{"id":1626,"date":"1996-04-20T21:55:50","date_gmt":"1996-04-21T02:55:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/?p=1626"},"modified":"2011-09-30T21:59:16","modified_gmt":"2011-10-01T02:59:16","slug":"1626","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/1626\/","title":{"rendered":"So Old To Show AKA This is What 50 yr Old’s DO"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\u201cShowtime\u201d, I thought as I lurched out of bed and listened to the rain.\u00a0 I thought about the mud on those two glistening horse\u00a0 bodies after yesterday\u2019s full body makeovers, nails done, expensive hairdo\u2019s.\u00a0 I\u2019m talking baths, scrubbing, rubbing, drying, clipping, sheening, and attempted braiding of manes and tails.\u00a0 Both Velvet and Sage were lovely;\u00a0 I was broken, old, sore-footed, wet, dirty and hairy. This is my first show as an adult.\u00a0 My last horse show was 33 years ago.\u00a0 I am called a beginning adult rider. Hang on for the day!<\/p>\n

I went out to pasture this lovely morning and the horses were barely wet with no mud.\u00a0 Whew!\u00a0 Thank you up above!\u00a0 After breakfast, my husband\u2019s friend came over to play guy machine stuff.\u00a0 I was nervous about getting those fox trotter ribbons in Sage and Velvet\u2019s mane and forelock.\u00a0 I asked John, who is a team roper, if he could braid my horse\u2019s hair.\u00a0 AHAHHHAAAA!\u00a0 John and my husband broke up over that.\u00a0 Braiding is not a manly team roping thing. As they were spitting up with laughter, I promptly broke into sobbing sobs.\u00a0 These were outloud sobbing sobs!\u00a0 All three of us were shocked!\u00a0 \u201cHmmm, we all thought, Susan is hysterical!\u00a0 Let\u2019s do calming words and thoughts and get her out of here!\u201d<\/p>\n

I got the horses into the trailer and drove the 10 miles alternating with tears and deep breathing.\u00a0 What causes a calm, relaxed, don\u2019t-worry-till-it-happens person to experience such frightful feelings? This show stuff is hanging yourself out, with no defense, for strangers to judge in an area where you are so inferior that you have to reach up to lick people\u2019s toes. Fox Trotter Horse Show!!<\/p>\n

The week before the show I was hysterical because I had never touched clippers and last braided anything 33 years ago.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t want my horses to be pitied because I didn\u2019t know how to make their fuzzy winter bodies into sleek summer splendor. Thank goodness a friend volunteered to help so \u201cmy girls\u201d were truly beautiful!<\/p>\n

I belong to the Kansas City Regional Missouri Fox Trotter Horse Breed Association. Two years ago my husband and I lost our minds and moved from our city home to a country home and I was finally to own a horse again before death took me.\u00a0 Why did I choose fox trotters?\u00a0 I love their heads-up beauty, their flowing manes and tails, and the practical reason that they are so smooth I will never have to wear adult diapers when riding!<\/p>\n

Against all the advice of the practical horse people in the world, I bought two young horses. The adventures and rear that I lived through for the last two years to arrive at this point is a separate story.\u00a0 I hire out as a motivational speaker.\u00a0 Just ask me!<\/p>\n

This is the 2nd<\/sup> annual horse show and seminar that the club has put on \u2013 purely for my benefit. The seminar teaches us about biting, training, and gaits. The horse show is for riders new to showing can have some experience before we get thrown out with the wolves. This is not to say that all the Missouri Fox Trotter World Grand Champions in our arena do not participate.\u00a0 They participate too as a warm up for the show season just around the corner.\u00a0 Plus, they help us \u201cnewbies\u201d. This year the association president, Tom Owens, was the speaker and judge.\u00a0 I laughed at all his jokes, but it didn\u2019t do any good in the show ring. Drat.\u00a0 He judged the horses on their performance rather than who laughed the most at his jokes.<\/p>\n

My first hint of something going wrong was when the registration person said, \u201c
\nEight Classes?\u00a0 You want to sign up for eight classes!\u201d\u00a0 I looked on the show bill again and counted.\u00a0 Yep, there were eight classes for me to ride in with Sage and Velvet.\u00a0 It was also then that I discovered that the show started at 1:30 rather than 2:00 and I barely had time to saddle both horses, stab their ribbons on and get into the arena to warm up Sage, my fun events horse.\u00a0 I was back stabbing the ribbon into Sage\u2019s mane when another rider asked if the trail class allowed you to wear ribbons. Whoops!\u00a0 I looked at the rules and saw that it said, No Ribbons!\u00a0 I frantically sawed the ribbons out of Sage\u2019s mane and arrived at the gate to see the gate man frantically trying to find me.\u00a0 My number had been called several times.\u00a0 I was the next to last horse to perform in the trail class. When I came out, I leaped off Sage and traded her for Velvet, my \u201cshow horse\u201d. The next class was starting and Velvet\u2019s newly borrowed show bridle hung for the saddle horn instead of her head where I put it.\u00a0 My husband had arrived to take care of my horses for me.\u00a0 He said, \u201cVelvet hates her bit.\u00a0 Her borrowed bridle is too long and I can\u2019t control her!\u201d\u00a0 Husband is also new to horses and Velvet went hysterical when I took Sage away. Good GAD!<\/p>\n

