When I was about 12 or 13, my Dad helped run a mounted youth drill team called the Mill Iron Wranglers. Sort of like the Westernaires, just not nearly so famous (FYI…Dad was a Westernaire, when he was a kid). We met weekly (or was it weakly?) to practice during the summer months. At the time he was a real stickler for details. I can still hear him yelling at everyone else…”spacing, spacing, spacing!” Of course he wasn’t yelling at me….I mean come on, I was always paying attention! We ran mounted drills and if the spacing wasn’t right, there was potential to have crashes and scrapes. But you can only hammer kids for so long before you start to lose their attention. So Dad was always telling us about the things him and his buddies did to alleviate their boredom. We were constantly trying to ride standing in the saddle, which it turns out…is easier to do in a lope than a trot or walk. Who would have thought that! Roman riding was only attempted once (by me), it helps to have two horses that will move side by side and without fighting (learned that one the hard way). But the one we probably had the most fun with was the rescue race. Now these are fairly common in gymkhanas, but I haven’t seen it done in a long time! The gist is that a rider runs to the other end of the arena to a person standing on the ground (behind a barrel), that person then swings up behind the saddle and you race back…fastest time wins. Seems simple enough....
