Ya-Ya Riders: Halloween Weekend Fun

Yaya sista's started the weekend early with a birthday dinner to celebrate the October Birthday Girls - Marsha, Sherry, and Kathy. Unfortunately, Kathy was working in Arkansas and missed our gathering at Olive Garden in Owasso Thursday evening. Tammy taught us the best verse of the Viking Birthday Song - "May the candles on your cake burn like cities in your wake," haha. The rest of the song isn't required to get the feeling.

Friday evening, the girls and I met Kathy B, Mallory S, and Roxanne B with her friend Mattie at the Arabian Show at Tulsa Expo. This show is several levels up from any horse show I have seen and we had good timing and got to watch finals for Open Country Pleasure and the Native Costume Class in the old Pavillion. Alaina was so impressed with the costumes and she kept saying that she was in HEAVEN. We even ran into Jean, Jessie, and Ruthie watching reining in the Mustang Arena. Kindred Spirits.

Sat. morning we rode in the party lesson at Patty's with Dennise S on Dee, and Tammi C on Murphy - the girls rode with us since Erica's birthday party was at 2:00pm. After Splash's good performance at the show last weekend, I was disapointed in our lesson work. We had some decent lateral movements but Splash seemed extra stiff bending to the right - he maintained lovely left bend when working left, but would slow to less than his normal slug spead when we worked right if there was any right bend at all. Also, our canter work to the right was very difficult to maintain. One step forward, 3 steps back in our training. The girls worked on canter departs and on staying on the rail through the corners.

After the lesson, I tried Murphy - he is very responsive to leg and seat cues and, after Splash, I had a little more power than I was after at both the trot and canter. He was very fun and we could imagine some nice dressage scores with those forward trot moves.

The girls dressed up in their costumes (sans horses) for a Halloween Party on Sat. evening and warmed up nicely for the Halloween Fun Show at Glenbrook hosted by Rita G at her beautiful spread in Claremore. The weather was perfect and the horses and costumes looked fantastic! We played games on and off horseback including: Bat Relay, Bat Dropping, Ride a Ghost, Boot Race, Pumpcan Race, Egg and Spoon Race and paraded all the costumes. Alaina was thrilled to bring Diez to the event dressed in her native costume in purple and turquoise - even though she was limited to walk/trot since Diez is recovering from founder earlier this year. Ivy the elf rode Pico the Christmas Reindeer (with Moose antlers). At times Pico looked a bit embarassed by his get-up.

YaYa Sister Tammy brought an Owl to add ambiance to the day - he was soooo cool. We finished the evening with a spooky Hay Ride and Wienie-Marshmallow Ro