This weekend was the Haunted Hunter Pace at Fox Run here in Columbia. Jackie and I were partners. She was riding Fassa and I was on Coco. Getting ready for the pace, we were thinking that it would be really fun to dress up and had costumes planned and everything. Coco was going to be a giraffe, Fassa was going to be a lion, and Jackie and I were going to be Bindy the Jungle Girl and Steve Irwin. Then, we realized that there was a lot of Halloween happenings on Saturday night and that it would be difficult to get to bed before say... 3am, and we decided that we would just ride and have fun and forget the costumes.
Sunday morning, we woke up at 6:45, left Jackie's around 7am, and made a quick stop a MickeyD's (where we spent $5 on hash browns alone) before we got to the barn, barely beating the trailer. We loaded our tack and horses and were on our way. We got to Fox Run at about 8am, took a few minutes to change and get ready and sit around recuperating before we started to get the horses ready. We were supposed to start at 9:10, but Jackie wanted to be on by 8:30 to warm Fassa up. We started tacking around 8:30 and were on our horses by about 8:45. Both of the horses were fantastic in the warm up ring, jumping everything like superstars! What good ponies!!! :D
We ended up going out on the course at 9:12, which was weird because Brittany and Melissa were supposed to be right before us but we hadn't even seen them on their horses yet. Fassa and Coco were very good!!! The trails were filled with spooky decorations, and if one of the horses was scared about it, the other one stepped up and passed it without a problem. When we got out to the field with the jumps, Coco just about went crazy! He remembers all the fun we had in this field last year and was totally pumped to go again! He took everything like a champ! No refusals. The only thing that was close was a white oxer that was downhill... He was cantering very nicely to it, then proceeded to stop and put his head down like he was going to smell it, so I dropped my reins to let him have his head to look at it. The next thing I knew, I was flying through the air!! My horse had taken the jump from a complete standstill and it had caught me so off guard that I didn't even know what to do! :p This is why I love him!!!! He consistently got weird distances to the tire jump that was under the trees, but I was very happy with him, because he was being a total rockstar about everything!!!
Back into the woods and we trotted as much as we good, galloping anywhere we thought it was safe to do so, and our horses were absolutely loving it!!! It was actually harder to hold them back than it was to get them going. They were having a total ball. Then we got to the big field where you're supposed to make 2 laps before the finish line. We galloped the first half of the first lap. Then Coco started to slow, so I thought it would be good to let him walk a little bit. However, he had other plans... he started slow gaiting and jigging until I would let him gallop again... so much for a flat walk!!! So we took off again. On our last lap, as we were riding next to the road, there was a trailer coming down the road and both of our horses saw that as a challenge, trying to beat the trailer to the end of the road and the entrance to Fox Run!!! They were FLYING!!! We got to the road and it was so hard to stop them that we had to hope that the trailer had seen us and would slow for us. Finished. And our horses couldn't be more proud of themselves. They needed about 45 minutes of walking to cool their jets.
We got a ride back to CEC. The ponies got immediately turned out. And we went home to nap. Overall, it was a very successful day!
