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Ribbon win ends 'Mavis and Millie's Big Adventure'

Subhead
Ruminations
Lead Summary
By
Mavis Fodness, reporter

Friday night I pinned a large, light blue-colored ribbon on my home office bulletin board. I had won the ribbon hours earlier at the WSCA Championship Show at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds for horsemanship, placing 10th.
Receiving the ribbon marked the end to what I dubbed the “Big Adventure” I embarked in earnest back in January.
The ribbon brings forth a lot of emotions and a lot of people I need to thank for pointing me in the right direction, offering that encouragement to keep going, and dragging that home arena for the millionth time (thanks, Honey).
The adventure has shown me that you’re never too old to have dreams or to achieve them.
Preparation to ride in the biggest horse show of my life began decades earlier when, as an 11-year-old, I joined Rock County 4-H, where I learned how to care for and handle a horse of my own.
Millie, a sorrel quarter horse, began the adventure 12 years ago at my daughter-in-law’s farm in Iowa where she was born.
Millie and I met last year when I borrowed her for the 2020 show season and completed a series of nine local shows affiliated with the Western Saddle Club Association.
At each one of these shows, riders who place first or second in specific classes qualify for the yearend WSCA show in St. Paul. Hundreds of youth and adults and their horses traditionally attend the annual show.
Millie and I qualified for the champ show in our first year together. Covid, however, canceled the 2020 show that occurs in the Lee and Rose Warner Coliseum, a large concrete structure I first experienced in 1982 as a 4-H’er selected for the Rock County horse judging team.
Over the years, I’ve been to the coliseum at least a dozen times, most frequently as a parent of 4-H’ers who qualified for the state horse show. The last few years I was “show mom” to a good friend who said she would hold my hand as I set my sights on actually riding in the coliseum rather than watching from the sidelines.
That moment came last Thursday and Friday during the 2021 event. I had spent countless hours preparing for the three Western classes I competed in with other qualifiers over the age of 50.
For nine months I focused on nothing else.
I took riding lessons, attended a dozen horse shows, worked with a trainer, purchased just the right clothes and, most of all, spent almost every day with Millie grooming, feeding and practicing.
Our goal, just like the ones I challenged my 4-H-aged children with, was to bring home one of those big rosette ribbons.
Last week I tried to savor the moments, showing in the coliseum for the first and more than likely the only time.
Those moments are all a blur.
If it wasn’t for the pictures and video my daughter, Courtney, captured, I wouldn’t remember any of it except for the disappointment that my first two performances, though high scoring, weren’t enough to earn a ribbon.
Before my last class Friday afternoon, I resigned myself to thinking that I didn’t need a ribbon to validate the reward of stepping outside my comfort zone and checking an item off my bucket list. I was proud of Millie, who was calm in the ring as well as in the stall. We were ready for the last class of our big adventure.
That last class, Western horsemanship, is not an event I particularly enjoy, and throughout the show season Millie and I haven’t been all that successful in winning the event.
Fate, however, seemed to be on our side and led to putting an exclamation point on our adventure.
You see, I purchased a long-sleeved T-shirt as a souvenir the day before that last class. My color choices were black or light blue. I chose light blue — the same light blue color as that ribbon Millie and I won the following day.

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