SHEIK AND THE ARABIAN ADVENTURE
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Sheik and I finally came back home to Virginia. I found a family whose daughter had a bunch of horses and needed someone to help take care of them. They had a gentleman's farm 99 acres and room for me and Sheik.
I got a job as a clerk in the Fairfax City Courthouse selling real estate maps. I lived on the farm and had eight horses under my care. There were several Tennessee Walkers, a couple of thourobreds and my three quarter Arabian.
On weekends, I would help the family bring in the hay. We painted fences, picked strawberries for sale, harvested hay, and cleared land with a bulldozer.
The horses were all healthy and I was healthy.
I moved from there and took Sheik to a stable where I could have access to going to shows. I was getting interested in showing.
I would visit an Arabian Farm, AlMarah and talk with the trainers to learn tips about working with horses.
Worked Sheik with a bosel (a woven leather band used only on the nose). I was training him for Western pleasure.
SHOWING AT HORSE SHOWS
After the first two years, he started to settle down in the ring. He was beginning to get the hang of it and started winning ribbons.
I tried to go to shows that were challenging - not the little neighborhood shows with the kiddies.
At the top shows with the top judges, Quarter Horses were king in the show ring. For a judge to take a second look at an Arabian, was really asking something. They were looking for that dogged, lopey, slow jog with the head held low. The Arabian holds his head up higher and has a classier way of jogging. That was understandable. But I had some good tips from the Al Marah trainers and Sheik did some things better than the horses that had that low head, slow mosey of a trot, even if he was an Arabian. The best win was at a show in Maryland with the rich set that was getting into Quarter Horses for Western Pleasure and Cutting. The Duponts were into it and it brought a lot of class to the Western way of riding.
This show was mostly registered Quarter Horses, trained by professional trainers. I didn't think we stood a chance. As we all went around the ring following the judges instructions, he would call out numbers and call them to the center of the ring. He called our number and I thought we were out.
But we weren't out - we had made the first cut. There were about 5 or 6 horses that he had to bring down to 1st, 2nd and 3rd.
His instructions were as follows: make one trip around the ring. Start with a walk, go to a trot, then slow canter, fast canter, down to trot then to a walk. All within that one trip around the ring. He was looking for smoothness of the transitions and Sheik had been trained to do just that - one of the training tips from the trainers at Al Marah.
We made a 3rd place. In that company, it was like a 1st place for us.
We had been winning over other horses who were winning in the National Horse Show, but I didn't have the money to enter horse shows of that caliber. I knew Sheik was good and I was doing a good job as a trainer, but I had to look at reality. We could go no further.
BACK HOME IN DC ON THE POTOMAC, SAILING - THE BEGINNING......NEXT