Enchantress
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- Apr 16, 2005
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Where to even begin. This year is just not going as smoothly as planned lol. We have yet to do a show that something "big" doesn't go wrong. Almost had a paperwork problem but the AMHR was fantastic about getting my papers turned around to me for my colt. And then Hillary had to have hers same day rushed and we picked them up off the fax the night before we were due to leave. But that disaster averted.
So the basic plan was to leave Tracy's house absolutely no later than noon so we can be there by 10 pm. Doesn't seem like a big thing. I had everything packed the night before. Got up at 5 am Thursday to rush to the barn to bring the girls to Tracy's, which is an hour away, since she was ever so generous to bring them for me. One of these days I will learn I don't need to bring 8 horses to a show. But if I'm going and there's room on the trailer, why not! Every show I say I'm going to just pick a couple, but every show I just can't do it so I put myself through this. So we get them down head home and are only half hour behind. And get going for the final time from my barn. Get to her place and pack up all the boys into my trailer and off we go. Only 12:30. Great! So we get to the first toll and the trailer is just rocking and rolling so we pull off and open the back. *sigh* One managed to get untied and crawl over the others to go visit. Had to unload everyone to get him out and pack them back in. So here we are standing in a DOT parking lot with minis tied to the trailer getting some strange looks from passers-by popping boards back into place and reloading everyone. Oh, maybe the strage looks were because perhaps because of the excitement they were all ahem..um..well.."excited" and one of mine left his legacy in the parking lot. Swell of him. Off we go again now only an hour behind.
All is going well until BAM what sounded like a shotgun blast and suddenly glass is shattering all over me. There's one heck of a hole in my windshield, but it's still in one "solid" piece so there was no air/rain etc coming through. No biggie. Other than the glass all over everything. So we have to stop again so I can get out and jump up and down to shake the glass off me and Hillary can clean off some of the car. *sigh* Tracy was kind enough to try to get someone to come fix it right then, but we figured we were better off continuing on and worrying about it when we got there since it was already getting late and we're now 2 hours behind.
On we go. And see a detour sign. Now, I don't know about Tracy but I was pretty darned tired and really not in the mood to go off touring the countryside, in the dark no less. But it was well marked and we safely pulled into the grounds I THINK close to 1 am. Of course, there's no one there to tell you where your stalls are so we just started walking through the barn with lights first. No luck. Up the hill to barn 3. No lights. Grab a flashlight and bingo! we have our stalls. Now, trying to find the lights. I switched off the outside light (oops!) and then figured out which was the switch for our stalls. I feel bad for waking up horses, but I know ours were tired and certainly glad to finally get off the trailers. So as we're banging away putting up a stall divider I look up and notice some campers over by the trees. SORRY! I'm sure you weren't planning on waking up at 2 am to that.
We won't even go there as far as finding the Motel 6 LOL. After about 3 tries going down different driveways I finally gave up and called. Now, anyone familiar with the area knows how "easy" it is to find, but after 13 hrs on the road and it being 3 am everything always seems more difficult. And of course it should have been easy to get back to the barns the next morning too, but nooooooo the left we were supposed to take was blocked off so we drove all the way to the next exit, turned around and came back. Good thing we weren't in a hurry and had fed the horses when we put them up the night before. We showed up around 10 am Friday morning to feed "breakfast".
I was lucky I didn't have to show Friday. But I still had some bathing and clipping to finish up, so I got to do that. And got measured. Now, measuring is still a mystery to me. Now, how easy does it sound to simply measure a horse to the last hair of it's mane. Simple, right? Well, why do my horses grow and shrink at will? My 2 yr old which measured in at 32.75 last time is now at 34" even. Yay! I get to show with Sarah in my class at least! The rest weren't any big surprises. One mare was 1" taller than last time, but she was already a B and I wanted her to be a B. Then there was the fun part. Due to being completely exhausted the night before we'd just thrown everything into the tack room. So I dug it all out and threw it in front of our stalls and repacked it all neatly so we could find it. Good thing!
