Let's see, where we left off...
Oh yes. Sophie was showing Buddy. Sophie and Buddy had an amazing year. Buddy took her safely from lead line to loping everywhere, even bareback. They showed walk trot the entire season in our open show circuit, SEMSCA. It's been a few years so I don't remember the exact places, but I know they won quite a few awards that year overall. I also know that after showing all season on good old Buddy, she had gained a ton of confidence. Enough confidence that we took her to her first POA show. She and Buddy were the cutest pair. Especially in English. It doesn't get any cuter than tiny little girls on adorable ponies in breeches.
Some of my favorite memories of Sophie showing Buddy in SEMSCA that year were of her showing with her sister. There were some adorable moments where they congratulated each other and just as many moments where the overall theme was "ha ha - I beat you." They were sisters after all. As much as they were competitors, they were also partners in crime. I remember the day, and probably can still find the video, when I told them to go out to the pasture and bring their ponies in for riding. I caught them in halters and lead ropes, no helmets, trotting those ponies across the hills with loose horses running all around them. They weren't safe. But they were having the time of their lives and their laughter and smiles made it so I couldn't even scold them. There was also the time they were brushing their ponies at the hitching post and making up jokes. I can't even begin to remember the jokes, but I can tell you that they weren't good jokes. However, I still remember laughing like crazy just because their laughter was infectious.
The year of Buddy was also the year that my friend, Karrie, drove clear to Harmony to take some pictures of the girls and their ponies. They were adorable of course, but the best came when Karrie told Sophie to strike a pose. Let me put this into a little timeline perspective for you. Remember the Captain Morgan commercials where the people who were drinking all would pose with their foot up in the air like the pirate on the bottle? Yeah, well, apparently Sophie had seen that commercial a few too many times because when prompted to "strike a pose", she didn't hug her pony or look all cute and sweet. Nope, not my Sophie. She propped that foot up in the air and embraced her inner pirate. Man, I wish I had that picture within easy reach. It still makes me smile.
Buddy was such a good boy, a truly one in a million pony. It was heart wrenching the next winter when he was playing with the others and broke his lower jaw. It wasn't life ending, luckily the good old boy got to go home and live several more years in retirement, but it was career ending. There was Sophie with no pony to show except... Who remembers who Sophie showed the next year?
Caption: How cute was this little shirt that we borrowed from the Mullenbach family for this one show? Another of my favorite early POA memories was showing with the Mullenbach's and how close Chrystal, Libby and Sophie all were.
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