Jo Cheek, with husband Bill, has been competing with her pair of Welsh Mountain Ponies in events throughout the West for the past couple of years and is having a ball doing it. We only wonder why Bill is making sure you don't miss his hard hat?CDE's in 2005
The Arizona Combined Driving Event, Coolidge, March
If you have now read about the Old Pueblo CDE in December of 2004 you saw that we are having a break in the decade long drought in the Southwest. Well things have not abated yet. Winter saw storm after storm pound Arizona so that people wanting to condition their horses were out of luck. The ground everywhere was so muddy, the folks preparing the course for the first event of 2005, the Arizona Combined Driving Event in Coolidge in early March were worried that they may have to cancel, simply because the footing was not safe. But, the weather gods saw differently, on the weekend before the event, the clouds parted, the sun came out and by the start of the event it was in the middle '80s and everybody was making sure they had their sunscreen on! Perhaps because of the weather, the field was unusually small, 42 competitors, but many were entered at the higher levels, Intermediate and Advanced. Mary Jane also entered at Advanced to see if she had mastered more of the difficulties of the tests at this level. Although finishing fifth in her division, she was competitive with the best of them and came home satisfied that she was getting better at Dressage and Cones. In the Marathon, five of the six competitors finished within eight points of each other, Mary Jane included, so they put on a great show for the spectators.
Jo Cheek, with husband Bill, has been competing with her pair of Welsh Mountain Ponies in events throughout the West for the past couple of years and is having a ball doing it. We only wonder why Bill is making sure you don't miss his hard hat?
Left: Terri Merry competes with her Mule, Blanche, and does very well. She had the best dressage score and finished third overall in a very tight Preliminary Single Pony class.
Right: Joan Stearns with her mini, Cottontail, demonstrates that age is no barrier to continued enjoyment of the sport of combined driving. Here she is in the pipes, the "U" portion of the cones course.
Dana Moore always has a great time in competitions and attacks the course with great enthusiasm. Here she is coming into the first gate of the water hazard, driving her Haflinger, Dixie.