My first class was the Model A Stallions. Ok so here we are, I KNOW I have a lot of close classes so everyone's out on cross ties/ties and mostly ready but I'm still chillin in my shorts and t-shirt. No problem there are like 10 classes before I'm supposed to go in. Then the announcement comes "classes ... through ... are canceled and we're looking for model stallions" huh? what? Can you repeat that? Fortunately they gave us 15 min or so to get ready, but I was rushing and couldn't find my "real" show pants so I spent all morning in my full seat saddleseat jods. Not the most comfy pants when it's 80 out doing a lot of running up and down that stinkin hill. We didnt' place, but I didn't really expect to. He was a little pistol and was trying to drag me around a little. He didn't show bad, but didn't show great and from what I could tell was heavier built than a lot of the others. No biggie. Then comes Sr stallions 30-32". Sarah was kind enough to hold the little munchkin while I was showing the first one. And I could hear him screaming while I was showing. He just loves the attention and the ladies lol. Took him in and he showed OK. He could have been better, but he stood MUCH better than the last show! Got a 5th of 7? My baby had to go in next. Hillary showed her little guy in the same class, but hers is better "weaned" than mine. Mine is 2 months old and hasn't been away from mom more than a few min at a time. However, since his last show (at 3 weeks old) I DID teach him to lead. Yay for me!
: So we got them all gooped up, grabbed mine's mom and off we go. Her little guy somehow decided it was fun to kick at me too, though he's never offered to kick before this show. Hmmph. He did good, I just let him "stand" around and check stuff out until the judge came around and then set him up and got his neck for a second. YAY I'm so proud of my boy. In between the rearing and jumping around looking for mom he looked good for a few seconds and remembered what I taught him. What more could I ask for! He was 3rd of 5 babies and I think I'm the happiest mom in the world as he's my first home grown mini baby.
After their class we went up to try to take a few pics of the babies together since they were all handsome and such, and while we were standing there Hillary's glasses broke. Not a good thing when you really can't see and you have driving classes to come.
:
My B colt was 6th of 6 in his class which is what I expected and then a 4th maybe? in solid B stallions/geldings. I got lots of compliments on my little buckskin stallion and how he was gorgeous with his dapples so I figured heck, why not sign him up for colour. I think there were around 14 horses in there. I was just hoping for a 6th. He was a good boy for the class and I listened anxiously as they announced 6th, 5th, 4th, then figured ahh well he didn't get anything. There were some gorgeous horses in that class some of which were handled by people who win a lot so no biggie. He won! I gotta tell ya, I almost cried. Yeah, it's only colour, but he still won in a good sized class. The rest of the weekend went pretty well too. My A mare showed well and got a 2nd in her open class with 6 or 7 (another very proud momma moment) and 5th in multi colour, my 2 B mares went 1 and 2 in their open class (only 3 in the class, but hey...) and the mare that won went on to be Reserve Champ Sr B Mare. The other was 2nd in her colour class. I was so proud of her since it was the longest she was forced to be away from her baby. Of course, she set up nicely outside the ring, but in the ring she just wasn't feeling it. And the judge noticed she'd rubbed out almost ALL of her mane LOL oopsie. And Hillary took my buckskin stud into the single pleasure mostly just to get him in the ring driving. I was once again the happiest mom in the world. He was good, didn't fuss too much and they came out alive! He's probably only been hooked 15 times, so that's as good as any blue ribbon to me!
So, I came home with 2 blues, 3 solid reds and a red tri, a third and some 4ths-6ths. I'm sure to a lot of people that show that's nothing, but this is my second year with minis, most of them "bargains" (ie I spent more on tack than on most of my horses) and I do everything myself. For me, it's huge.
And I absolutely LOVED the judge. She was very friendly, VERY patient waiting for people to get horses set up and even would pass by and return for some horses while a lot would just keep going, and she gave some hints and joked around with everyone (not just the "big" people either). She took her time pinning the classes and she seemed fair since the very few I got to see I pinned like she did. and I don't know anyone's name. :bgrin
HUGE thanks to Sarah and Tracy for all their help, to Linda for fixing some feet, barnbum for holding horses (yes something so simple is so HUGE and so greatly appreciated!) and it was great to meet so many new people and they were all FRIENDLY (more than I can say for some people in Maine). I didn't see Jessica, I said a very brief "hi Lyn" as I was walking into my class but didn't actually introduce myself LOL.
