I arrived at the Sedalia fair grounds and got Velvet into her new stall home for the weekend.\u00a0 I met the \u201cPaint Sisters\u201d and their horses. We were chatting and one of them casually mentioned that they had won the Paint World first through fifth placings in dressage, jumping, rail work, etc, with both their horses.\u00a0 I as bug-eyed at that. She went on to explain that they stopped showing and now into the Extreme Challenge contests. Their horses will swim, jump up or down anything, go anywhere and do Cowboy Mounted Shooting. Gad!\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0This conversation killed all the desire to brag about how good Velvet and I were. Right then and there, I gave up the idea that we might have a chance to win.\u00a0 I wondered what other talent would show up.<\/p>\n
That surprise was soon to come. Velvet and I were practicing in the Coliseum.\u00a0 It was dark inside, but sunshine-bright outside. The gate opened and a backlit silhouetted horse and rider came in the gate.\u00a0 I recognized that silhouette and gasped.<\/p>\n
Here is the Missouri Fox Trotter famous multiple-many-year Versatility World Grand Champion, Hall of Fame inductee, Sally Scott.\u00a0 She is a true goddess.\u00a0 I\u2019ve now seen her in \u201cthe light\u201d.\u00a0 I am but a peon.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0From that moment on, I knew that I would just have great fun with this competition because I had no hope of winning.<\/p>\n
\u00a0In the versatility world, we do patters. We did patterns on Friday and Saturday. Compared to the Missouri Fox Trotter World Celebration versatility patterns, these were simple.\u00a0 Pattern might be simple, but they are never easy. When you are in the arena, every step taken (or not taken) is under close scrutiny. We were not given our scores after the Friday or Saturday competition.\u00a0 No one knew how they did.\u00a0 My new \u201cPaint Horse\u201d friend told me confidentially after we were done on Saturday that Sally and I \u201cblew away the competition\u201d.\u00a0 She said, \u201cI never thought I would be beat by a gaited horses.\u201d\u00a0 I was stunned to hear her say that.\u00a0 I thought she did a fine job with her pattern that day.<\/p>\n
\u00a0The second day is when I learned the definition of the left and right side of a barrel. The directions were to pick up a basket on the top of the barrel with my right hand.\u00a0 I rode to the right side of the barrel and picked up the basket with my left hand.\u00a0 We had to weave around the barrel. That meant I picked up the basket with the wrong hand and broke the pattern.\u00a0 I weaved when I should have wove.<\/p>\n
\u00a0I need a left and right side rehab clinic.\u00a0 Later, I learned that I lost nearly 50 points from the day\u2019s score and most of it was probably the barrel incident. Curse the barrel!\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sunday was Freestyle Day.\u00a0 The riders included Marilyn Monroe riding a Friesian draped with diamonds with \u201cDiamonds are a Girl\u2019s Best Friend\u201d music. We had a Friesian knight complete with warriors on the ground which the knight slayed. Then she jousted an opposing horse, causing that rider to fall on the ground and died. We had a trick rider on a mustang stallion. We had a rodeo co9mpetitor.\u00a0 The rodeo woman set up barrels, poles, fake cow and a living staked goat in the arena.\u00a0 The rodeo woman ran the poles, barrels, roped the fake cow twice with two ropes, drug the cow and leaped off her horse and tied the goat\u2019s feet.\u00a0 That was amazing.\u00a0 We had a damsel costumed rider on a big Spotted Saddle Horse. She zipped around the arena in a reining pattern complete with flying lead changes. The crowd roared!\u00a0 Salle did a reining demonstration too, but she did hers bridleless. She and her horse did wonderful.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Velvet and I did our comedy routine. The crowd was with me from the beginning. They laughed and clapped.\u00a0 You know how that makes Velvet and I reach for the stars!\u00a0 My son was singing opera in the background.\u00a0 I was having the greatest time when I suddenly realized the music had stopped.\u00a0 I asked my coordinator, Hope, \u00a0if I were done. Four minutes had gone by in four seconds.\u00a0 My legs were so full of emotion that I couldn\u2019t dismount in the arena.\u00a0 I had to go outside and wait for the muscles to calm down to be able to get my leg over the back of the saddle.<\/p>\n
All the rest of the day was great compliments on the Wow Factor and the humor of our demonstration.\u00a0 Later I learned that I had scored 198 out of 200 points for that performance!\u00a0 You don\u2019t get much better than that!<\/p>\n
\u00a0After everyone was done and the points were compiled, we all gathered in the arena for our placings.\u00a0 We started with seventh place and went on up.\u00a0 My Paint Horse friends got fifth and third.\u00a0 I got reserve. Sally Scott won first .\u00a0<\/p>\n
Total possible points were 700.\u00a0 Sally got 636 points and a saddle.\u00a0 I got 630 points and a red ribbon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I arrived at the Sedalia fair grounds and got Velvet into her new stall home for the weekend.\u00a0 I met the \u201cPaint Sisters\u201d and their horses. We were chatting and one of them casually mentioned that they had won the Paint World first through fifth placings in dressage, jumping, rail work, etc, with both their horses.\u00a0 I as bug-eyed at that. She went on to explain that they stopped showing and now into the Extreme Challenge contests. Their horses will swim, jump up or down anything, go anywhere and do…<\/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":[125,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-missouri-fox-trotter","category-velvet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1870","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=1870"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1875,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1870\/revisions\/1875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}