Strathcona Mounted Troop
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Final Preparations - 13 May 2010
Written by: Capt Dan Gray, SMT Tp Ldr
Preparations for this years ride season are in full swing with the equine course winding down and the Musical Ride practice heating up. This year’s course saw one of the largest in recent years, graduating nine new riders into the Troop. With a bit of a head start on the training and practices, this year promises to be one of the best in years. This year’s ride will consist of a good mix of new and experienced riders with sixteen returning riders in addition to the nine new riders. With the addition of the so many new members, competition for the sixteen ride spots should be fierce.
With the ride instructors (Sgt Alexander, MCpl Fedyshyn and Cpl Roberts) completely frustrated the ride course finally ended and the troop started straight into some long hard days of practicing the Musical Ride. Fortunately the Troop has been able to conduct some rehearsals in full performance mode by performing the Musical Ride for the MFRC daycare kids and the University of Calgary Centre for Military and Strategic Studies visit. This has luckily allowed us the opportunity to iron out some of the last minute wrinkles from the performance before the season kicks off.
This year, the Troop sees the addition of three new horses; Strathcona, Senator and Solomon, whose pictures you can see in “The Herd” section of the webpage. We have also finally retired Staghound and Sentry to a new home following their many years of service with the Troop.
This ride season promises to be a memorable one which will see the Troop performing mostly at Spruce Meadows in Calgary and around the Edmonton area; full details are available on the SMT calendar. This relatively local proximity will hopefully allow many of our local supporters to take in a performance, or two, closer to home this year. We will also be extremely active within the Regiment this summer as there is a Change of Command, Change of Colonel of the Regiment, and Reunion 2010 that the Troop will be supporting. Once again we will be front and centre proudly showing off the uniqueness that SMT brings to the Regiment and the events it hosts.
Be sure to check back to the SMT webpage regularly for updated rides and show times as we still have a fair number of openings in the late July and August time frames.
The Strathcona Mounted Troop is proudly sponsored by
