From Secret Agent to Pink Panther

A little notice: this embed from Facebook starts playing with sound muted. At this point I can’t change that, so you will have to turn on the sound by clicking on the little “speaker” icon in the lower right hand corner of the video. It’s no fun without the music, so just letting you know it’s there if you remember to turn it on.

Here’s the synopsis of our Pink Panther pas de deux, so you can follow along with the story. A “Mission Impossible” voiceover lets us know that the Pink Panther diamond was stolen from the Louvre in Paris and is believed to be hidden somewhere on the showgrounds. Our mission is to find it and bring it back to safety. If one of our team falls off the “judge shall deny all knowledge of our existence”. Anybody familiar with the old Mission Impossible show will pick up on all the references. We had an older judge, so we were hoping…Anyhow, we start off as secret agents looking for the diamond, then stop for a moment to discard our coats and sunglasses, pull out our panther tails, and transform ourselves into the Pink Panther. We have blinking pink lights on the front of our helmets that we don’t turn on until we become the Pink Panther. The blinking lights are the Pink Panther diamond which we have obviously located.

Our barn manager recorded our performance at Willow Tree on Saturday. She also gave a little running commentary because what we were doing wasn’t always clear on the video. At one point she moans “ohhhh Chaaaarmm….” when my lovely mare picks up a counter canter instead of the proper lead near the end of the performance. I didn’t try to correct it and wonder of wonders she kept it all the way through the two 15-meter circles. Since it was an “anything goes” freestyle musical, we weren’t required to do any particular movements and I think the judge decided it was done on purpose–one horse on correct lead, other on counter lead. At least, she didn’t ding us for a mistake!

It was Charm’s day to have her own ideas about canter. At the beginning she wanted to go early, and when I held her back she shook her head in disdain when I finally asked for canter–on the wrong lead of course. A bit later she broke from trot to canter just for fun in the middle of a 10-meter half circle. Quickly got her back on trot after that one. She stood for me to toss my jacket off but decided it was too much to ask to stay that way for our sunglasses toss. In any case. we still scored in the 80’s. I suspect if a judge really enjoys an “anything goes” freestyle they’re likely to score it on the high side just because it was so much fun!

If you don’t have Facebook or the link doesn’t work for some reason, I just got this video of the pas de deux from the Sunday show.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=19ZjM5vscWWgwFY8y38Det1RoL1KpxqGc

And if you’re really into the nitty-gritty of the movements, here’s a super neat bird’s-eye view from a drone of one of our practice sessions!

https://drive.google.com/open?id=18a7V3-aoJjBc-UOsNn4q6d5yikgAm9CV