Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Chicken Truck?

Yesterday was an exciting day. Mondays are usually the most feared days of the week but since school children had received a glorious day off it turned out to be one of the best. It all started at five in the morning. A bit early for most people but horse back riders are well accustomed to waking well before the crack of dawn. Two friends and I fed six horses and proceeded to prepare ourselves and our horses for the day ahead. We put shipping boots on our horses legs to protect them from possible injuries in the trailer and Lindsey and I headed down the road (with our two horses) to load them on a friends trailer. That is when the deities of school decided that if we weren’t going to be attending school then life wasn’t quite worth living.

We almost got plowed down by a chicken truck.

Wouldn’t that have been the way to go out of this world? “Two teenagers and their event horses run over by a speeding chicken truck at five thirty in the morning of Martin Luther King Day”. That would probably have gotten some bemused looks. The monstrous chicken truck was speeding down the dirt road that our farm is located on and scared my horse, who wasn’t thinking clearly, and promptly jumped into the middle of the road. I shoved him across the road and made it to the other side just as the truck rumbled past with chickens clucking in all of the cages. It was a wonderful way to start the morning but the horses loaded beautifully on the trailer and we were off to their first cross country schooling with their new riders.

Cross Country is a phase of eventing in which rider and horse are required to complete a course of solid fences ranging from logs, coops, and tables to ditches, banks, and water. It is considered the ultimate test of the event horse because it requires bravery, stamina, agility, and speed.

We arrived at Poplar Place Farm, tacked up our horses, and headed out to the green fields on the background of a perfect blue sky. Throughout the course of the day we navigated multiple types of fences, water, banks, and ditches, with all of the horses proving to be brave and capable.

It was thrilling as well as time consuming. We ended up spending over four hours on the course. But each and every minute was well worth it. Knox proved himself a brave and physically capable thoroughbred with tremendous spring from the hind end (essentially, for non horse people out there, he was a blast to ride and has a wonderful jump). The other horses also proved to be admirable and all in all it was a wonderful experience.

Hopefully we will be able to go cross country again some time soon and be able to advance our skills further. And it will be much easier to enjoy in the summer time because I will not have to come home and write two five hundred word entries for Mr. Glenn. Just kidding. Just kidding…..

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