So it's "the" year in the world of POA showing. This is the year that Sophie will "graduate" from being a youth rider before next year she heads into the world of adult classes. POA does a wonderful job of making it a special time and has a program at Congress where there is a write up and a ride for all the youth to be recognized. Me, being me, I'm already trying to think of what I will say in her write up. This explains why so many Sophie memories are running through my brain. So... I've decided to share some of my favorites with Libby's help to start preparing for the big event.
Let's start from the ground up. My earliest memories of Sophie of were of her toddling out to the pasture with me to help check her "he-he's". She loved all the horses from the beginning and they loved her. Even when she barely was taller than their knees.
It wasn't long until she graduated from toddling to running everywhere and that meant she wanted to do everything her big sister was doing. Ponies were of course on the list. She was being led around on ponies from the time she could sit and hold onto the horn. But the first pony she rode by herself was probably our mini, Thunder. Thunder had a neat little trick. He loved to go trotting around and then stop dead, drop his head and Sophie would roll off the front. Now, in true Sophie fashion, she didn't let it bother her and would hop up, pat her helmet and say "that's why we wear helmets!"
By 3 she was showing in lead line on her sister's pony, Shadow. The following two years she had an even better ride, our first ever POA, Shez No Kid (Giggles). Lead line is full of happy memories, like the time she got a pink cowboy hat that had a light up crown and a pink fluffy brim. It was supposed to be for fun but guess who had to wear it for every lead line class? Yep. That's right.
And not only did she dress in an interesting fashion, she ...Never. Shut. Up. Lead line with Sophie was a constant stream of babble. "Mom, look at that pony over there, I love that pony, it's so pretty, oh my gosh - poop! Don't step in the poop mom, oh you just missed it, good job mom, did you see the puppy out there, it's so cute, look there's grandpa, say hi to grandma and grandpa - hi!" It was never ending.
Don't think that showing lead line had Sophie putting her best "pony" out to pasture. Sophie was the stick horse champion rider of the world, or at least our neighborhood She would quickly break or wear out real stick horses. Her folks weren't rich people but yardsticks were free at the county fair. They were brightly colored, square and they came with a little string on the end. Sophie rode the heck out of those stick "horses". She would run them across the gravel so many times that the sticks literally wore off on the ends. A favorite memory of Libby's and mine was the time she was "barrel racing" her stick horse in the driveway and face planted into a giant puddle. She stood up, streaming muddy water from the entire front of her dress and yelled at us to "stop laughing at her". Thankfully she can laugh with us when we retell the story today. And lucky for her, all cell phones didn't have cameras or that image would have been immortalized. I have a picture of her in my mind, in a yellow dress, shoes on the wrong feet, riding her best stick "horse", but sadly that image rests only in my mind now because I could not find it anywhere.
During these years she was with us trail riding everywhere. For many miles we ponied her along and she always wanted more challenges. Sophie was the one begging for more hills to climb and more water to cross. No trail ride ever scared her, except maybe that time Licorice decided the sandy spot at the end of the trail looked like a good place to roll. Looking back, as much as we all laughed, I'm not sure even that moment was scary for her.
She did lead line as a 3, 4 and 5 year old, but by the time she was turning 6 we knew we weren't going to get her to be satisfied with being led around any more. She truly wanted to jump right into the loping classes but we were determined to find her a walk/trot pony first. We looked long and hard for a pony to lease and found the best little pony in Buddy. We took the time to get him hardshipped into POA as "It Ain't EZ". Right off the bat, Buddy and Sophie were the team to beat in walk trot. As one judge commented as he announced them in first place, "In first place, It Ain't EZ, though they sure make it look like it is."
There were plenty of "Sophieisms" that year. One of my favorites was when she was having a lesson and her trainer asked her where her toes were. (Implying that we were practicing showmanship and she needed to pay attention to which way her feet were pointing.) In true Sophie logic she looked down at her toes and replied, "Uh? Right there?"
Another conversation at a lesson went..
"What if he bucks me off?" (Buddy had never bucked.)
"He won't."
"What if he gets scared and bucks?"
"He's not going to get scared."
"What if he gets stung by a bee and bucks me off?"
"Well, I guess we will worry about that if there is a bee."
I'm sure she was exhausting, but she was good at showing from the start. She had watched her sister show enough that she just copied what she had seen her sister do for years. She sat up straight, held her hand in the right place and much to her sister's chagrin, magically got the right diagonal almost every time. It was the start of Sophie being "the Unbeatable Sophie" in SEMSCA; according to her fellow competitors anyway. It was also the year Sophie tried her first POA class. We were just starting to try our hand at breed showing and Sophie was there from the beginning.
Which brings us to our second installment of "Sophie's Stories". Wait for it....
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