Hi!! I'm Chrystal, I'm 16, and I ride my mare Dixie in barrels and poles at our saddle club's gymkhanas. A gymkhana (say it gym-KAH-na) is basically a horse show where everything is timed and nobody cares what color your saddle pad is. Our club has one the first Saturday of every month from April through October, at the club arena, and I have not missed one since I was eleven.

The club's secretary has the official stuff (entry forms, Coggins rules, all that) on paper at the arena, but there wasn't a web page, so I made one. Nobody asked me to. You're welcome, Dusty Trails!! If something on here is wrong, e-mail me and I'll fix it, and if it's about the points, Kay has the real book and she's always right.

This is it, the last one before the year-end awards, and the points races in at least two divisions are going to come down to it. (One of them is mine. Nikki is three points ahead of me. THREE.)

• Sign-up 8:00 at the announcer's stand. Peewee barrels start at 9:00 sharp.
• Order: barrels, poles, keyhole, flags. Peewees, then Juniors, Seniors, Adults in every event.
• Entry: $4 an event or $12 for all four for members. Non-members $6 an event. Non-members can ride but don't get points.
• Bring your current negative Coggins papers. No Coggins, no unloading. Sorry, that's the rule, and Kay checks.
• Concession stand opens at 8. Donna's sloppy joes are the best thing on earth after you've been in the sun all morning.

Club Trail Ride & Chili Supper, Sunday, October 17. Meet at the arena at noon with your horse saddled. Micheal Kifer is trail boss and he knows every gate and creek crossing in the county. About two and a half hours at a walk, nobody runs, and then chili and cornbread at the arena, bring a dessert. Everybody's welcome, even people whose horses have never seen a barrel.

Year-End Awards Banquet, Saturday, November 13, 6:00 p.m. at the community building at the fairgrounds. Covered dish. HIGH POINT BUCKLES for every division (Peewee, Junior, Senior and Adult), ribbons through sixth place, plus Most Improved and the Sportsmanship award. I want that buckle so bad I can taste it.

Here's how Dixie and I did. Full results and everybody's points are on the points page.

OK so about the second barrel. If you look at my times, Dixie is fast enough to win, and twice this year I've thrown it away on the same barrel. Here is what happens, according to Lisa (our club president, who rode barrels for like twenty years): I get excited coming out of the first barrel, I look right at the second barrel instead of past it, and I drop my inside shoulder. Dixie follows my shoulder, cuts in too close, and her hip or my knee clips it. Every time it tips over in slow motion and every time I hear it hit the dirt. Five seconds. That's the whole points race right there.

So my homework this month is: eyes up, look through the turn, sit up, outside leg. I've been practicing at a trot with a bucket on top of the barrel so if I touch it, it falls off and I know. Dixie thinks this is very boring. Too bad, Dixie.

Barrels. Three barrels in a triangle, run in a cloverleaf. You cross the timer line, go around the first barrel (right or left, your choice), across to the second barrel and around it the opposite way, then up to the third barrel at the top and around it, and then run home as fast as you can through the timer. Knock a barrel over and it's 5 seconds added. Go around one the wrong way or skip one and you broke the pattern, which means no time. Our arena isn't big enough for a full-size pattern so ours is a little shorter. The measurements are posted at the gate.

Pole Bending. Six poles in a straight line, 21 feet apart, and the first pole is 21 feet from the start line. You run down the side to the far pole, turn, weave in and out of all six coming back, turn around the end pole, weave back up again, and run home. Knock a pole down and it's 5 seconds. Miss a pole and it's no time. Poles is where a horse with good lead changes really shines, and that's Dixie.

Keyhole. A keyhole shape is drawn on the ground in white lime, a narrow alley that opens into a circle. You run in down the alley, turn your horse around inside the circle, and run back out. Step on or over the line and it's no time. It's over in like 8 seconds and it's harder than it looks, because your horse wants to swing her butt around and step on the line.

Flags. A bucket of sand sits on top of a barrel at the far end with a flag stuck in it. You run down, grab the flag, and run it back to the second bucket at the start and stick it in. Drop the flag or miss the bucket and it's no time, as I proved in September in front of everybody.

Timing: we have an electric eye timer the club bought in 1997 with bake sale money, so times are to the thousandth. Before that it was two moms with stopwatches. Points: 6 for first, 5 for second, then 4, 3, 2 and 1 for sixth, in every event in every division. They add up all season and the most points wins the buckle.

Dixie is a twelve-year-old sorrel Quarter Horse mare. Sorrel means red-gold, with a flaxen tail, and she has one white sock (left hind) and a star. She's 14.3 hands, which is small, and she turns like a cat.

We bought her when she was seven and I was eleven. She'd been a ranch horse who'd never seen a barrel in her life, and the first time I pointed her at one she stopped dead and snorted at it like it was a bear. My dad almost said no to buying her. I cried. He said yes. (Thank you Daddy.)

We started slow. Like REALLY slow. The whole first summer we walked the pattern, and then trotted it, and Lisa taught me about the "pocket," which is the space you leave between your horse and the barrel so she can come around it in a smooth curve instead of slamming into the turn. We didn't lope the pattern until the next spring, and we didn't really run it until I was thirteen. My first gymkhana time was 24-something. Now it's 16.5. It took five years.

Dixie's personality: bossy in the pasture, sweet in the barn, a pig about peppermints, hates having her ears clipped, and LOVES her job. When we walk in the arena gate on a gymkhana day she starts dancing. She knows.

Our week: We only run the full pattern a couple times a month. The rest is slow work, circles, lead changes, trail rides to keep her legs strong and her brain happy, and one day off. If you run your horse on the barrels every day she'll get sour and start fighting you at the gate. My farrier says Dixie has the best feet in the barn. I made him write it down.

These are the things I wish somebody had told me at eleven. Some of them somebody DID tell me, and I didn't listen.

1. Walk it first. Then trot it. Then walk it again. Your horse has to learn the pattern before she can run it, and so do you.
2. Look where you're going. Not at the barrel. Past it, to the next one. Your horse goes where your eyes go.
3. Leave a pocket. Aim to pass about an arm's length from the barrel going into the turn, so your horse can curve around it.
4. Sit deep and sit UP in the turn. Don't lean in like a motorcycle. Your horse has to carry you around it.
5. Use your inside leg to keep her off the barrel. Don't haul on the reins.
6. Grab the horn in the turn if you need to. Everybody does. It's not cheating.
7. Don't run every day. Slow work makes fast horses.
8. Wear your helmet. I wear mine even though I'm old enough not to have to. My friend Misty's sister got a concussion at a show in another county last year, and that was enough for me.
9. Pet your horse after, no matter what the clock says. It's not her fault you looked at the barrel.

The real rule sheet is on the bulletin board in the announcer's stand. The big ones:

• Helmets on every rider 12 and under, every time they're on a horse, not just in the arena. No exceptions, not even for your cousin who's visiting.
• No running horses in the parking lot or the trailer area. Walk. There are little kids and dogs everywhere.
• Dogs on a leash.
• Current negative Coggins for every horse that comes on the grounds.
• Pick up after your horse at the trailer. There's a manure pile behind the barn.
• No alcohol on the grounds during a gymkhana.
• Be nice to the volunteers. They are your mom.
• Any rider who's rough with a horse (jerking, whipping in anger, that stuff) is done for the day. Kay doesn't play.