Driving a cones course

Pardon the driving, I need to tighten my lines.  However, if you've never driven a cones course before this is a decent example of one.  This was taken at the National Drive 2012.  They were great, every day they changed the two cones courses so there were lots of opportunites to practice cone driving.

Judged Trail Ride with Best

This is our new theme!

I recently had the opportunity to take Best in the woods, of course, we didn't just start out with a nice hack through the woods.  No, we tackled the Cal-U Equestrian Team's Judged Trail Ride in Mingo Park.  You could ride in teams and we were fortunate that an experienced friend let us trail along with her mare.  Best did very good overall.  He practiced leading and following as well as standing quietly while waiting for others to finish their obstacle.  Overall he finished 6th in the Best of the Rest category, not bad for his first outing.  

We were a bit over-matched by the terrain though, Mingo has some hills that were much steeper than we had tackled before.  We had some problems with the saddle slipping back but Best was very tolerant.  I'm still working on developing my seat and Best had several opportunities to dump me but he never took it.  At one point we were going up hill at a trot, with the saddle slid back, when my stirrup came out of the keeper, suddenly I'm grabbing mane, riding with one stirrup with the other stirrup dangling upside down from my toe.  Yes, he was very good for not trying anything at that point. 

Here are a few pictures from the event, they were taken by a Cal-U team member.

Here we go on a Jungle Cruise!  Going through the dangling cloth while walking down the tarp resulted in some dancing but he was more concerned about the noise then anything else.  He's very much a city boy - 21 gun salutes and firetrucks are no problem but rustling leaves are 'weird.'  He was much better on tarps as time went on though. 

We had to walk on the tarp and then do a 360 on the haunches.  Since Best has studs in his shoes we walked across the tarp and then did our 360 so we wouldn't tear it.

We jogged down this 'road' before stepping over the 'bumps.'