A horse is a horse, of course, of course . . . .
But what they can do with those horses!
When we checked in on Wednesday, we heard there was going to be a horse show coming up on Saturday, starting about 9am. We spent most of the day there!
There were horses and horse trailers everywhere you turned . . .
Riders and their horses warming up and practicing.
This lady had lights on hers.
The young girls liked them a lot. : )
I liked the coloring on this one. It was different.
The State Park has a show ring and practice ring and once a month, they host a show. Today’s was the last show of the year and according to the announcer, it had the most entries of the year. They started the day at 9:00am and when we left (for the last time) at 7:30, there were still several of the 54 ‘classes’ to do.
To our untrained eyes and experience, it seemed like a lot of the classes were the same, and a lot of the entries were the same people/horses. It was still very interesting though!
We watched and took pictures and videos of all ages do all kinds of things!
There was jumping,
This one is a little girl on a pony – not a colt, a full-size pony!
So cute!
halter walking,
which we don’t have pictures of because it was going on in the practice ring at the same time as other things, plus there was so much stuff between us and them we couldn’t see them very well.
showmanship,
Lining up before the judges.
They did this after each of the ‘show’ classes.
Those being the ones where they walked/cantered/loped, etc. around the ring.
control,
They walked their horses around these cones in the ring. Kinda like barrel racing without the speed! : )
The English version vs the Western version? : )
obstacle course,
Getting the course set up took a looong time!
Part of the Western obstacle course.
They walked up and unhooked the ‘gate’ and walked through it, then walked over the wooden platform.
Not as easy as it sounds, some horses refused to walk over the wood. They had to leave the competition.
The horses stepped between all the pvc pipe without disturbing it,
and backed up between the poles.
I was most impressed with their cross-legged walk along the other pvc pipe!
pole-bending, (they could bend them, but not knock them over)
It was dark by now, so the the evening pics aren’t very good.
3 types of barrel races . . . single barrel,
Only video for the single –
straight-line triple,
and a ‘triangle’ triple
Filming this one was too difficult as the barrels were so spread apart, the video was too long to post.
In every case, the first horse was the fastest, and I missed filming them. : (
It was a lot, which is why we’re guessing it took about 11 or 12 hours! And in between, there were often people rinsing off their steeds.
One odd thing we noticed was that most of the riders were girls – waaay most. I don’t know why. I tried to get some info from a woman who was sitting close to us, but she was no help. She said she was from Italy and knew practically nothing. Her 10-year-old daughter was one of the participants.
We did leave periodically – for lunch and we took a walk on part of another bridle trail. All the horses were busy elsewhere. 😊
At 65′ this bridge is the longest foot bridge in the Park.
Advance America is a cash loan company.
The other odd thing today was the constant shooting! Turns out there’s a shooting range near the Park. I can’t believe it went on all day long. You’d think it would’ve disturbed the horses, but it didn’t seem to.
The video was the best I could capture. At times, there was a lot more!