Greetings!
I believe your nearest Gleann Abhann equestrian neighbors are in the Little Rock area. I may be the next closest in Jackson, TN but that puts me somewhere around 6 hours away. 2 hours is close, as far as eq activities are concerned. You might want to also check with Calontir and Ansteorra to see if any of their horse-types are near your border.
The primary games for equestrian activities are (in no particular order):
ring-tilting
tent-pegging
quintain
javelin
saracen course / behead the infidel
reeds
mounted archery
mounted crest combat
mounted heavy combat
jousting
There are a variety of other things that can be incorporated -- gymkhana games and such -- as long as they aren't expressly forbidden and are ok'ed by the marshal.
You can find some pretty good information on-line -- here are a few pages that have good articles and you can find others by looking at other kingdom's equestrian webpages. Just remember that these are not Gleann Abhann folks, so there can be some variation in how things are done.
madrone.equestrianguild.org/dynamic/MEG/Articles
ilaria.veltri.tripod.com
You're coming on-board during a transitional period. The old SCA Eq rules provided a lot of information on the games, but they've streamlined the regulations to be legally sufficient and no more and have cut out most of that. There is supposed to be a supplemental document providing equipment and games guidelines coming out, but it's not here yet. So you get to scrounge :)
I would recommend you start with the basic equipment: ring lance and ring stands and "tent-pegs" (Chinet plates are great cheap targets) and short sword and saracen and/or reeds equipment. All can be made with inexpensive materials available at Lowes, except the sword, and a used armored combat sword makes a fine eq practice one (mine was cut down from a heavy sword whose end had been "pulped"). With these you can introduce your horse to the basic issues: carrying and moving a long lance around him, swinging a sword around him, maneuvering around obstacles with one arm occupied by lance or sword, aim,.... These are all essential whether you stay with the simple games or move into the contact sports of jousting and heavy mounted combat. You should be able to find plenty of info on building these items on the web pages above, but if you have any questions, I'll be happy to provide more insight from my experience.
When you're ready to get fully involved with the mounted combat and jousting activities, you will need to find someone experienced to work with. One, because it's pretty much impossible to learn to joust with only one horse and rider. But more importantly, because they'll be able to help with lots of "learned it the hard way" information -- especially important in terms of your and your horse's armoring. I've not had the chance to gear up for any combat other than crest yet, so I can't help much there.
Introducing the equipment is pretty simple -- if you've worked flags before, you know the drill. I do recommend that you get your horse used to being hit (not hard) by the lance and sword, because no matter how careful you are, you will occasionally whack them with it by accident in the middle of a run, and you don't want it to be a shock when it happens at a gallop.
In addition to neck reining, a good tourney horse will leg yield easily - very important for good times on the saracen course and also for putting your sword (rather than your horse's head) within easy reach of your opponent. Stop easily. Travel in a straight line (harder for some than others). Stay in the gait you have requested. With a big draft horse type, I recommend you work a lot on flexibility and agility so you don't have to struggle to put him where you want him while you're trying to hit the person on the other horse or the target or whatever. Basically good flatwork/dressage/ring work (whatever you want to call it) will be of benefit.
Get him accustomed to wearing garb, to seeing you wearing garb, and to seeing _other_ horses and riders in garb (my mare never minded her garb, but all the other horses at the barn freaked out the first time she wore it). Also, before your first event, it can be helpful to introduce your horse to the sights and sounds of heavy combat. Sometimes the fighting field is on the far side of the world from the eq area, but sometimes it's 25 yards away, and those guys make a lot of noise, they look funny, and the sun reflects off their armor in weird ways...
Good luck. Hope to see you at an event sometime,
Lora Greymare
--- On Wed, 1/7/09, Amber Everson <deirdreofauxarc@...> wrote: From: Amber Everson <deirdreofauxarc@...> |
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