I groomed Velvet to show ready during this session. But, I did listen to what he was saying…something about you need a calm steady horse when climbing sheer mountain trails and the fox trotter was the horse that fit that bill.

DUANE SCOTT AND FELLOW TEAM PENNERS

The last session was a demonstration of team penning. The man doing the announcing and educating said he thought Fox Trotter Team penning could really take off. He told us that he never thought it would become popular for mules, but now mule team penning has become big. I figure if mule people think team penning is fun…there must be a lot of fox trotter riders that would think it was fun too. Count me in on team penning! I’m getting my cow pony fox trotters in readiness for this fun sport now. The team penners were handsome young men…Duane Scott et. al… Duane’s team showed that they knew their stuff. They went in and cut the correct doggies out of the herd before the doggies knew what was happening. Then they just slide the cows right up to the pen and made them go right in. It was an awesome demonstration. I thought it would be a lot of running and yelling. We were told that running and yelling was the mark of beginners…that would be me.’

‘That was the end of the demonstrations. In twenty minutes, the foot race, costume class and water glass class were due to start in the main arena.’