We are supposed to be receiving a ribbon in the mail and I was waiting for that thinking it would be a fun way to post about the online Standardbred show series Frankie and I are participating in this summer, but it's almost time for the second show, so to get up to speed...
There is an online charity horse show series being hosted by a Standardbred retraining group on Facebook. How it works is you have someone video you and your horse doing the prescribed activities for your particular class, post your video to the class page in the show group and a judge reviews each entry and places them accordingly.
The entry fee for each class is a donation to an approved Standardbred rescue and you post a screen shot of your donation page receipt. The April show raised $2100! The other benefactor besides the rescue groups is me and Frankie. Well, at least me. Frankie's not so sure he's actually benefiting ;-).
I got pretty down on myself last year for not putting much training time in. To be honest, getting Frankie "up to speed" was less than motivating even without the 2020 slog. My initial fear of not being able to slow down a race horse was quickly replaced with the fear that I'd never be able to really get him going.
He's still not going to set any land speed records and maybe he never will, but he's getting a little more confidence in his ability to pull the "heavy" cart and the fitness to finally be able to start incorporating some small hills into our workouts. This improvement is actually in part due to phoning it in last year.
Frankie won't actually be six until this summer. Five sounds like a plenty old enough to work hard(ish) age, but he apparently grows about as fast as he trots (in harness that is ;-). He looks like a completely different horse this spring and he's putting himself together way faster than if I'd tried to push it last year. He just needed a bit more time.
Sadly we were the only driving entry in our class, but I don't care about that...other than wishing some more folks would give carriage driving a try. Frankie and I can compete with ourselves each month and I'd give pretty good odds on a big improvement by the end of the year!
Our second show entry needs to be posted by the end of this month. We'll probably just repeat the same class this time due to lambing and spring weather conflicts, but we are going to add in some good additional challenges for the rest of the summer like shipping out to a different arena, adding a second horse in the ring, a dressage test, some cones and other obstacles...
It will be fun, Frankie! I promise ;-).
9 comments:
Wow! Looking great! Both of you! Nicely done :D
Lancelot doesn't get in on the fun???
You both look great! Looks like fun too.
Quite the dynamic duo. You both look great. I hope he enjoys it more and more as his confidence builds.
Its going to be so fun to watch the progress. I love learning and this is all new to me.
I would love to drive Lancelot, but I don't have anything that fits him :-o.
The cart is a Frey Sprint cart and it's just a year or so old. Come on! That was some of Frankie's fastest walking ever ;-D. Definitely lots of room for improvement and I can't wait to see our next video.
I started carriage driving with a Saddlebred. Frankie has extremely big shoes to fill and I remind myself of that when I get a little discouraged.
He’ll do fine. Once he realized how much he enjoys his job and pleasing you. At least I hope that’s the path. He’s very handsome.
Sara, is the show only for horses in harness? I thought there might be under-saddle classes as well.
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