yrs ago there was a mule that was winning a bunch of NCHA events, if I remember correctly, they outlawed the mule, mules special kind of animals, takes special hand to make a good one.

Heck yes! I love this story. This is the kind of thing that should be shared on the new. Hard work and perseverance paid off. Oh, and something about not judging a book by it's cover too!

Congrats to the young lady and the Mule.

Thought I'd share this with the THF family...

Got to be part of seeing a really cool life lesson unfold this weekend at horse show near our place in Argyle. A 12-yr old girl who takes regular riding lessons at our facility, and volunteers with our disabled lessons on the weekend, decided to enter the Hidden Lakes Hunter Jumper Show to get experience on doing "ground work" for judges. The pony she's training to show jump isn't ready for the ring yet, so our trainer told her she could pick one of our therapy animals to take... and she choose Neena. As you can see in the pic's she isn't your typical show horse, but since she was entering equitation classes, it didn't really matter a lot. These classes are judged primarily on the riders abilities to execute the required disciplines. Expectations were pretty low as this was just a training exercise for her, and there was plenty of competition (about 7-8 horses in each division). As you can see from the pic's, she and Neena kicked butt and out of 8 events they won six 1st's, a 2nd and one 3rd. (The third place actually came in a jumping class over cross rails). And where awarded the Championship in both divisions they entered!

There were a lot of shocked parents watching their kids ride $15K show horses and mumbling about the judges being crazy. In the end a lot of people learned a good lesson around the payoff for hard work, effort and attitude, all of which this girl exhibits in spades.

Sad turn of events today. Was floored to find out that our trainer got a call and was informed that they would no longer allow mules to enter their shows. They bowed to pressure from a number of parents/trainers that got their nose out of joint and some how feel the mule had a competitive advantage(???WTH???). We hadn't planned on making a habit of bringing mules to their events, but this decision reeks. I've called the local news stations to see if we can get some coverage. Never thought I'd be an advocate to end mule discrimination.