April Gymkhana

No pictures yet but I just had to share.

This was our club's first ever 3 day show. Although the kids didn't win any of the overall awards they received lots of medals for placing in the individual events. In order to have an idea of what I'm talking about I'm going to explain about divisions. There are a number of divisions in gymkhana. The FC riders are the slowest, you can go anywhere from a walk to a slow lope and be in this division. The next is A, then AA, then AAA, and finally AAA+. We had a number of fast riders this weekend from out of town and we still only had 2 AAA+ times total, so that gives you an idea how difficult it is to run those kind of times.

Malachi started out the season as an A rider. This show showed he has progressed and he is a solid AA rider at this point. He rode very cleanly and only had a few mistakes, mostly due to his horse. It's nice that he rode most of the events in AA, showing how consistent he can be.

Lorna was at a disadvantage because this was only her third show on her horse. Unbelievably she ran a number of AA times. Most surprising was the fact that she ran 3 AAA times! Her fastest time had her only 2 tenths of a second from AAA+. I couldn't help myself from jumping up and down. She was so excited I thought she was going to leap off her horse. Since there was room for improvement on her run it means that she has the potential to eventually run some AAA+ times. This weekend she not only had people cheering for her but she received many compliments on her riding.

Lorna's tack sales progressed nicely and she has orders to deliver next show. She also put one of her horses up for sale on Tuesday and ended up selling him on Friday.

The one low point to the weekend was that Lorna's cat died sometime last night. He was acting strangely the last 2 days so it wasn't a complete shock, but since he was only 7 and an indoor cat we weren't prepared to lose him so soon. With all the excitement over the weekend I don't think the loss has really sunk in yet. She really doesn't remember a time without her cat so I know she has to be grieving. In a way all the other stuff going on has been a good thing since it has taken her mind off of her loss.