Camp Report, The Three Stages of Drill Team

Home Team

Stage 1) Oh! Hell! No!
Stepping Stone Farm Advanced Camp started off with a bang, or more accurately, a hop. At North Georgia, Milton handled traffic beautifully [Notes]. At his home barn, not so much. Unfortunately, drill team is all about having other horses in one’s personal space.

Overtaking horse? Hop.
Tailgating horse? Hop, hop.
Oncoming horse? Hop, hop, hop.

Milton’s go-to move is a crow hop. Drop head. Round back. Bounce around on four legs. While there is enough hang time to create doubt in the rider, so far I have been able to sit the hops and talk him down out of trees. Milton feels things deeply, but caves quickly [Milton’s Remediation]. Let’s keep it that way.

On the plus side, onlookers agreed that the meter was reading Overwhelmed rather than Evil.

When he wasn’t sproinging around like a wind-up toy, the racehorse got massively out-trotted by the Saddlebreds. We repeatedly trailed the field by many, many lengths. In the photo above, Milton is the gray blur on the far left, all by himself.

Stage 2) Y’all are f-ing crazy.
The second drill team session was at the end of a long day. He utterly failed to see the point.

Stage 3) I hate all of you. This is my life now.
As you can see from the screen shot of the video, we continued to play sweep. The only times we caught up were when I cut a corner. I was fine with our snail-like pace. No hoppy toad? Awesome. You do you, Milton.

Full video available on the SSF Facebook page. Since this is a business page, you do not have to log in to Facebook to watch the video. At about minute 3 when this screenshot was taken, Milton can be seen sashaying down the fenceline bopping his tail to the music. It didn’t ride that way, but it sure looks cute in the video.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott