The Saga of 4-H Horse Camp

Dear Wal,

Wow. It's Friday. A week and a half later, and I've so been putting this off. Why? I don't know. My blogging engines  ground to a halt for some odd reason last week, probably simply from how horribly out of habit I am, but oh well. But now I'm sitting here watching Doctor Who and writing about my epic adventures at horse camp.
At the local Agricultural Center annually I go to a three-day 4-H horse camp. It's the most brilliant thing since clinics were invented. You spend three days thinking and breathing and living nothing else but horses. It's like the horse equivalent of a comiccon, although I wouldn't know for sure because I've never actually been to a comiccon. This is something that needs to be fixed, and don't worry I've already told Dad that next vacation we are going to San Diego. Anyway, back on subject. Camp.
It's the most wonderful thing ever but it's also the most stressful thing ever because I always seem to have the crazy insane horse that flips out all over the place and loses his mind when I ask him to do a simple thing like walking. This is Buzzy I'm talking about of course, but Montana was also a bit of a problem the years that I rode him. He likes to go fast. Really fast. At all times. And I don't like to go fast, on horses anyway, because of the threat of not being able to stop. Buzzy is just terrified of everything, which makes concentrating on walking impossible for him. What usually happens is he starts freaking out, and then I start freaking out, and then we're both freaking out. You can guess where that ends up. Both of us splattered across the fence.
But this time was an absolute dream. My dream about how camp should be. No horse freaking out, and tons of fun.

Sunday

Me making a trip to unload stuff

So maybe I lied a bit about the horse freaking out. He did have his moments, but thankfully most of them were spent on the ground in a closed space without me on him. Sunday is the day when we load everything up and then go to the Ag center, and then promptly unload it all again. I spent two-three-four hours in this process, and I got mostly everything from home to  the Ag center. I forgot the scoops, the tables and the beat pulp. All the adults went off to retrieve these things and while they were away I took Buzzy out and worked him in the round pen.
I think the walk between his stall and the round pen was the most terrifying experience of his entire life. This is a pretty good description of what was going through his head:
DRAIN D8 TRAILER D8 CHAIR D8 PEOPLE D8 PLASTIC O: PLASTIC D8 GALLON DRUM D8 TRASH CAN D8

Small horses

I finally got him into the ring and sent him in a circle. At least that was the idea anyway. It didn't really end up being a circle. It was a mad rush in every direction it's possible for a four-legged creature to go. He continued to do that for the next twenty minutes or so until he finally chased all the boogey men out of his head and got over the fact that he had been transported to another world. A strange planet with lots of scary things and plastic.
I took him back to his stall and everything was happy hunky dory from then on. I sat and read my book. It was a very good book.
Then these adorable minis showed up. They were like mini Buzzies.

Monday


Well, first off let me tell you about sleeping in a barn. Sleeping in a barn is one of the hardest things you can try to do. First of all, it's cold. Really, really, really cold. And really noisy. There are horses pacing, whinnying to each other, tossing buckets around (Buzzy is notorious for that) and generally being a pain. Most horse noises don't bother me, except for stomping. I've learned to wake up as soon as any horse within earshot starts stomping because stomping is usually a sign from Montana that he's sick. He only ever stomps when he's not after food when he's sick, and since he's thirty years old it's kind of important to get to him as fast as possible when he's sick.
Anyway, I would have been fine because there wasn't any stomping, if it wasn't for the cold. I think I nearly froze to death, and I probably only got two or three hours of sleep. Anyway, I woke up with the sun and got up about an hour later to feed and water and scoop poo. We were all really tired and really cold. It was misting and overcast. Things were looking bleak. We might not get to ride if it started raining harder or thunder and lightning showed their faces. After me and Katie (My BFF from Florida. We've known each other since we were born pretty much, because our mothers went to college together.) headed down to the safety meeting in the main arena.
Colin, the main organizer for the camp (He's totally awesome. He has long hair that he braids every morning and he lets us soak him with water balloons. Don't worry, I'll get to that story eventually.) had to shout over the tractor in the background. He explained that the riding schedule was going to be complicated because of the weather. Here's how it went. We had the rideoff in the morning for Western, English, Games and Non-trotting. We only had three arenas available to us, which meant that by the end of it pretty much every class was splitting an arena with another class. The English and Western had three different classes; Advanced, Intermediate and Beginner, and the Non-Trotting had two different classes; Fast and slow. I don't have a clue how the Games were set up. I wasn't paying attention.
After the safety meeting we went back, got tacked up and went to our respective rings. Buzzy was fantastic, completely calm, light in my hands. No problems at all. We spent most of the morning walking just to be sure.