I was trying to get the bridle on Velvet, the hysterical horse when the trail class riders and horses were called into the arena and line up!\u00a0 HUH! Sage and my husband had dropped out of sight.\u00a0 I had a hysterical horse.\u00a0 The brave gate keeper volunteered to hold my horse.<\/p>\n

Susan, the new show horse person, cantered into the arena.\u00a0 I hoped people wouldn\u2019t notice that I wasn\u2019t riding a horse.\u00a0 They did notice as there was a pregnant silence.\u00a0 The announcer was finally able to recover and made a quip about a funny lookin\u2019 two legged horse in the arena. I lined up in the middle with the other horses and hoped my number would be called.\u00a0 It was!\u00a0 I got reserve!\u00a0 To thunderous applause, I cantered over to the ribbon girl and got my red beauty ribbon!\u00a0 I cantered out. Thank goodness I didn\u2019t win first or I would have had to canter a victory lap.\u00a0 Whew!!!<\/p>\n

I scratched the bridleless horse from the first class and went out to do some calming ground work.\u00a0 I hoped I might be able to get the bridle on before my next class of seven!\u00a0 The classes that Sage and Velvet were in alternated and the trailer was parked blocks away.\u00a0 I had planned to have different outfit for the fun events and the fox trotting events, so I compromised with jeans and shiny silky jacket and teddy.\u00a0 No pictures were taken of me.\u00a0 Drat<\/p>\n

Sage, the fun events horse, has turned into the bravest horse ever. She was a formidable competitor with her trick bag of sidepassing, backing and tight fore and hindquarter turns.\u00a0 We had a blue tarp in the trail class and she just sailed over that. She sniggered at walking over the logs \u2013 come on give me a challenge!\u00a0 She sidepassed to the mailbox and waited patiently for me to get my letter in and out.\u00a0 She floated between two staked flags and won 2nd<\/sup> in the class.\u00a0 Our first show ring experience!<\/p>\n

The egg and spoon was lost when I believed the announcer who jokingly said, CANTER.\u00a0 That lost me the egg.\u00a0 No one else cantered.\u00a0 I’m still bitter.<\/p>\n

We had a water relay where two riders had to work together.\u00a0 One had to dip water out of a bucket with plastic glass and then pour the water in the partner\u2019s plastic glass who then had to empty his glass contents in the bucket. Then we had to bring the bucket to the judge\u2019s helper. We won!<\/p>\n

We had musical feed sacks. When the music stopped a horse had to get one foot on a feed bag. There was one less bag than horses. Sage was yelled at, threatened with ramming but managed to STOMP on her sack.\u00a0 \u201cDon\u2019t try messing with the boss Mare!\u201d\u00a0 We lost when we were too far from a feed sack. The other horses beat us and were standing on the feed sack when we got there.\u00a0 I told Sage that we weren\u2019t allowed to knock them off the sack and we left the arena!<\/p>\n

The husband loved Sage that day.\u00a0 He held her ribbons.\u00a0 He wore them on his overalls and stuck out his chest more as the day went by. Sage became \u201chis horse\u201d on this day.<\/p>\n

Velvet, the former \u201csweet\u201d horse now turned \u201cspirited\u201d, electrified the crowd with her beauty and fire.\u00a0 Our performance at the gaits was not to be discussed. We did move quickly around the arena when asked to go into the faster gait.\u00a0 It appears that Velvet and I must get out more into the real world.<\/p>\n

When the show mercifully ended, I was so grateful to Ronald Howe, the wonderful gate man who helped me get on my horse, held the classes open until I could get into the arena and tried to calm me down. My thanks to Ralph and Sue McGarry who gave me advice and also helped to calm me down before entering the arena. Thanks to Paula Crump who gave me some training tips after the show was over, even though she worked harder than all the show horses and was dead tired. Thanks to Nancy McConnell who loaned me the show bridle. Thanks to Gail Osbourn who fed me and wasn\u2019t afraid to hold the spirited Velvet. Thanks to all who helped a beginning adult rider survive her first show.<\/p>\n

Thanks to my great husband, Terry.\u00a0 He approached the announcer and told him it was my first show. He did this while I was in the arena waiting for the next class to start.\u00a0 Terry also mentioned that these were young horses.\u00a0 I bet that announcer was just amazed to learn all this, but he dutifully reported it to the crowd.\u00a0 So I had to ride around the arena and wave at everyone which I did with a big grin on my face with the Queen Elizabeth wave.\u00a0 Thank goodness, I was riding Sage.\u00a0 I told Sage to canter, but she wanted to hard trot instead.\u00a0 Oh, the crowd was nice to me and clapped.<\/p>\n

Lordy, what a day\u2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cShowtime\u201d, I thought as I lurched out of bed and listened to the rain.\u00a0 I thought about the mud on those two glistening horse\u00a0 bodies after yesterday\u2019s full body makeovers, nails done, expensive hairdo\u2019s.\u00a0 I\u2019m talking baths, scrubbing, rubbing, drying, clipping, sheening, and attempted braiding of manes and tails.\u00a0 Both Velvet and Sage were lovely;\u00a0 I was broken, old, sore-footed, wet, dirty and hairy. This is my first show as an adult.\u00a0 My last horse show was 33 years ago.\u00a0 I am called a beginning adult rider. Hang on for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sage","category-velvet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1626"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1630,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1626\/revisions\/1630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}