June 16, 2010
Our favorite mustang, Sweet Georgia Brown, has successfully completed the Extreme Mustang Competition in Fort Collins, Colorado. He was trained by a wonderful trainer, Rebecca Bowman, who learned many of her training techniques while trainingThoroughbreds. She was sponsored and supported by our very special farrier, Chase New. Thank you to all the Bits & Bytes Farm friends for supporting them in the contest.
Here is the story from Rebecca:
Thursday morning I rode for about 2 hours in the morning and as he was feeling good I rode another two after lunch. We had a trainers meeting at 5 followed by a 90 second routine so we could be picked by Al Dunning and Ken Mcnabb on teams. I was lucky enough to be picked by Al Dunning (a world champion reining trainer). See the video here.
Friday was the trail competition (worth 50% of our final score) at 1. Sweet Georgia Brown (after 6 hours in the saddle) was wild and decided he had never seen a bridge before and took about a minute to go over it. That put us in 22nd. See the video the trail competition video.
Next was reining (30%) in which he was great. We placed 10th and were one of a few who got all our lead changes.
Friday night was the fan favorite competition. Madeleine and I took over and did an East / West ride off. I rode in a jumping saddle and Madi in a western. Her three moves were stop, rollback and standing on her horse. Mine were jumping, lead change and Spanish walk. See the video – sorry for the poor quality. Madi’s talent was hula hooping and for mine I read an edited version of the Man From Snowy River poem. Madi won fan favorite competition with a little more applause than I had.
Next on Friday night was the team relay race – lots of fun.
Saturday morning was more clinics with our team leaders and then working cow class at 1. He was great in that and we ended the class in 15th. (worth 20 %). Saturday night was team Cow Hockey – playing hockey on horseback with cows. It was a blast. My team won the team event.
Overall we came in 22nd. I met some great trainers and learned a lot at the event. I was coached all weekend and had 5 hours of clinics a day with Al Dunning (priceless). Listen to what Al Dunning had to say about the competition.
There were some amazing trainers there, I made a lot of new friends. You probably remember Ramon Castro from voting. He is an exceptional horseman and person and came in 3rd overall (I thought he should have won).
Sunday morning we ended with the auction. Chase New (my friend and farrier) who was kind enough to drive us to Colorado and back was hoping to buy Sweet Georgia Brown at the auction. After some frantic bidding … he bought him. We were able to load him back in the trailer and bring him home. He enjoyed a few hours in the pasture last night (and didn’t even jump out).