All photos kindly by Kim Lechner
I don’t know about in North America but here in Australia, school fundraising activities often include cake stalls, prize draws and selling chocolate frogs by the case load. Thankfully my two boys go to a little country school where the parents behind the fundraising activities are a little more imaginative than average.
Two years ago I had my first experience of Cutting and loved it. Cutting is a sport where the horse is trained to the point it makes a lot of the decisions. Its reflexes reacting to a cow are as good as a well trained cattle dog. They move so quick and low you can’t help but be impressed by their athletism, but really good horses also need to be calm and slowly stalk the cattle.
So last weekend we had our annual Vacy Cutting Day, just near my home. This annual fundraiser raises money for our school, Vacy Public School and the Westpac Rescue Helicopter Service which is our regional helicopter medical evacuation service, a critical service in rural Australia.
Each year the day raises a few grand (this year over $5,000) for the two causes, through entries, bacon and egg rolls for breaky, camp oven roast lamb sandwiches (these are worth the cost of the airfare from the USA alone) and of course, a bar which opens at 11am.
In all it is a great fun day out for the family, and in my opinion beats selling chocolate frogs (which are not even the cool ones like in Harry Potter) at $1 a piece. In fact, we would have needed to sell 280 cases or 13,440 chocolate frogs to net the same income, in a school of only 85 odd kids, that means each family would need to sell, usually this means just buy youself, over 200 chocolate frogs. Could you imagine how bad the kids and their parents would look after consuming over 7 kilograms (about 16 pounds) of chocolate each, it isn’t even good chocolate.
If you are an Eventer who has never seen Cutting, find out when your next local competition is on and go watch, you will love it. There were even a few Pony Club horses trying their hand at cutting, no reason why an Eventer can’t have a crack.
In all it is a great fun day out for the family, and in my opinion beats selling chocolate frogs (which are not even the cool ones like in Harry Potter) at $1 a piece. In fact, we would have needed to sell 280 cases or 13,440 chocolate frogs to net the same income, in a school of only 85 odd kids, that means each family would need to sell, usually this means just buy youself, over 200 chocolate frogs. Could you imagine how bad the kids and their parents would look after consuming over 7 kilograms (about 16 pounds) of chocolate each, it isn’t even good chocolate.
If you are an Eventer who has never seen Cutting, find out when your next local competition is on and go watch, you will love it. There were even a few Pony Club horses trying their hand at cutting, no reason why an Eventer can’t have a crack.
Finally, while most cutting riders seem to think their heads are inpenetrable to cattle and horses, I was very pleased to see a number of riders particularly all the young ones wearing a safety helmet.
Yours in Eventing (& Cutting)
ESJ
All photos kindly by Kim Lechner
Location:Hunter Valley, NSW, Australia
