Hi Everyone!
Can you believe I’ve been here for a year already??? This place is very different to where I came from but I’ve learned so much and made so many friends of both the 2 and 4 legged varieties. I’m a very tactile pony and the biggest thing I had to learn was that not everyone likes to be licked and touched all the time, that has been very hard for me! I hadn’t been here very long before I was tasked with a very important job. A good friend of Tall Timbers, Sui Watts, was going on a special trip to France to represent Australia in the Virtus Global Games and I was asked to help get her ready! You see, Sui has 2 beautiful horses she is lucky enough to ride and compete but they couldn’t travel all the way to France so I got chosen to help her get used to making friends with different types of horses before she met the horse she would be borrowing for the big competition. I must have done a pretty good job because she won gold! Sui and her teammates also won gold in the team event beating people riding their own horses! Congratulations Sui and Team Australia on a job well done!
Back on the home front I was completing my training and meeting new riders and learning how to adapt to everyone’s different needs. Some people can ride with no assistance while others need people on each side of them to help them with their balance or doing the games we play. One group I was a part of was practicing for a musical ride competition, we got to dance around the arena with music playing while of course being careful not to crash into each other. Unfortunately, something came up and I couldn’t participate on the day of the competition but my team, ‘Barbie,’ placed 2nd and the other TT team, ‘Under the Sea,’ placed 3rd; congratulations to coach Maddy and everyone involved!
Some of my friends also got to compete in our mounted games day though it sounded more like a dance party with the music playing in the arena. It was great to be a spectator for this one, watching my new friends doing activities I’d never heard of, well everyone knows what the bending race is but I’d never heard of ‘snakes and ladders,’ ‘crazy 8’s,’ or ‘twist and turn’ but hopefully I’ll get to compete next year because it looked like everyone was having a great time with lots of laughing and cheering and best of all great sportsmanship. Well done everyone!
The first horse friend I made when I arrived was Karoo, he also liked to lick so we got on great! He explained how RDA works and all the good things about the place, he told me how much fun I would have and how, if I worked hard, I would get to help as many people as he had. I loved my conversations with Karoo but sadly his time to cross the rainbow bridge came and we all had to say a final goodbye. RIP Karoo, you have certainly left a hole in our hearts; a true gentleman and it was an honour to have known you.
Reflecting on my first year at TT so much has happened, competitions, EPA clinics, SES training, new friends coming and going, property maintenance work and ALL the regular routine stuff but boy has it been fun (we’ll just ignore the doctor and dentist visits…) and I can’t wait to see what adventures next year brings!
Merry Christmas everyone! Thank you all for your support, we couldn’t do it without you, stay safe and looking forward to seeing everyone next year.
