Pokey really was Pokey

This photo is of me in my 20's riding a horse I bought from a friend as a 2 yr old. He was a registered QH and his name was "Pines Impressive Sun", but his "real" or "barn" name was Pokey and boy did he earn it! I was learning to ride and show English in this picture because people were clamoring for me to apply for my English judges card from ISHA. I had previously been only a western rider. My thought's on it were to learn to do it well enough that I could win those classes consistently and then I would feel I had the right to judge other riders. As you can see from the picture Pokey and I were a ways away from that goal at this point.

I had a hard time finding a riding instructor that would challenge me until I met a fellow lady judge at one of our seminars named Ellen Demkowitz. Ellen had a background in hunter classes and her and her daughter were hard to beat in those. Ellen when I started taking lessons from her was showing dressage. She was taking lessons from Carol Grant that won the dressage freestyle at the Pan American games during the 1986-7 Olympics. The horse portion of that was held at the then brand new multi-million dollar facility that is still known as The Hoosier Horse Park.

Ellen employed quite a bit of dressage into our English riding lessons, which I found not to hurt a thing as far as being able to morph the style a bit to ride hunter classes. I was only riding in the under saddle division and never jumped any further than a hunter hack class in competition. Ellen did drag me and Pokey off to a few dressage shows where we scored low 60's right out of the box in training level. That club threw you out of training level with more than 3 scores over 55, so after three I took a hiatus! I had just memorized the one pattern I was riding (test 2) and thought that was about the hardest thing I ever did trying to remember the turns, upward and downward transitions while riding the dang horse too! As you can imagine its by far harder than it looks. Its surprising how difficult it is just to enter the ring in a straight line to salute the judge.

Not to mention on top of all the new skills I was learning Pokey was not exactly the best dressage prospect. In a sport where "forward" and lively movement is coveted Pokey was, well.....Pokey. Suited perfectly for the slow and easy western pleasure events I showed him in, he was rather lazy and uninterested in the whole idea of long athletic strides and forward movement. He had to be "persuaded" the entire time. It was aerobic exercise for me if it wasn't anything else. "Squeeze him up into the bridle! like your squeezing a tube of toothpaste!" Lady....we are at the end of the tube. There is nothing left in it.

Other than being rather lazy by nature for an English riding horse, Pokey was a great horse though. I won lots of year end awards on him, and some really huge versatility championships as well. I still have the plaques and trophies out in the garage.