Oakland County 4H Kick Off Show 2007

May 12, 2007 was our local 4H Kick Off Show. We were all excited to finally be back showing. The fairgrounds feels like home to us.

Rebekah is riding Blissfield's Dejia of Countryside Farm. Cathy McGeen has been so generous in letting us ride her horses and giving the kids lessons. She is a blessing to us. We haul Jenna's pony Coolio over every week for practices and lessons. I even bring Isaac over sometimes and take a lesson myself.

This was an eventful show and everyone had a good time. Bekah and Jenna both had a handful of ribbons by the end of the day.


Rebekah received her first blue ribbon of the year riding Dejia in the Junior Western Horsemanship class. These two become more of a team at each show, and I love to watch them go. Bekah loves Dejia and works hard at riding her. While Dejia is a "push-button" horse, if you don't push the right button, look out. She is not as easy to ride as Bekah makes it look, but they do better and better each show.

Dejia is a multi-talented horse. Not many horses can go from Dressage, to western riding to SPEED and do all three successfully, but Dejia does. I love to watch them fly doing barrel racing or two man relay. I used to have to close my eyes, but I am getting better at being able to watch without worrying too much. Dejia was a bit too excited this time and they DQ'd in their best class, Keyhole. She stopped a little too fast in the keyhole and Bekah ALMOST came off.

Just before Bekah got changed from her western outfit into her speed stuff, we replaced her old turquoise speed tack with her brand new HOT PINK tack that was her birthday present. She got it early this year. She was quite surprised to see it as you can tell from the picture below.

Now all she needs is a pink shirt!

Bekah's boyfriend John also attended the show and I give him tons of credit. He doesn't ride but was there to support Bekah ALL DAY! Those of us that show know that horse shows can be long, hard days and sometimes quite boring. A lot of "hurry-up and wait" and sometimes watching pattern classes is much like watching paint dry. But John was there all day, helping out with everything and enduring the jokes and "death stares" that our trainer's son Colin was giving him LOL.


Jenna and Coolio did well in both English and Western Walk/Trot classes. Coolio was a jumper pony and did quite well until he fractured his navicular bone (a small, but important bone in the foot). He can't jump anymore in competition so he came to us for "flat" classes, such as English, Western, Dressage, Trail, etc. We were very pleasantly surprised by Coolio at the show. When he first got off the trailer, he was very jumpy, snorting and nervous so I was a little bit concerned how he would act with Jenna riding him. But this little guy was a trooper. He "manned up" and took care of Jenna throughout the show.


Coolio tried his best in every class, even getting a crash course in neck-reining. I don't think Coolio has ever had a western bridle on or if he did, he never learned to neck rein, yet Jenna and Coolio placed in all of their classes, with a third in Western Equitation. He tried so hard to understand what she was asking him to do and was calm and cool the whole day.





Cathy (our trainer) has a son named Colin who is Jenna's boyfriend. He rides his horse Storm who he has grown up with. They are great together. I tell people that Colin is such a good rider that Storm could do a backflip and Colin would not only stay seated, but would probably ask him to do it again!






The weekend was a long one. We hauled the horses to the fairgrounds after school on Friday and by the time the kids rode and we bathed the boys up, it was midnight! We had to get up at 5:00 a.m. the next morning to get out to the fairgrounds in time to feed the horses and for the girls to get prettied up for classes. Since Jenna wasn't feeling well, she skipped Showmanship, the very first class of the day. Hopefully as the season goes on we will find ways of getting the bathing done quicker. Once school is out we can haul out earlier on Friday too.

And finally, here are the placings...

Bekah and Dejia
Junior Showmanship - NP
Junior Western Horsemanship - 1st
Junior Western Pleasure - 5th
Junior Bareback - 6th
Cloverleaf 9-14 - 2nd
Pole Bending 9-14 - 3rd
Keyhole 9-14 - DQ
Speed and Action 9-14 - DQ
Indiana Flags 9-14 - DQ (She got the flag in the bucket, but it bounced out)
Two Man - Colin was Bekah's two man partner and they would have placed because they had a good time, but the class was run twice - once for each rider to get a time and so there was no placing for them in this class.

Jenna and Coolio
Walk / Trot English Equitation - 2nd
Walk / Trot English Pleasure - 3rd
Walk / Trot Western Equitation - 3rd
Walk / Trot Western Pleasure 4th

Finally - I want to give recognition to FrawgByte Photography. This is an awesome team of photographers who come to every show and work hard at taking awesome shots of all of the kids. They are all wonderful people, approachable and fun and it is a pleasure to know them all. There are many more pictures of this show and they can be found at the link below... PLEASE VISIT THEM and order some pictures!


Once you are at the FrawgByte site, go to the upper right-hand corner and click on gallery. Then select 4H Events Purchase Gallery. From there you can select which show you would like to see photos from. Enjoy and drop them a line and let them know we sent you!

Dee
P.S. You can click on any of the pictures for a bigger view.