Making it to State

Everyone has problems or challenges to overcome
What obstacles are you proud to have faced and conquered?

One challenge for me is training my horse. He is still fairly young and doesn’t always listen. This past year in 4-H, my goal was to make it to state fair. I knew very well that this was going to be difficult. In order to qualify for state you have to get at least one blue ribbon in every class and get a certain amount of points. This was going to be my second year working with Dakota (my horse), and my first year we didn’t do to well.

I started a normal schedule of riding late in January. Every Sunday and Wednesday I took lessons. My biggest challenge with him was picking up his correct lead, and not breaking. Some other things were going slower, keeping his head down, and just listening. I also had to work on my equitation. As the weeks progressed we got better and better.

However, when track season came around, this caused a dilemma. With track practice every day after school, I could no longer ride every day after school. Now, even though I couldn’t ride on school days, I still rode on the weekends.

Once track and school had ended, I rode almost every day. I did pretty well at the shows. When Fair came around I was so proud of Dakota. We won Grand Champion in both English and Western Pleasure. When I heard I had qualified for state, I was so happy.

I did good at state, and want to go back this year. I know, though that I have to work even harder this year.