™Region 9 Championships Shawnee, OK
by Kyra Beth Houston
™
Region
9 Championships Shawnee, OK
by Kyra Beth Houston
I was assigned to scribe for Liz Searle and she is a lovely lady who started as an eventer with two mares, one a Standardbred. She switched to dressage when her mare found the ground too hard for cross country. Her first mare taught her much. The mare would always jump every obstacle, but wanted to check out the obstacle carefully first resulting in no jump faults, but time penalties for slight hesitations at the jumps as she studied them. A trainer decided he could solve that problem by teaching Liz to use the whip at the precise moment. Liz was approaching a water jump, and while probably not at the precise moment, applied the whip. The mare put her ear back and then just at the take-off, perfectly applied full brakes, sliding to a stop and dumping Liz over her head into the water. As Liz said, "She taught me NOT to use the whip."
Judge Searle is extremely easy to scribe -- she is clear, articulate, comments are excellent -- by the end of the classes, I was almost anticipating her comments. Our classes were 1st level to PSG including South West Dressage Championship (SWDC) classes which were co-judged by Anita Owen, whom I haven't seen since 1995 when I scribed for her at Bartlesville, OK in 100 degree temps outdoors. I brought a cooler full of frozen towels and ice each day. Anita gets my vote for "Trooper of the Year" as she never made a single discouraging comment about the heat and merely complimented the show management, riders, and volunteers for doing so well in the heat.
We had an hour break, so I headed for the barns and found Kentchurch Chime and Nancy Hinz. Chime is even more kewl in person. I will scribe for his GP freestyle on Sunday morning (scheduled at this time to accomodate another rider in the class).
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