May 27th Leaderboard Update

May 27th Leaderboard Update.  Our 2 Teams in the number 1 & 2 spots left NE today and headed to CA to do a TEVIS educational ride.  We wish them safe travels and lots of fun and learning.  Lots of riding this Memorial Day weekend since it was really nice before and inbetween the rain.  Hard to believe the end of May is just around the corner.    Sure hope the weather in June is perfect for riding everywhere :-)

May 20th Leaderboard Update

This has been a very active month, there have been CTR's endurance rides, cattle drives, FBMD rides, birthday rides, wagon rides and just plain everyday fun rides.  So far for the month we have ridden collectively almost 3,000 miles and for the year to date over 15,000 miles.  Those ponies are earning their hay now (about time)!

As we all know the best way to view the world is between the ears of a horse :-)

May 13th Leaderboard Update

It was a beautiful weekend and I sure had to post alot of riding on the Leaderboard Spreadsheet.  Congrats to Team 14 Messick for being the 1st team to reach 600 miles already!!

FBMDR was a success!

Friday Before Mother's Day Ride......A wonderful ride that Tammy Vasa started many years ago was a wonderful success on Friday with about 60 riders and wonderful weather!  It started out a little cool but once the sun came out it was awesome.  The plum bushes smelled so wonderful and the green grass and blue sky made the day very colorful.

We rode from Valapraiso to Loma and back, all in all about 17 miles.  Loma was made famous as it was used in a movie staring Patrick Swayze back in the 90's.  Loma is the home to the Patrick Swayze movie, "To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar." on the side of the "hardware" building, you can still see the muriel that says "Welcome to Snyderville" which was the name of the fictional town.

After we had lunch in Loma we headed back to Valapraiso and had a wonderful pot luck meal together.  Thanks Tammy for a wonderful day full of great memories.

Hints

 

To those riding the Friday Before Mother’s Day Ride on Friday, here are some hits to finding a couple of the lucky horse shoes.  If you find one, claim at my trailer after the ride and tell me where (landmarks) you found it or take a picture of the coordinates on your GPS.

 

 

 

 

Good Luck!

Distance Derby Riders at the FBMDR

This coming Friday is the annual Friday Before Mother's Day Ride beginning at the trail head in Valparaiso, Nebraska and riding to Loma and back. This is the 13th year for the ride and the Big Fat Lying Weatherman has said there is only a slight chance for rain. Do we believe him?


A few things for you Distance Derby riders who plan to be at the ride. It is tradition that there be 10 horseshoes planted along the trail. If you find one (limit one per person please), claim it for a small prize after the ride.


This year, two of the horseshoes will not be in plain site. Why? Because I want them found by Derby riders. Late Thursday night, tune into this website and I will show you the coordinates via the GPS of where they are hidden. Go to that spot and find your horseshoe. To claim your prize, you have to tell me where you found it (landmarks, etc).


Secondly, I'd like to have a Distance Derby group picture in front of the church in Loma at around noon. Just meet in front and we will get as many of the riders who are there at the time. I know its impossible to coordinate everyone, but we'll give it our best shot.


For those of you who are not natives to the area or perhaps are but might not recall, Loma is the home to the Patrick Swayze movie, "To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar." on the side of the "hardware" building, you can still see the muriel that says "Welcome to Snyderville" which was the name of the fictional town. Snap a picture of it while its still there; it is fading fast. And a little Derby trivia: Tanya of Team 31 - Cinc, was an extra in that movie.


Everyone have a good week and hope to see you in Loma!


~Tammy

*** First Leaderboard of May ***

April showers bring May.....snow???? What was up with snow on May 1st!  Enough already!!!  Are we all wanting to ride so bad it hurts....I'm thinking yeah!!!
A big congrats to Team 14 - Messick for being the top team this week.

With Sympathy

 

This is Tammy jumping in here today.  I just wanted all of you to know that last year’s Distance Derby winner, Juanita (Team 41), lost her husband, Ray, this week.  He has been ill and she has been caring for him – giving us updates through Facebook. 

 

I have known Juanita and Ray for years but got to know them so much better during the Derby last year.  You may not know this, but probably a majority of the miles she racked up were on what she called her “racetrack” – a quarter mile strip outside their home going back and forth.  She never wanted to be far away from Ray.  He was well enough to make a couple trips with her last year.  I recall seeing pictures from their Missouri vacation as well as the Petersburg, Nebraska trail ride in August.  I know it made her happy when he was with her but I know Ray was equally happy when Juanita would ride.  “Ride your own ride,”  he told her.  And she did.  He accompanied her to the awards dinner this past January.

 

My sympathy to Juanita and her family at this time of their loss.  If you are so inclined, say a prayer for both of them.  Or you might want to reach out to her in the comments on her Derby Page. 

 

Juanita posted the following on Facebook this morning. 

 

 

 

Page County Conservation is located in southwest Iowa, bordered on the south by the state of Missouri and home to the Pierce Creek Recreation Area. Collectively, the Page CCB manages 8 parks, trails, recreation areas and wildlife areas encompassing some 1,479 acres across the county.  For additional information about the programs, services and facilities offered by the Page CCB, please utilize the following contact information:

Address to mail memorial:  Page County Conservation c/o Joyce Kruse, 1178 200th St, Shenandoah, Iowa,51601-4582.  Note “Iowa West Match” and in memory of Ray.

http://www.mycountyparks.com/county/Page.aspx

End of April Leaderboard

Here is the End of April Leaderboard.  This past weekend was the biggest weekend for riding of the entire month!  Wow ya'll kept me plugging in numbers to the spreadsheet like crazy :-)  Mine included.  So happy to see everyone riding since we are back to winter this week :-( .  Congrats to Team 14 and Team 22 for both getting over 500 miles in the first 4 months of the year.

