Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Combined Driving At Its Best

Marathon Day At Live Oak

This past Saturday we attended the Live Oak International Combined Driving Event. This event has become an annual outing for us. We hope for sunshine, pack our chairs, cooler and dog and drive the 10 miles to the event. Though this event has three phases, Dressage on Friday, Marathon on Saturday and Cones/obstacle course on Sunday, we have found the Marathon to be the most exciting.

Good Humor

 With a little bit of Good Humor and lots of excitement the day goes by fast.

Obstacle 1 The Sanctuary Water

The Marathon is the toughest test of stamina, courage, and agility.The classes are grouped by 1. level of difficulty and level of the horses training, 2.either horse or pony and 3.number of horses/ponies that are in harness (Single, Tandem and Four in hand). You can imagine the excitement in watching the four in hand going through the obstacles. There are 7 obstacles spread out over a large field. The driver walks the course to decide the best route through the obstacles or mazes, keeping the lettered gates in sequence as he goes. The more time spent in a hazard the more penalties. 

The Driver and Navigator do get wet !


This basic pony cart was tagged at $2,000.00


This deluxe Horse Cart was tagged at $9,200.00


As you can see, Combined Driving can be a very expensive sport. I think I'll stick to watching with DBH and Mia.


DBH and Mia

All in All, a great day in the country


Sew Happy,

Karla

1 comment:

  1. Wish I could have been there! I could use a day in the country!
    Cheers,
    Ki

    ReplyDelete