Fun Classes

There were three "fun" classes on Sunday afternoon.  The first was the egg and spoon ride.  There were three of us entered, and Tao and I won, bareback!  We walked, trotted, and by then the other two people had dropped their eggs.  The judge asked if we could canter with our egg, so I asked Tao to pick up his right lead.  Unfortunately the gate was open, and we were headed toward it...  I told Tao to go past the gate, but he is fairly new to neck reining and thought I said to JUMP the arena fence.  I felt him lean back and get ready to leap, and I told him to whoa and turn.  Which he did, and very quickly.  I had no chance of staying on, and as I slipped to the left off his back I reached for the ground with my foot, felt the footing, and ALMOST got my right foot on the ground as well for a perfect 10 gymnastic landing...  but I lost my balance at the very end and tipped onto my butt.  Tao stopped immediately and looked at me in a very worried way, so I gave him a rub on his neck and told him what a good boy he was.  Fortunately, they still let me win the class even though I fell off during my victory lap.

Setting up for the egg & spoon ride

I love my haflinger pony!

Bareback for the fun classes

The next class was the toilet paper class.  Two teams were entered, and the Bit of Honey team consisted of Sheridan and Rain with me on Tao.  Rain was pretty worried about the white flappy toilet paper coming towards her, but she pulled herself together and we did walk and turn with the paper in tact.  It did break when we were trotting and she went sideways to escape the white flapping.

The last class was the Ride-a-Buck class.  There were three of us entered, one of whom had never ridden bareback before!  The idea is you place a dollar under your thigh and ride bareback until the dollar falls out from under you.  I was on Tao again, against Trisha in the ride-a-buck battle of the day.  When they told us to canter I asked Tao to pick up his left lead, but he was worried.  Last time he cantered bareback I fell off, and he didn't want to do that again!  So he went into a giant ultra-fast trot, careening around the arena at the trot as fast as Trisha's horse could canter.  Trisha teasingly thought about complaining that I wasn't cantering, but when she saw the bumpiest fast trot I was riding decided that was harder anyway.  I finally lost my dollar when the announcer told us to post the trot, which I'd been doing the whole time Trisha had been cantering.  It was so much fun!

Laughing so hard after the ride-a-buck class!

Here I am with my working student, breaking the rules!