Day 99:Mustang Final

On Oct. 1^st the 2011 Mustang Yearling/ Washington Youth final event took place. We were super excited and could not wait to see everyone with there Mustangs. I made sure we had everything we could possibly need and more before we set out to Reber Ranch. My sister and I had decided to bring Reece in the night before so she could get settled in before she had to work the next day. We got there at about 6pm and the first thing we did was give Reece a quick bath. She had not had one in a while and she was in a strange place so she was not very happy about having to get wet. Right after her bath we took her outside to dry off. We finally got her tucked into bed at around 10, then we went to a friends house to get some rest before the big day.
   The next morning we left the house about an hour later than planed but we were still there in plenty of tome to get ready and clean up before the morning meeting. I worked with Reece some in the morning just to get her stretched out then we went to the morning meeting to go over the days events. The meeting went by quickly then we were all lining up to with our horses all clean and ready for vet check. Reece had been up most of the night so she was really sleepy which was the main thing we got marked down.
    The next thing to do was showmanship. The pattern was all things that Reece new and was good at but she decided she was to tired and did not want to have her best performance.
     Soon after that we had trail class to do. Again there was nothing new but Reece decided she didn’t like it anyway. She was afraid of the newspapers on the ground, she did not feel like trotting, and she didn’t want to back either. She loaded into the trailer like usual and even turned around to have her halter taken off like I would normally do, but the judge saw that as trying to get out. She ground tied well and side passed fine to even if it wasn’t quite strait. So far it has not been our best day.
     Finally we had the free style. This was the event I had been looking forward to all day. We both got all pretty and dressed up like fairy princesses and I even made my ‘greenstick’ into a magical wand. Reece was awake and ready at this point and we were both excited to show off what we could really do. I had put together a routine with the song ‘Fireflies’ by Faith Hill. The routine was originally supposed to be at liberty but she was so sleepy I figured I better leave the halter on during the whole thing. I had her move her haunches and forehand, side pass both ways, trot slow and fast, send at a walk and a trot and around cones. I lifted a pole between her legs and as my finally I got up on a fence and sent her butt around both ways like I was going to mount her. The fence I had always done this move on was about 4ft high but the fence I used at the event was about 6ft high, and I was wearing a slippery dress. I almost fell off the fence a number of times and when it came time to lay over Reece like I had planned she decided not to stand still. So I improvised by simply putting my knee on her rear and striking a pose. We did really well and had a lot of fun.
    I ended up with 4^th place over all and the horsemanship award which made me very proud of our work together. Each of the trainers went home with a belt buckle, a shadow box, and a leather bracelet with your mustangs brand on it. We even came home with 3 more special surprises...