HAJI BABA -
meets some "horse-eating monsters"

Some time in my first year with Haji, I was riding him in a dressage test in the Pony Club oval, and the arena was set up so that when I was riding towards the judge, I was also facing the BMX track adjacent to that oval. Very shortly before I entered the arena to perform my test, a kid turned up on a horse-eating killer BMX bike to ride on the track. Haji was absolutely petrified, and our test was quite spectacular: every time we were moving towards the judge he had the brakes on, and as soon as we turned our backs to the judge he took off like a rocket!! The kid continued to ride, oblivious to our predicament. Needless to say, our score was not good.

Not many weeks later, Haji met junior soccer. They play on the big show oval every Sunday during the season (winter), with about six fields set up in that huge oval. When not in use, the goalposts are stripped of their nets, and live around the edge of the oval. At about 8am (when dressage horses are arriving), the first families arrive for soccer, and before long the inanimate goalposts spring to life and march across the arena to their match positions (dragging a couple of humans along with them), where they are "dressed" with the nets.

Until you have met Haji you may not know this, but soccer goalposts live on horseflesh, and are definitely out to get any poor unsuspecting horse in the vicinity. Not only that, but once in their new position, kids run around in between them, and at times whole teams of kids, screaming and yelling, also run towards these same unsuspecting horses, so they too, surely, must need horseflesh to survive?

The dressage arena is adjacent to the show oval, and I rode a couple of tests in there in my early days with Haji which were similar to the one in the PC oval: that feeling of being stuck in the mud as you go towards the judge, and sudden bursts of speed every time you face away from the judge - it almost feels as if you're going downhill with no brakes! To add insult to injury, some poor unsuspecting Dad plus a couple of toddlers came and stood at the rail to watch us, which caused Haji to refuse to go any closer than 10 feet from the end of the arena :-( I suppose the Dad and kids wouldn't have know anything about dressage anyway, so might even have thought our performance spectacularly good? (the usual reaction from soccer kids that "visit" Haji is "oooooh, he's so BIG, does he bite? Look at his FEET, oooooh, he's got metal things on them...." etc.!)

The horseflesh-eating monsters struck again at Haji's first Alice Sprngs show. They were hibernating on the edge of the oval at the time (it was, after all, the middle of winter); but who knows, they could have woken up at any moment. Just ask Haji - he knows these things. The judge of the hack classes really liked him, and gave him more chances that I thought he deserved! Each time we came in for a class he worked beautifully on the circle, well away from the monsters and with the security of other horses behaving nicely around him. He didn't even mind those horses that did *not* behave nicely around him. BUT: when he had to do his individual workouts (a couple of times having been called in first), he also had to move out towards the fence, and the MONSTERS...... No way was he going *anywhere* near that fence :-( Down in the placings we would go, only to come out in the next class, work nicely on the circle, and be given another chance. We did manage two minor placings :-)

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