2016 Functional Horsemanship - Red Bird Ranch Arena Obstacle Challenge Results

In between uncharacteristic days of windy and rainy September weather, we lucked out and had perfect weather for our second annual Arena Obstacle Challenge. Some competitors drove over 100 miles to compete and I hope they were challenged, and likely so, as new locations will often make the best horses a little hinky.

I tried to find a good mix of prop related obstacles and basic horsemanship maneuvers to give each rider and horse a challenge within their respective divisions.    

The competitors entered the arena and proceeded over ground poles then through a funnel with plastic arms. Next they were required to trot through traffic cones placed 10 feet apart, stopping past the last cone, Open Division riders had to back in a circle, Intermediate riders backed in a 180 degree arc and Novice riders back straight for 10 feet.   The full AOC arena diagram is below:

The Garoucha pole was next were Open Division retrieved the pole and jogged a complete circle around the pole while other Divisions were required to retreive the pole and ride their horse between the pole and the fence. This seemingly easy tasks proved to be much harder than you would imagine for several of the horses as they viewed the dark hard wood pole leaning up against the fence with suspicion.

Next, all rider were required to two track about 30 foot, traveling laterally about 15 feet. Two tracking is forward movement combined with lateral movement where the horse's outside front foot stepped over and forward of the inside front hoof while the horse has forward movement. Open Division did this at a trot, while the other Divisions could do it at a walk. This proved to be the singular most difficult task for most all of the competitors.

Obstacle 7 was gait transitions - Novice a walk to a trot transition; Intermediate - a working trot to a extended trot; and Open was required to do a canter departure.  Photo below left: Angela Beltran-Flores on Starbuck.

The next obstacle was a 32 inch wide, 8 foot long bridge which the majority of horses navigated okay.

And this led to side passing ground poles where Novice Division had to side pass a 6 foot ground pole; Intermediate was required to side pas a longer 8 foot ground pole; and Open had to side pass both ground poles.

Navigating vertical poles placed 4 1/2 feet part was next to challenge the rider. This required riders to be pretty careful as they moved through them not to knock over the poles with their stirrups or their horse back end.

The riders next had to dismount then send their horse though a couple barrels like they would if they were sending a horse into a trailer. The rider followed their horse through then re-mounted from either a mounting block or the fence. All rider's chose the mounting block - a couple competitors did this for the first time, trying to opposition their horse in order to step up and mount.

From here the rider's moved to a rope and while holding onto the rope they backed their horse's pulling a bag of cans up to the top of the arena bow gate. I thought this would be the most difficult obstacle for horses but the majority of competitors and their horses did just fine.  Photo below right is Lynn Gonzalez, riding Sonny, from High Rolls New Mexico pulling the bag of cans over the bow gate. 

The final task was to demonstrate control of the back end or fore end. Novice Division had to do a 180 degree turn on the front end; Intermediate - a full circle on the front end; and Open - a 360 degree turn on the haunches.  







2016 Functional Horsemanship - Red Bird Ranch AOC Winners:


Open - Luanne Santiago, riding Tippy, won Open for the second year in a row.
Intermediate - Luanne Santiago, riding Nutmeg who narrowly beat Marianne Bailey riding Apache.
Novice - Lisa Rains, riding a borrowed horse as her dressage trained draft horse was held out for a cautionary health issue.

Just a notable few of the other competitors were Gina Blankenship from Deming, NM riding Dee, a Buckskin mare who will appear tonight on Julie Goodnight's program; Jenna Mendez, a nine year old riding Harley a Palomino gelding, and Jenna was competing for the first time in an AOC format, nevertheless securing 4th place in Novice; and Angela Beltran-Flores, last year's Novice winner, riding a fearless old horse Paint horse called Starbuck.

All competitors made a trip to the prize table and a Perfect Harmony Horse Rescue was the receiptant of part of the entry fee proceeds as well as the money made from the raffle. After an enchilada lunch, some of the competitors took their horses back into the arena for further schooling on the obstacles.  We also hosted a couple ladies from the Netherlands who are visiting dressage riders and attended to watch their first AOC.   Next year's annual AOC will probably be held on the last Saturday in September as well.  And lastly a big thank you to Arden Evans who helped judge the event.