Millarville Saddle Sores - Winter Workshop

Between horses and camps and public speaking this is a busy 4H group.

January was a busy month for 4-H’ers. After the long holiday, it was back to work. Our Winter Workshop this year was awesome! We stamped letters into leather plates and cut them out to make nameplates for our horse stalls. Everyone was a little tentative at first; scared they would hit their fingers with the hammer! We punched small holes in the leather for the chain and gems and used a Chicago screw to hold a leather 4-H clover in place. Besides the letters, there were also horseshoe and horse stamps for decoration. Once we were done stamping, another table was available to paint the leather. We owe a big thank you to Tom Adams, Martie Blatz's great-grandfather, for supplying the leather and stamping tools. Also, thank you to Jackie Rawn for organizing and Jeff Blatz and John Brogden for providing expertise.
The Calgary 4-H Region held the Winter Bonanza Camp at River's Edge on January 27th to 29th. This year, Juniors and Intermediates were combined because of the low number of people signed up. However, when we got there, I found out that there were more people than last year and two of us had to share a bed! Luckily they let us switch rooms to be with friends so it wouldn't be too awkward. As always, it was an amazing weekend with lots of games. I made plenty of new friends. We had a ton of fun! Too soon came Public Speaking. Our top finishers were Jackson Collard and Aimee Michaelis for the juniors, Sasha Lewis and Julianne Uchytil for the intermediates and Brittnie Moore and Nevada Rowe for the seniors. Good luck to all six who will be representing our club at Area Public Speaking on February 25th. Thank you to AltaLink for sponsoring our public speaking event and to Terry Allwarden, Marion Anton, Carlyle Cupid, Trudy Cutfield, Elizabeth Davis and Paddy Mullaney for volunteering as judges.
On February 10th we had our monthly meeting and listened to a talk about show preparation by Diane McKay and level testing by our instructor, Cassandra Day. Willow McDonald performed a speech on Irish dancing for us, because she had been absent at Public Speaking. The next morning it was too cold for the first riding group to ride but the other groups went ahead. We labelled parts of the horse's body in preparation for level testing and were quizzed on horse colours and markings before the actual riding lesson. Up next are two clinics – a non-extreme cowboy trail clinic/competition with Steve Dunham and a goat-tying clinic with Dusti Whiteside. Thanks again to SEARS for sponsoring our light horse program this year.