I'm Batman

Then I got off and went back to the barn, pleased and extremely tired. Katie's mom had a sandwich waiting for me. She makes the best sandwiches. After that I mostly just sat and read and took care of Buzzy and ate lots of food. Like, a lot of food. The evening session went just as well. We did more gaiting then we did in the morning and managed not to fall apart all over the place. One of the things I did when I was riding in the morning was make a careful list of 'Horses to Stay Away From'. It's not that these particular horses were bad horses or had bad riders, they just had particular attitudes toward or affects on Buzzy that I wanted to avoid. Like the fast horses, they send Buzzy off in a tizzy because he gets pressured into going fast by them, or the stinker horses that like to play little dominance games when their riders weren't looking. I see a lot more than a lot of people when I look at how a horse behaves. Every movement is a sign to me, and tells me what the horse is thinking. That skill was imperative in keeping out of trouble during this clinic.

RELAX Buzzy D:

HI 8D

Anyway, I told the instructors that I wanted to be placed in the slow group. This has it's benefits because that means that most of the riders would be going at a walk and only trot occasionally, but also has a downside. There were mostly younger, inexperienced riders in this group, so I had to be super extra careful. Even with all that to keep track of, we still did extremely well. I got back to the barn completely zonked and crashed.

Tuesday
Safety meeting, as usual, and this time we could actually hear Collin since there wasn't equipment going in the background. After the meeting I went and saddled up. This time we were in the outer uncovered arena. This arena has always made me nervous. It sits nestled in an intersection between a four-lane road and a two-lane road, and then across the road is an airport. In effect what you get is the noise of trucks plus the scary giant white raptors in the sky. Buzzy was completely fine with all this, and I, however, wasn't. I felt exposed, and it didn't make anything better that we had to split the ring with the advanced English riders.
This may not seem that significant, but let me tell you. All of them were cantering, a lot, which meant that Buzzy was picking up on the energy from five or six horses cantering at once. Talk about herd dynamics in action. He was only energized a little by the cantering horses, though. He is extremely focused on me now, I rarely lose his attention anymore, and so he was fine. Like I said before, I wasn't. I got all worried about him reacting to the other horses and the noise and overreacted when he started speeding up. He was speeding up because I was tense, not because he was pitching a fit or being nervous. But I learned an important lesson that day. Listen to what my horse is telling me about myself and what I'm doing and not just what he's doing.
I spent the rest of the morning having a meltdown in one corner of the ring. The instructor (I don't know her name, sadly) was very nice and very supportive.

This was bad?

I got off, feeling like a ticking time bomb and exceedingly dissatisfied with myself, and spent the lunch hour pretending to be cheerful. Heather and Anna, Katie's two sisters, had come to visit us at the barns. Heather didn't understand leads very well, so she asked the Western instructor to show her how they worked. I don't like the way he teaches his horsemanship, but he knows a lot about general riding. He showed us how leads worked by using the back feet as an example instead of the front feet. I've always just looked at the front legs to tell which lead, and never really thought about or understood the actual mechanics that go into what a lead is. He said that you use one foot to push yourself around a circle, and so does a horse. So if you're going around a circle to the right then you're using your left foot to push off and essentially pivoting on your right. And if I remember correctly that meant that your right foot was leading. I could be wrong. Anyway, our two feet were simulating the horse's back feet.

Me overreacting. Buzzy making a funny pose.

It was a very interesting and amusing ten minutes. I got to watch Heather trying to canter around in a circle and understand leads better. After that I went to go saddle up, and while I was in the stall tightening Buzzy's girth something completely terrifying happened. Lightning flashed down from the sky and stuck somewhere in the midst of the Ag Center grounds. I knew it was on the grounds because there was absolutely no pause between the lightning and the thunder. It sounded like a shotgun. Not that I've ever heard a shotgun, but if I heard one I'm sure it would sound like that. It was insane. Me and Buzzy both leaped out of our skins simultaneously. After I was sure we both still had all nine limbs and limited brain damage I got out of there fast. Everyone went around with an O.O look on their face for the next twenty minutes or so. Lets just say we didn't ride that evening, so I didn't get a chance to redeem myself from my breakdown that morning. However, we didn't get a blip from the sky the rest of the evening.

