{"id":3307,"date":"2015-09-27T22:51:23","date_gmt":"2015-09-28T03:51:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/?p=3307"},"modified":"2015-09-27T23:12:44","modified_gmt":"2015-09-28T04:12:44","slug":"winning-cowgirl-of-the-day-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/winning-cowgirl-of-the-day-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Winning Cowgirl of the Day Award"},"content":{"rendered":"

Missouri Fox Trotter World Celebration 2015
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All dressed up for Ranch Horse classes<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

This is Cisco’s third ever horse show and it’s the big one. \u00a0We were planning on showing at the Spring Show in June, but he developed a coughing allergy at that show. \u00a0My diagnosis after some experimentation is allergic to moldy sawdust. \u00a0Sadly, the coughing continued from June till August. \u00a0No riding. No ground work. \u00a0Just cough medicine and cough supplements. \u00a0Finally, he was cured enough to ride. \u00a0Cured enough in August, about thirty days before the World Celebration. \u00a0I rode him and noticed immediately that we had lost our communication for things like canter and consistent flat foot walk and fox trot. \u00a0I was in big trouble. \u00a0I immediately decided that he needed training with Jennifer Vaught.<\/p>\n

Cisco is somewhat out of shape, signals have to be re-established plus he has to recognize my signals as opposed to the perfectly balanced, soft hands, super knowledge, super experience etc of his trainer compared to me (just put a “not” in front of all those good words in this sentence plus me not riding much at all since June.<\/p>\n

Now, let’s add in torrential rain and water puddles everywhere in the arena when the Ranch Horse Versatility class started. \u00a0This was the third day of showing. \u00a0Amazingly, we were not disqualified and occasionally did not come in last in all our classes. \u00a0But last was to arrive now!<\/p>\n

Jump. \u00a0In this class, you have to jump over a pole about twelve inches off the ground. \u00a0We did practice this morning. \u00a0Our first jump was about three feet above the pole at a trot. \u00a0I persevered and soon we were cantering and jumping about thirteen inches off the ground to clear the pole. \u00a0 We practiced dragging a tire in the warm up arena and after a little nervousness, Cisco was able drag that tire faster than a walk. \u00a0I tried to open the gate into the arena standing next to the gate with my left arm ready. \u00a0Cisco wasn’t having it. \u00a0Cisco is a right arm gate opening horse. \u00a0Left hand gate opening makes him nervous. \u00a0Of course it had never occurred to me earlier in the year to practise opening a gate with my left arm. \u00a0It’s just not done in the trail class world. \u00a0Sadly, this was the Ranch Horse Versatility world and the gate into the arena was a left hand gate. \u00a0The words “Prior and Proper Preparation” had not been accomplished.<\/p>\n

It’s our turn. \u00a0I tried standing next to the gate with my left hand ready to open and Cisco objected. \u00a0OK. \u00a0We turned so my right hand could open the gate. \u00a0The bolt was out preventing the gate from opening. \u00a0I had to lean way down, lift the gate slightly up and wiggle the bolt back into its hole. \u00a0I did not curse out loud. \u00a0There was a noise, but it wasn’t a curse. \u00a0The announcer felt sorry for me and asked if we had a gate attendant, but was told this was part of the pattern. \u00a0I held the gate, Cisco and I backed through the opening, turned and side passed to shut the gate. \u00a0Dang gate wouldn’t stay shut without the bolt. \u00a0I was mad at the gate by that time and just threw it shut hoping the gate attendant would catch it before it killed someone.<\/p>\n

Now the task was to canter. \u00a0I asked Cisco to canter with a left lead. \u00a0He got the left lead and we were cantering for about two steps when he saw the river of water. \u00a0Someone had dug a little ditch in the sandy arena to let the water drain out. \u00a0Cisco said to me, “SCREAM”! \u00a0There’s a deep river that will kill us as he screeched to a halt. \u00a0I answered Cisco with a human SCREAM. \u00a0Yep, I screamed out loud right where all the spectators and riders were standing and watching. \u00a0The scream was loud enough to be heard in the entire versatility arena. \u00a0Cisco stepped over the river and we started cantering again. \u00a0I think we even had the correct lead.<\/p>\n

Now we are going around the corner and headed to the jump. \u00a0But the jump pole is supported by these white boxy looking things. \u00a0These are clearly dangerous and Cisco decided to detour far enough from the jump that the white boxy things wouldn’t eat him…at the canter. \u00a0Maybe we did break into a trot for a few strides…perhaps.<\/p>\n

The rest was great. \u00a0We made it alive to the tire. \u00a0I got the rope and dallied around the saddle horn and away we went and managed to fox trot. \u00a0We returned to the fence where throwing the rope over the fence was a problem \u00a0Cisco and were standing between the tire and the fence. I didn’t have long enough rope to throw it over the fence. \u00a0I had to tug the mud filled heavy wretched tire manually close enough to Cisco that I had enough rope to throw over the fence. \u00a0It wasn’t pretty, but we accomplished the task!<\/p>\n

The rest of the pattern were canter circles with two rollbacks. \u00a0We looked darn good doing that. \u00a0We cantered and did slide stop rollbacks through big standing water puddles. \u00a0We came down to the ending slidestop and backed. \u00a0We then had to go to the judge. \u00a0I made a funny sigh of relief that I was alive while the judge was looking at Cisco’s bridle. \u00a0He commented, “You lived through it”.<\/p>\n

Boy Howdy! \u00a0And that’s how I unofficially won Cowgirl of the Day and we did snag a last place ribbon. \u00a0It was a ribbon! \u00a0We didn’t get disqualified. \u00a0Life is good when you are Cowgirl of the Day<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Missouri Fox Trotter World Celebration 2015 This is Cisco’s third ever horse show and it’s the big one. \u00a0We were planning on showing at the Spring Show in June, but he developed a coughing allergy at that show. \u00a0My diagnosis after some experimentation is allergic to moldy sawdust. \u00a0Sadly, the coughing continued from June till August. \u00a0No riding. No ground work. \u00a0Just cough medicine and cough supplements. \u00a0Finally, he was cured enough to ride. \u00a0Cured enough in August, about thirty days before the World Celebration. \u00a0I rode him and noticed…<\/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":[106,125],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cisco","category-missouri-fox-trotter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3307","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=3307"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3315,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3307\/revisions\/3315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}