Extreme Cowboy, Foxtrotter Style by Tori Blankenship
Foxtrotter Group Photo
I met and introduced my now good friend Lisa Wright, to our Fox trotters a little over a year ago. She met her soul mate in the body of a hefty sorrel Foxtrotter we had at the time with the biggest brown soulful eyes I‘ve ever seen. Being a brand new rider, she boarded “JJ” at our farm and I had the pleasure to work with her and “JJ” and watch the confidence in both horse and rider grow over several months. Her goal was to get comfortable enough to trail ride, that’s all she wanted to do. This woman is a quick study! She was blazing the Southwest Florida trails and in no time and then started asking about upcoming horse shows. In about 90 days she competed in the Florida State Foxtrotter Championship Show and came away with the Reserve Grand Championship in the Novice division. One Foxtrotter led to 3 and her fiancé, Rob and his daughter were now new riders as well. Trail riding is Lisa and Rob’s first love for sure, but once you experience the competitive side of horses you usually can’t stay away from the arena for long.
Lisa called me on the phone pretty excited about an ad she had just read in our regional equestrian newspaper, it was for the first ever Great Florida Cowboy Challenge. The ad was pretty vague about what was actually involved in the competition, but it was only limited to 30 horses. She had the lets-through-caution-to-the-wind-and-sign-up-right-now idea. We could always gracefully back out and donate our entry fee to the good cause if it turned out to be too much. News spread of this new challenge and the 30 spaces were filled up in a matter of days. There was such an interest in this competition they eventually allowed 40 horses to compete with many on the waiting list in case of cancellations. I think the ink must have still been wet on the newspaper when she was reading it because she managed to get both of us and her Fiancé’ Rob entered and a position secured in the Cowboy Challenge. The Foxtrotter breed would be very nicely represented.
Rob and Chip
Lisa and Jazzy-D
When the call came to let us know that our horses were indeed secured a position, we finally were able to get a hint about what was actually involved in this Challenge. The coordinator of the event told us that we should watch the Extreme Cowboy Races on RFD-TV; this challenge is based on that competition. That is all of the information that could be squeezed out of her regarding what our horses were expected to do. Having never seen this show and in our search to find out what it is all about, we quickly learned about the Extreme Cowboy craze that is going on all over the country. Thankfully Horsecity.com has back episodes of the Extreme Cowboy Race that can be viewed on their website. I clicked on the link, chose the last episode with the Championship run, sat back while the file loaded and then watched what we were supposed to have our horses ready to do in less than 6 weeks. I was speechless and a little…. no, a-lot intimidated.
The horse Lisa intended to take was “JJ” - Jazz’s Jackpot, a former performance horse and Breeder‘s Cup Champion. After a year of ownership a great bond and trust was formed between the two of them. Lisa had spent countless hours on the trails with JJ and he would do just about anything for her. As it turned out, the night before the challenge she was unable to take JJ and had to substitute her newest horse, Outlaw’s Jazz Dancer. He was also a former performance horse with trail experience, but no obstacle experience that we were aware of. She has ridden him on trail rides locally and he has proved to be an awesome, brave trail horse that has handled many different situations beautifully in the short time that she has owned him. She trailered him to my farm just before dark the night before the challenge for a crash-course through the obstacles that I had set up. We held our breath as Jazzy-D approached each obstacle; he took it all in stride and handled most of the obstacles as if he had been through them before. There were some things that he was unsure of, but Lisa pointed out that she had 12 hours to perfect them….no sleep for her that night!
Rob owns the 2005 World Grand Champion MFTHBA Amateur Versatility Horse, Doc’s Chippin Away. Up until this point he has enjoyed Chip on the trails, he really did not have any desire to compete with him. Being a new rider and spending countless hours in the saddle, an awesome partnership between the two of them had been created. Chip would go anywhere and through anything that Rob pointed him at. This horse has total trust in him and is extremely bold and sure of himself. No problem with this team handling what was in store for them.
The horse I intended to take is our newest addition, 7 year old stallion Playboy’s Sampson. He has been a straight forward, powerful performance horse since the moment the first rider ever sat on his back. He has won numerous national performance championships yearly since the time he was a 2 year old. We proudly took ownership of Sampson last year with our good friends and now partners Arnold & Candace Miller. Sampson moved to Florida permanently the end of 2006. At the time we were told our horses were definitely in the Challenge, Sampson did not even know how to back - let alone navigate natural obstacles on the trails…..actually, he had never even been on a trail ride. All he knew was performance arena riding and riding in controlled environments by extremely talented trainers. Sampson is 16 hands, 1200lbs of muscle and all stallion, I was still in the process of learning how to ride and handle this powerful horse. Many people had doubts that I would be able to ride him successfully, they surely will think that I have lost my mind to even think about attempting this kind of thing. I was beginning to feel a little bit that way myself!
Tori and Sampson
The morning had come way too quickly to load our horses in the dark and make the drive to the arena for the Challenge, still not quite sure what was in store for us. The sun had finally risen as we parked the trailer on the grounds. We unloaded our horses, tied them to our trailer and made them very happy for the moment with hay bags stuffed to the max in front of them all. The turn out was much larger than expected and with every truck, trailer and car that parked on the show grounds, my anxiety level increased. The courses were already set up with billboard size diagrams and instructions in front of them. The group that gathered around the signs steadily grew and the comments became more colourful as each new person saw what was ahead of us all.
Solid walls of palmetto fronds, black vinyl water obstacles, log pulls through barrels and cones, 20 foot tall rope curtain, garland hoops on the ground sparkling like mad in the sunshine, a bridge with levels like we’ve never seen before, a horse size teeter-totter, a plastic pool with and endless supply of plastic gallon jugs to walk through with a life size stuffed junkyard dog in a doghouse barking and snarling like he was rabid, lawn sprinklers going off, mailboxes and ground tie stations right in front of the grandstands that would most likely be full, a strange horse trailer in the middle of all this and a life size plastic horse. In preparation for the breeding season to offer shipped semen this year, Sampson was recently collected off of a dummy at a reproductive lab. You can just imagine the thoughts going through my head about navigating that obstacle!
Half of the obstacles were set up in the arena and the other half were set up in an area outside of the arena. The competitors were split into two groups to work the obstacles in one area in the morning and then switch and work the other area in the afternoon. Sam and I were in group B, Lisa & Rob were in group A. It was helpful and very comical to listen to each others morning rides over lunch and warn each other about what to expect in the other arena during the afternoon session. There were a total of 15 obstacles in the competition, our goal was to compete at least 50% of the challenge successfully. It was an extremely proud and rewarding moment when we all completed the challenge and had surpassed the goal that was set before us by completing more than 50% of the challenge. None of us were able to finish in the top 6 - Rob was pretty darn close with the high score he had earned with Chip. With several horses pulling out after the morning session and others not completing the afternoon session, we all proudly finished as finalists of The Great Florida Cowboy Challenge and……….. had managed to introduce many people who had never heard of a Foxtrotter before to our wonderful multi-talented horses!
With a little more time, who knows…our Foxtrotters may be RFD-TV bound!
