Play Day

On April 11th a friend and trainer at the barn asked if I wanted to go with her to a fun show in Haysville. Of course I said Absolutely! Getting Fritz out into the world is always a good thing, and riding him around at a new arena is a fabulous way to do it. A fun show is something anyone with a horse can participate in and so Fritz and I decided to go for it. We actually did something in a competition setting which had nothing to do with cows. It was great. We ran the poles and tho we didn't win anything we also didn't knock any poles down. Yeah! This is a diagram of pole bending and will help explain what we did:

A rider and horse run past a timer line to the end of a line of six poles, then turn the end pole and weave down through the pattern, again turn at the last pole and weave back up, then run back home across the timer line. The fastest time will win.
The horse has to not only have speed, but also the agility to switch leads between every pole at a full out gallop.
The pole pattern consists of plastic poles that are set 21 feet apart and the timer line 21 feet from the first pole. The poles are 6 feet high and the base is no more than 14 feet in diameter. If a pole is knocked over, a 5-second penalty is assessed. Fast pole bending times are run in 20-21 seconds.

It's not as easy as it looks and no, we did not gallop through it. We jogged, or trotted.