Frisbee show in Nova Vas

On Sunday September 27 Nadja and I went to Bloke Ranch in Nova Vas to do a halftime frisbee show at their horse event, "Spretnost je umetnost." The organizers set up a very innovative obstacle course that horses and their handlers had to negotiate calmly and skillfully. The emphasis was on negotiating the course without resorting to whips, spurs, and other forms of force.

For the first round, handlers led their horses through the series of obstacles.

There was a gate...

a bridge, where the horse had to stand quietly and wait while the owner rang a bell three times...

a water obstacle (not pictured) followed by this weird-looking thing...

then a tunnel (not pictured), then you had to go with your horse into a sort of three-sided improvised chute (hay bales on two sides and the tunnel wall at the end, not pictured) and stand there for five seconds, then back out, then go and collect a wooden club and use it to tip the scary-looking creature pictured below into a bow.

During the second round competitors repeated the course, this time on horseback:

In between rounds the arena was taken over by our dogs. As a warmup I ran the obstacle course with Lyra:

She did a great job, but I was disappointed when the judges didn't give us a score so we could see how we compared with the horses' results. ;) I was also quite surprised when Lyra balked at the water obstacle, running alongside it instead of through it; I thought for sure that would be her favorite, but I guess she didn't want to get her dainty feet dirty.

After warming up Lyra (and the crowd), I launched into our frisbee routine. Somewhat adjusted for the smaller space available. And my first experience performing on sand. Interesting. Lyra got a mouthful whenever she tried to scoop up a missed frisbee from the ground, and I got generous amounts in my hair, shoes, pants, etc. But it wasn't too bad. Makes for nice soft landings anyway. :)

After I finished with Lyra, Nadja took over. Unfortunately I didn't get to see or hear much because I was busy changing dogs. She was fitted with a microphone, which confused Ginny a bit because when Nadja called her she ran in the direction of the speakers instead of towards the caller. ;) Nadja told the audience a bit more about the sport (and also about aussies) and demonstrated some freestyle moves, like weaving...