Me pushing Katie in a wheelbarrow

We got to go the BB&Q still, though. It's held in the main arena. You have to get their early in order to get a good spot in line, but once they start serving food things move pretty quickly. While we were standing waiting for our food we got to watch the saddleseat (gaited) riders who were going to State ride. They got some extra practice because that show is a pretty big deal where I live. Every 4-Her who has a decent horse and half a mind tries to go to that show. I haven't yet. I might go next year, judging from what I learned about Buzzy's non-reaction to new places at camp this time.
Anyway, I got to watch them trot/gait their horses around in circles. They were all pretty good. I hope they do well.

Chelsea making a funny face while running with an egg.

After the BB&Q (it was great food, by the way) was the horseless games. It's basically a bunch of people running around like idiots doing ridiculous things like pushing their friends in wheelbarrows and riding fake horses while balancing an egg in a spoon. Katie, these two other girls and I were on a team. The other two were friends of Katie I didn't know that well but liked anyway-Chelsea and Crosby. Hopefully I spelled their names right. I probably didn't. After the games were over we had a MASSIVE water balloon showdown. Everyone split into two groups and each person got one water balloon, and then at the count of three we all threw our water balloon. Mine didn't pop. It bounced off and popped on the ground instead. The whole one water balloon per person thing didn't work out all that well, and so everyone made a mad dash for the bucket. Then everyone nailed Colin. Unfortunately, he had a massive water canon.
You can guess what happened next.

Colin nailing people with his water canon

Anyway, we had a blast. It was tons of fun and really cheered me up after that morning. Me and Katie went running once the games were over, about a mile or so around the grounds of the Center, and I actually kept up reasonably well. I'm very slow, so I was delighted to find someone my speed. I wish she lived up here. She's one of my best friends, and I don't get to see her more than once or twice a year.

Wednesday
The previous night Dad brought me a sleeping back, so I wasn't cold. I slept like a baby, undisturbed from the moment I laid my head down to the moment I opened my eyes. It was wonderful. This was the last and best day of camp in my opinion. Buzzy was awesome. We were both awesome. Both the instructors for the gaited class were completely drooling over him by the end of the morning. One of them even thought that he might be related to a grand champion because of his name: Home Land Pride. If you happen to know what grand champion that is, feel free to comment. I completely forgot his name. It was Pride something, that's all I know.

The Team

We had a gaited clinic and cow penning. I did cowpening once in the morning and rocked it with my two teammates. We got a cow into the pen in 35 seconds. It was amazing. I left after that and went over to the gaited clinic. I concentrated really hard on not freaking out and translating with my body exactly what speed and feel I was looking for in Buzzy's running walk, and it worked. I had him going really smooth after a few tries. However, there was a ton of traffic. There were about fifteen horses in the ring, gaited riders and English riders, and let me tell you; some of these people were just so oblivious. I got boxed in at one point, behind three English riders riding side-by-side (which is stupid in any situation, did I even need to mention?) with a gaited horse next to me and someone coming up from behind at a running walk. The person behind pushed Buzzy, and he started speeding up but there was no where to go. I had to turn Buzzy into the fence, which produced a very large and painful-sounding clang that got the attention of one of the instructors. She pulled a bunch of people off the rail and talking to them about ring manners and safety. I was grateful, and after that hypervigilant to stay out of trouble. However, the same girl that ran up behind me when I got boxed in did it again. Now I can handle once, even tolerate twice, but when she started to do it a third time I got called down for getting in another horse's space (and that was only because her horse was pushing from behind) so I turned around and told her to stop running up behind me. She did.

Action!

Other than that incident it was fairly uneventful. I got off and went and went to get lunch. Very slowly and carefully. Every muscle was rebelling against me at that point, chanting something like: "NO MORE MOVEMENT!" I got back on after lunch, and went and did cowpenning again except this time with Katie. We had a long wait, which meant I got even more stiff. Buzzy was extremely entertained by the cows, however. He's very curious once he's calm, and so of course he kept trying to socialize with them. One started licking his face. He wasn't bothered at all by this. I think my Tennessee Walking Horse is a cow whisperer.
Anyway, once we got in with the cows it took forever to get one cut out of the herd. They kept running back. These cows were a lot harder than the herd we had in the morning. We finally got two in the pen, however.
After the cows I went back to the gaited clinic. We spent almost the whole time in a running walk. A spectacular running walk, if I do say so myself. Then came the packing. Heather was astonished when Buzzy just walked into the trailer, no fuss, didn't even bat an ear. The packing and leaving went amazingly fast, and before we knew it we had left the Ag Center with only the memory of camp and a couple T-shirts to commemorate it. I went home and crashed.

/endrant

P.S. This post took me three days to write. Appreciate, people.

P.P.S. I had some videos, but they are taking WAY too long to upload with our snail internet, and I'm impatient.