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Judging the Trail ClassSeptember 10, 2007 Ask me what the best thing about having a horse is and my first response would be "trail riding." After a nanosecond's reflection, I'd add, "Well, there's hanging around the barn -- and a couple of days ago I was hanging on the pasture fence for ten minutes just watching Allie race across the field, tail flagged like an Arabian's, then stop, wheel, race, rear, buck, kick right, kick left, snort, and chase off to the far corner of the field -- oh yeah, and a few days before that I was cleaning tack in the barnyard watching Dis Kitty and Dat Kitty stalk and pounce on each other . . ." The best thing about having a horse is being around horses, but still -- being out in the woods on horseback is right up there with reading something I wrote and knowing that it's good. (I've been line-editing The Mud of the Place and meaning to write about the Joy of Revision, but I haven't got around to it because I'm too busy revising. More later!) So when I was asked to judge the trail class at the Crow Hollow Farm horse show for the second year in a row, of course I jumped at the chance. Samantha of Crow Hollow called on August 14 and had her first child the next day, which is the main reason that this year I also got to design the course. I did it on Saturday afternoon, improvising from stuff I found around the barn. Sunday morning I did the hardest part: drawing a diagram of the course in Paint. My word talents are great, but my graphic capabilities are minimal. I was pretty pleased with what I came up with:
This year, as in previous years, the trail class took place in one of Crow Hollow's pastures. For a limited space (probably less than an acre), this pasture offers varied terrain: an uphill and a downhill, lots of evergreen trees, and a nefarious gate that swings downhill. In the days before the show I paid particular attention to the challenges that Allie and I encountered on the trail. Since a house is in the early stages of being built on the same property as our home barn, these include several piles of lumber covered by tarps. Since her fillyhood, Allie has been convinced that tarps ipso facto conceal trolls of various shapes and sizes; she has to check them out carefully, usually with several snorts, before she'll walk past them. So I laid two hay bales end to end, placed a third on top of them, and wrapped them all in a blue tarp -- that's the heavy line marked "hay / bales" in the diagram. Riders also had to halt on a downgrade, jump a low rail, move a raincoat from one post to another, dismount, lead past a clothesline with three flapping T-shirts on it, remount, and back through an L-shaped chute composed of four rails. Backing up proved one of the course's major challenges; the other was the gate, which you had to open, ride through, and then close. It was OK to dismount and do it on foot, but I said anyone who could do it on horseback would get extra credit. Everybody made the attempt -- several attempts -- but only a handful succeeded. Manipulating a gate while maneuvering your horse is not easy, especially when the gate is determined to swing downhill. I had a blast judging and encouraging and occasionally coaching (the younger kids especially) and even giving a couple of leg-ups. Got a little sun-scorched but what the hell.
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