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Mustang Magic 2010 |
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 Cody Coyote in his first days at Whispering Hills He was almost named Noah! Our trip back to Georgia was one to remember. We drove through torrents of rain, and football fields of standing water on I-20 into Atlanta at 11:00 at night. By the time we woke the next morning that stretch of I-20 was closed due to flood from the excessive rain! Winning Fourth place with Seren in the Gatorland extreme mustang makeover earned me an invitation to the Mustang Magic Competition. All top five finishers in Mustang Makeovers across the U.S. are invited to the best of the best Magic competitions. I accepted my invitation and journeyed to Fort Worth, Texas to pick up my next Mustang. Where as it took only a few hours to get a lead rope on Seren, Cody proved different. He was much more flighty then Seren. The slow start was ok with both of us. Cody needed time to learn to trust me and his feet needed serious attention before he could be ridden. My farrier said he had the worst case of seedy toe he had ever seen. It was well into 30 days before I could put any training rides on him due to slight lameness. During this time we worked on various other things like trailer loading, the pedestal, bridges, water crossings, and bareback passenger rides. With 90 days left and front shoes on Cody's feet we finally started doing some serious ride time in the saddle. Our next hurdle was getting Cody to pickup the left lead. After a few rides of getting his confidence about cantering, I started to push for the other lead that he never offered. Some horses offer both from the first ride and some offer both with a little encouragement, with Cody this was just not happening. I have a policy, if a horse does not pick up both leads after three days of trying then I call in the Horse Chiropractor, Dr. Penny, to rule out anything physical. One adjustment made the difference. Cody had both stifle joints out. Two rides later Cody was offering both leads easily. Cody proved to be more athletic than Seren over all. He was an athletic jumper, and had a nice trot and canter and a natural high rounded headset. I like to let the horses show me what they are good at and I then expand on that for the freestyle portion of the competition. Cody was also confident about putting his feet in tight spaces like the trailer and pedestal. So these were things that we worked on as we continued training. Weather played a big part in Cody's training. Winter closed in on us in a big way. We had three significant snows this winter as well as a two week period where the daily highs did not get above freezing! Very unusual for Georgia. With no covered facility to work in and sheering winds, I was struggling to put three rides a week on Cody, but he was a fast learner and still progressing well. |
A week before we were to return to Texas, I got permission to invite a few friends to the Jim Miller covered arena and do a dry run in front of an audience. Cody and I loaded up all of our tricks and headed out to wow the crowd. We talked about our journey and showed off Cody's jumping, sideways over a barrel, dragging an object, and standing on a pedestal. I was hoping to have flying lead changes on Cody by now but, the weather prevent the amount of time and dry footing needed to accomplish this. It had been a long journey and we had both come a long way and were as ready as we could be for the January Competition in Texas.
Just like any other trailering experience with Cody, the trip back to Texas once again exciting! The goal was to get to Fort Worth the Wednesday before the competition. It was a sixteen hour drive and about 14 hours in we drove through the aftermath of a tornado that wiped out a local trailer park on I-20. There were three of us traveling together Hannah Windom my animal communicator, Nicole Reynolds my right hand woman who runs our barn, and myself. With more storm cells still needing to cross interstate ahead of us we opted to hunker down outside of Tyler at a Chevron gas station and watch the weather. An hour later the last cell blew through the gas station leaving us shaken but unharmed. We stopped short of Fort Worth at an overnight facility and completed our drive the next morning. As much as we loved Cody Nicole and I both vowed to never haul him again. With help of Hannah we got Cody settled in to the hustle bustle of the Fort Worth stock show. Nerves were high but he and I settled in to a few good rides on Thursday in the Will Rodgers Coliseum. Friday Night the competition begins with the compulsory course of in hand tasks and required riding skills. We did well, crossed every obstacle, loaded in the trailer, stood to be tacked and mounted, drug an object, sorted a cow, cantered our figure eight at the end of day one we were sitting tied for 8th place. the big Saturday night was all that was left. In between our meetings and practices we were meeting interested adopters and talking to them about Cody. His calm quite demeanor in all of the commotion had attracted several interested adopters'. Many people congratulated our performance and thought we should have scored higher. The final performance was here and Cody and I had drawn first go for Saturday night. We were definitely the Ginny pigs. We had very little time to warm up after the intro skit. We reentered the arena to start our routine to dead air! My music was not queued up properly. and when it finally started playing it was thirty seconds in and i was not aware of this! We carried on with our routine drug our wheel barrow, jumped our jumps, side passed over the barrels, jump roped at a canter, did simple changes and of course ended our routine 30 seconds early when the music stopped! My horse did great but human error both mine and the sound mans didn't do us any favors with the judges. I did both pivots in the same directions and couldn't relax enough for Cody to get all four feet on the stool and stay there. In the end we came in ninth over all, and more importantly Cody was adopted by Michelle, a Fort Worth local who was smitten with him. They send regular updates and let us know how he is doing. This being only my second competition I gained a lot from the experience and am ready to apply it to my next competition in Murfreesboro, TN in October 2010.
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