A Day at the Ranch

There was a horse dressage and jumping show/competition just outside of town on Saturday and Sunday of this weekend. I spent all day both days there working concessions and wandering around during the not-so-busy times and taking in the shows. Basically, I could care less about dressage, but jumping was fun to watch. Pictures to come...

I've been to the ranch that hosted the event several times since that is where Aswan works. They have some absolutely beautiful horses, most of which are imported from Australia and Europe and cost upwards of $250,000. Yes, that's US dollars. The daughter of the man who owns the ranch goes to our school, so I've met him a few times both at school and at the ranch. Yesterday, he approached me, and we had the following conversation in a curious mix of Indonesian and English (we both speak both).

Him: So I hear you're quite the rider.
Me: Not really... My family had horses when I was growing up, but I've never ridden competitively or anything. I like being around horses, but I'm not much of a rider.
Him: Well, feel free to come ride here sometime. In fact, I hope you will. We could use an athlete like you around here.
Me: Oh, I'm definitely not an athlete, but I'd love to ride sometime. The only problem is that I don't know how to ride English. I've never tried it. I'd have to learn.
Him: How do you ride then?
Me: Where I grew up, most people ride western. I usually didn't use a saddle at all when I rode, just in the fields around my house.
Him: Western? Like rodeos?
Me: Well, kind of. They ride western in rodeos, but they're not the same thing.
Him: We'd like to get into some other areas of horse riding. Can you train our horses for rodeo? That would be great.
Me: Um. Probably not. Your horses are already trained to be ridden English style for dressage...
Him: Oh, there's some half trained ones back there I'm sure you could use.
Me: Well, I've never trained a horse before. And you don't have any western saddles here. Or any of the right tack....
Him: But you have all summer off! You can come and work on it.
Me: ....Or any horses that aren't warmbloods or thoroughbreds.
Him: These ones'll be just fine.
Me: I've never ridden in a rodeo. I don't know how.
Him: I bet you could learn!
Me: Um. Maybe.
Him: So you'll do it then? Great! I look forward to it!

Apparently, "you had a pony as a child" = "you are a professional horse trainer".

As I was thinking about it though, I realized that I could probably figure out how to train a horse to do stuff like barrel racing and pole bending and that thing with the flags. Knowing the culture, I bet Indonesians would really be into something like that. Of course, I've never done any of those things myself. And there's still the problem of there not being any western tack or quarter horses in this part of the world. But when you have 250 Gs to drop on a horse, how difficult can it be to get those things?