It Takes Skill
Taking small steps to get Blitz to target the ball when he first came to live with me. May 2008
On Sunday we held our first event at Iron Horse Farm. We called it a Skillathon. Our intention was for it to be a giant obstacle course that tested you and your horse’s skills. You could enter to be timed (scored on how fast you went through the obstacles with time faults added for incomplete tasks) or you could be judged (scored based on how well you did each task – we looked for rider patience, horse’s willingness, ease of completion). We also had three levels, a beginner, intermediate and advanced level.
We spent a long time planning and constructing onstacles. We built a bridge, made a soccer ball pit and so on. This was the first (that we know of) event like this in our area. We were hoping to attract a large barn of parelli followers as well as some of our local pony club members and maybe even some western/fun riders since we also had speed games like pole bending and barrels too.
Anyway 5 people showed up…all our friends from the local pony club. But who cares! We had fun anyway! I ended up running through the advanced level course first in order to show the other riders how to do it first. I certainly thought the course was fun – and I love facing my pony with something I’m not sure if they will like…all to see if they trust me enough to guide them through it.
I got a short video of the end of the course that you can watch below. I love watching Boomer doing the bicycle task, where I ask him to let me lead him while riding a bike, as well as the soccer ball pit, where I ask him to walk through a pit of soccer balls. I think those tasks definitely take skill! And Boomer – who had never seen the ball pit I might add – did it with ease.
We have another event scheduled for October 25th of this year – so hopefully we can learn from this time and make our event even better for next time.
-KD
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I would have loved this when I was younger and had an awesome pony for it!
Sounds like fun, wish I was closer to you!
What was the soccer ball pit?
Mary
we “corralled” a bunch of soccer balls into a pit. So that when you walked your horse up to it they have to choose a careful path (by watching where they place their feet) in order to not trip.
I think its a great way to work on coordination with a young horse – or even work on training a horse for trail riding and learning how to watch where they step.
Hi,
Thanks for this post. It was a very useful read.
Regards
Tom