While I'm putting up photos, here's one I can't resist. It's three years old now and not only has Lily grown, she has outgrown the pony she's on. A pony I can say is The World's Best Pony.
(Click to enlarge.)
That's me on Lucy. Notice who has the blue and who has the red. My only excuse is that we weren't in the same division (thankfully!)
But back to the World's Best Pony. Her name is Annie Up and we picked her up from a riding school that was getting rid of all of its school horses and others that weren't A circuit quality. Annie looks like a dachshund (short and long), so she is not A circuit quality. She also will canter backwards across a field to kick another horse, and the child riding her will never even notice. Annie kicks. Annie is grumpy.
Annie will do EVERYTHING you ask. And not one thing more.
I have never paid as much for a horse as I paid for Annie. She'd been a school pony for six years, so I didn't bother to have her vetted. If she can be ridden every day and not be lame, she'll do. And I was right.
When Lily's seat wasn't very secure and she'd land on Annie's neck after a jump, Annie would stop. Paul and I were watching her ride, and what could have been a catastrophe (a horse running away with a little girl on her neck) was a non-event. Lily slid herself back into the saddle and said, "Thank goodness she has a neck."
And I said to Paul, "That's why I paid so much for that pony." (By the way, my idea of lots of money is probably a lot less money than your idea of lots of money. I'm pretty good at getting fabulous horses cheap.)
This photo is from Lily's first horse trial with Annie (and my first with Lucy). When we walked the courses, Lily got very upset that there were two jumps (one on cross country and one in stadium) that had bales of hay under them. "I'll never get Annie to jump those," Lily said.
"She's not afraid of hay," I said.
"No, but she'll stop and eat," Lily said. I told her she was crazy. Annie was lazy, but Annie was not a refuser.
The first time Lily had ever ridden Annie was a year or two before we bought her when Lily went to riding camp at that stable. Lily fell off the minute she got on Annie and Annie decided to eat. If you've been around horses and children, you know what happened. Annie put her head down to graze, Lily was hanging onto the reins determined NOT to let her graze, and Annie pulled Lily right down Annie's neck. Kind of like a playground slide with a mane down the middle. Annie likes to eat.
At one Pony Club games day Annie decided that the plastic fruit in the barrel was real and needed inspection. Lily could not get Annie's head out of that bucket.
So, back to the horse trials. Lily couldn't sleep that night for worrying about Annie eating the hay jumps. I continued to tell her she was crazy.
Guess what. Lily was first after dressage, had a perfect round in cross country -- and then it happened. In show jumping the first jump was the one with the bale of hay. Annie went right up to it, slowed down but did not stop. Lily started kicking and using her crop, because we could all tell that Annie was planning on having lunch, right then and there in the show jumping arena. The hay was calling to her! And I watched in amazement as my little girl forced that fat, lazy, perfect pony to jump the jump -- but not before Annie took a bite out of it on the way over. I don't know if there is a penalty for eating the jump, but they weren't charged and managed to hang onto first place.
More on Annie later. When it was time to sell her, all it took was one e-mail to one person. Safe ponies, even overweight ones that will buck and kick, are hard to come by.
As for my red ribbon, well, I'm glad I lived to tell about it. Lucy and I were first after dressage. On cross country she bolted on a stretch of wooded path, took three strides and realized that she faced a tall, wire pasture fence. I thought we were dead. I really thought we were dead when I realized she believed her best option was to JUMP IT. That's why God gave horses manes, even if He shorted them on brains. So I hung on and we cleared it! Then I was able to get her to stop. My first reaction was to pray and thank God that we were alive. My second reaction was to figure out whether or not I was legally on or off course. Since I could follow the fence line down to where a gate opened out onto a path and there were no jumps that I was missing, I decided that I was still legal and rode on down to the gate and resumed cross country. I had that euphoric feeling you get when you almost die but don't. And Lucy seemed to have recovered what few senses she has.
And then I did that really stupid thing that riders sometimes do. Coming in to the last jump, which was not at all challenging, I ignored the little voice in my head that said, "Lucy is going to be distracted by that other horse that just came on course," and I kept riding toward the last jump as though I had already won. But that little voice was right. There was a horse coming in the opposite direction, and though he wasn't near the jump, that was all the excuse Lucy needed to duck out. All I had to do was actually ride and it would have been ours. So we dropped from first to second place and didn't screw up in show jumping, so we got to keep it.
But I lived and my daughter won, even with Annie taking a bite out of jump. That was a great day.