Two DD 2013 Riders Meet one from Alaska and one in California!

It's not very often I get a drop-in visitor, and I've never had one drop in from Alaska before!  But Jenny Wren and her 17 year-old daughter did just that today, when I heard through the grapevine that they would be driving practically past my house!

 

It was fun, and weird, to have strangers come, but they were very easy to talk to and of course horse women NEVER run out of conversation.  We had a late lunch, then went out for a barn tour and to see the horses, which of course is always the best part.  We compared quality, availability, and types of hay, and compared riding opportunities and horse events and so on.  As cool as Alaska is (and I'm not talking about snow), it is a really inconvenient place to live in comparison to most of the "lower 48".  She talked about how she hauls more in the winter, because she needs to haul to indoor arenas to ride---- but only if the temps are above 10 degrees, that's her cutoff.  In the summer she has area to ride out from her house, so doesn't need to haul to trails.  She is active in CTR.  We compared prices, of feed and boarding, in particular, and as you can imagine hers are higher.  She was marveling at someone's ad for pasture board for $180/month (in your area).

 

She really liked Bravo, probably because he is kind of a looker these days.  He has a pretty arched neck and is sooooo shiney.  He's maybe overly-friendly sometimes, so he was reminded to mind his manners and keep his mouth to himself, thankyou.  (Mary, I haven't measured him lately to see if he has grown.)

 

They were here maybe an hour and a half, then had to continue on to their tasks. 

 

It was a fun visit!  Thanks to Distance Derby (and Tammy) I got to meet a new horsey friend from Alaska.

April 21st Leaderboard Update

OVER Four Hundred Miles, yup we have 3 teams with over 400 miles already!  Team 85 was the first team to get over 400 miles back on April 8th and now a BIG Congrats to Team 14 - Messick for leading the way this week with 430.88 miles.  Team 14 and Team 22 reached their over 400 miles this past weekend at the TallyHo Endurance Ride in Kansas.  Have a great week everyone :-)

Team 81 is a Judge!

Team 81 - Murphy and the Spots is a judge for Dog Trials and I asked her what she does when she judges and here is her story of her last judging.  This is soooo cool :-)

Getting Ready to Judge 

RD Competitor

Hock Exercise

Sit / Stay

I made it to St. Louis to judge the Dalmatian Club of America's (DCA) Specialty Road Trial ! Friday was horse familiarization and judge's briefing and Saturday was the Road Trial competition. This Road Trial competition took place at Purina Farms in Gray Summitt, MO http://www.purinafarms.com/#article-grid , a truly beautiful venue for this type of event. The Dalmatian Club of America offers this competition once a year in conjunction with it's Conformation, Agility, Obedience, and Rally classes and at 2 or 3 other sites across America.

A Road Trial as defined by the DCA rules states: " A Dalmatian Road Trial is a performance event designed to evaluate the Dalmatian’s ability to "coach”, or follow the horses. Exhibitors compete as handlers on horseback or in a horse-drawn cart or carriage, with their dog(s) off leash. The Dalmatian Standard of the American Kennel Club states that the Dalmatian “should be capable of great endurance, combined with a fair amount of speed”, qualities essential to his successful use as a horse/rider and horse/coach escort. The purpose of a Road Trial is to demonstrate the use of purebred Dalmatians as a companion of man in the role that they have been bred to perform.

There are three levels of Road Trial Competition. The “Coaching Certificate” test evaluates the Dalmatian’s ability to coach. The “Road Dog” class evaluates coaching ability and moderate endurance (completing a 12 1/2 mile course in less than 3 hours)and the “Road Dog Excellent” class evaluates coaching ability and extended endurance (completing a 25 mile course in less than 6 hours). Road Trials demonstrate the Dalmatians’ ability to behave in public places, such as riding trails, in the presence of other dogs, in a manner that will reflect positively on the sport and on purebred dogs. I had 13 entries (7 dogs in the RD class and 6 in the CC class, no RDX entries) and all the entries qualified in the RD class and 4 of the 6 qualified in the CC class."

We did have two problem. As I rode the 4 mile loop I found that the route winded through the middle of the shutzhund competition! So my team and I spent several hours reworking the course. Then another hour planning out the "obedience" area. Unfortunately, the field was a smorgasbord board of animal poop. There was sheep, goat, cattle, ducks (and their blood), pigeons (and their blood), horse, dog - from border collies, deer, geese and rat (from a "go to ground" competition) droppings! It was definitely a challenge for the Dalmatians as they experienced a smell sensory overload! The horses were a bit jittery too as parts of this field had large blue tarps flapping in the wind. But we all had a great time!

The weather was as picture perfect as one could hope for, with partly cloudy sky's, a slight wind, temperatures in the low sixties and no humidity. The horses at the event were either brought in and owned by the competitors, or rented from a local wrangler. This wrangler gave us Tennessee Walkers which he used for hunting with his pointers and setters, so the horses had no problems completing the 12 1/2 miles, were used to dogs under foot, and often carried inexperienced riders. One competitor brought her Friesian mare (reportedly worth over $50,000!), another brought her Morgan and the third gal her Pinto Quarter Horse. The carting entry was a draft/warmblood with the best temperament I have ever seen. Nothing frazzled this big guy including one Dals' close encounter with it's nose!

I met some really fantastic people, admired some excellent working Dalmatians and beautiful horses, and rode great a Morgan gelding who happened to be the same color as my horse Murphy. It was just a fun weekend and I really look forward to my next Road Trial!