s By Patti Schofler
A Dutch Warmblood stands out in both Dressage and Cowboy Mounted Shooting.
the 16-hand gelding and Gretchen, his owner and trainer since he was two, competed in the Arizona State Cowboy Mounted Shooting Championship, finishing in the middle of a sea of Quarter Horses. At first glance, these sports have little in
common beyond that they are both performed in a pattern singularly. One is fast, furious and loud. The other is quiet with intense concen- tration. And yet horse and rider draw invalu- able benefits from each one, demonstrating the horse’s incredible ability to adapt given the benefit of training in keeping with its nature.
Gretchen Walters is all for cross training as a valuable tool for bringing her Dutch Warmblood G-Force up the dressage levels. Her choice of a cross discipline, however, is seemingly far from the usual jumping or trail riding. Instead, she and G, as he is called, also train and compete in Cowboy Mounted Shooting.
T
he five-year-old G (Contester II x Ploy x Darwin) is Gretchen’s third dressage horse on top of which she’s shot her Ruger six shooter. In fact, the second horse
she took to this unique sport was a 16.2 hand Hanoverian- Arabian cross named Six Shooter Ruger, whom she success- fully competed to Prix St. Georges. Her first was an off-the- track Thoroughbred she showed to Fourth Level. Last year, G and Gretchen were Training and First Level Champions of the California Dressage Society’s Central Regional Adult Amateur Competition (RAAC), ending the year with median scores of 73 percent at Training Level and 70 percent at First Level. Only weeks after the RAAC,
16 January/February 2017
While the two sports have plenty of differences, on closer inspection, they have more in common than you might expect.
Comparing the Sports Cowboy Mounted Shooting (CMS) is a speed sport with about a 20-year history that focuses on the American West of 1850s to 1880s, while dressage flourished in the Europe of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Both events require the competitor to follow a prescribed pattern, but CMS is timed and the pattern is performed at speed with the fastest and most accurate performance winning. The typical run is 15 to 35 seconds. A typical dressage test is five to nine minutes. CMS is competed at any gait, in any form. Dressage is judged on accuracy, the quality and purity of the gaits, training, the rider’s position, harmony and confidence, transi- tions and other elements. Ten balloons on sticks anchored in road cones are config-
ured in one of the more than 80 patterns that the CMS asso- ciation has authorized. The goal is for the rider to follow the
Top of both pages, L & R: Gretchen Walters and G-Force are a force to be reckoned with in both Dressage and Cowboy Mounted Shooting.
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