I am very excited as it looks like I will be coaching the MSU IHSA hunt-seat team this year! What does this have to do with Rose? The advanced (Intermediate and Open fences) riders always need "fancier" than school horses to show. Usually local hunter/jumper horses are recruited from around the area to be used for the day of a show. This brings up a little dilemma in my mind. I am very happy to trailer her in on occasion and use her as a school horse when she's in a practice lesson that I'm teaching or as an extra horse for a show (to be clear, I am not donating her to the university as a school horse), but is she ready for it? Obviously she's not ready for the open level fences, but she could definitely do novice level fences, possibly intermediate level, and she'd be totally a-okay for flat at any level above w/t/c. But what happens if she has a 4-year old melt down on some poor kid? Oh the guilt. Or what happens if she is perfect and apparently saves all her melt downs for me (less of a problem obviously, just a blow to one's pride).
I suppose I could haul her to a couple practices and see how it goes before committing her to a show. The change of pace might be good for her, the pseudo show environment is always good practice, and learning that she has to listen to another rider would be good for her too. Plus, I'd get to see someone else rider her for a change. That would be kinda nice! Regardless, as the coach I'm not required to do this, I'm just thinking about it.
Happy trails and swooshing tails!
If you're the coach and you are supervising and you pick the students who ride, it could go well. Hope it works out!
ReplyDeleteAgree with SprinklerBandit. I rode IHSA in college for 3 years and we did not have anything CLOSE to Rose's quality. :) Lucky kids!
ReplyDeleteahhhh the IHSA...
ReplyDeleteI definitely never drew anything near Rose's quality to ride, that would have been a dream! I must say though, that as often as we joked about the "three-legged-donkeys" that we were somehow supposed to coax around the Open courses, I would have been more leery as an owner looking at all the riders who either prematurely pointed out into the higher divisions or were placed there in the first place from impressive riding resumes.
I saw more scary falls and bad rides in the Int/Open classes due to overfaced riders that I don't think I could have ever let Pia loose in that scene... If you could pick the riders, that'd be one thing, but the IHSA raffle is somewhat terrifying from an owner's perspective now.
But that doesn't change that as a rider, I would have SWOONED for the chance to ride something as lovely as your girl in the IHSA ring.... :)
I rode IHSA in college as well and agree with Gigham, there were a lot of scary riders/falls in that division. Some kids (and coaches encourage this ugh) 'fudge' their experience to get into higher levels that really shouldn't be. It would personally make me nervous to put my 4 year old in, its kind of a crap shoot! lol
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