Now, can't wait for Nationals! I'm sure I'll be bringing home some more great experiences and hopefully some new friends.
Sorry, no real pics. I think Tracy got a few candids which I might post sometime, and here are some of my windshield. Here's the view from the inside. I put tape over the part that shattered in since glass was still falling off.
And the outside
So the basic plan was to leave Tracy's house absolutely no later than noon so we can be there by 10 pm. Doesn't seem like a big thing. I had everything packed the night before. Got up at 5 am Thursday to rush to the barn to bring the girls to Tracy's, which is an hour away, since she was ever so generous to bring them for me. One of these days I will learn I don't need to bring 8 horses to a show. But if I'm going and there's room on the trailer, why not! Every show I say I'm going to just pick a couple, but every show I just can't do it so I put myself through this. So we get them down head home and are only half hour behind. And get going for the final time from my barn. Get to her place and pack up all the boys into my trailer and off we go. Only 12:30. Great! So we get to the first toll and the trailer is just rocking and rolling so we pull off and open the back. *sigh* One managed to get untied and crawl over the others to go visit. Had to unload everyone to get him out and pack them back in. So here we are standing in a DOT parking lot with minis tied to the trailer getting some strange looks from passers-by popping boards back into place and reloading everyone. Oh, maybe the strage looks were because perhaps because of the excitement they were all ahem..um..well.."excited" and one of mine left his legacy in the parking lot. Swell of him. Off we go again now only an hour behind.
All is going well until BAM what sounded like a shotgun blast and suddenly glass is shattering all over me. There's one heck of a hole in my windshield, but it's still in one "solid" piece so there was no air/rain etc coming through. No biggie. Other than the glass all over everything. So we have to stop again so I can get out and jump up and down to shake the glass off me and Hillary can clean off some of the car. *sigh* Tracy was kind enough to try to get someone to come fix it right then, but we figured we were better off continuing on and worrying about it when we got there since it was already getting late and we're now 2 hours behind.
On we go. And see a detour sign. Now, I don't know about Tracy but I was pretty darned tired and really not in the mood to go off touring the countryside, in the dark no less. But it was well marked and we safely pulled into the grounds I THINK close to 1 am. Of course, there's no one there to tell you where your stalls are so we just started walking through the barn with lights first. No luck. Up the hill to barn 3. No lights. Grab a flashlight and bingo! we have our stalls. Now, trying to find the lights. I switched off the outside light (oops!) and then figured out which was the switch for our stalls. I feel bad for waking up horses, but I know ours were tired and certainly glad to finally get off the trailers. So as we're banging away putting up a stall divider I look up and notice some campers over by the trees. SORRY! I'm sure you weren't planning on waking up at 2 am to that.
We won't even go there as far as finding the Motel 6 LOL. After about 3 tries going down different driveways I finally gave up and called. Now, anyone familiar with the area knows how "easy" it is to find, but after 13 hrs on the road and it being 3 am everything always seems more difficult. And of course it should have been easy to get back to the barns the next morning too, but nooooooo the left we were supposed to take was blocked off so we drove all the way to the next exit, turned around and came back. Good thing we weren't in a hurry and had fed the horses when we put them up the night before. We showed up around 10 am Friday morning to feed "breakfast".
I was lucky I didn't have to show Friday. But I still had some bathing and clipping to finish up, so I got to do that. And got measured. Now, measuring is still a mystery to me. Now, how easy does it sound to simply measure a horse to the last hair of it's mane. Simple, right? Well, why do my horses grow and shrink at will? My 2 yr old which measured in at 32.75 last time is now at 34" even. Yay! I get to show with Sarah in my class at least! The rest weren't any big surprises. One mare was 1" taller than last time, but she was already a B and I wanted her to be a B. Then there was the fun part. Due to being completely exhausted the night before we'd just thrown everything into the tack room. So I dug it all out and threw it in front of our stalls and repacked it all neatly so we could find it. Good thing!
My first class was the Model A Stallions. Ok so here we are, I KNOW I have a lot of close classes so everyone's out on cross ties/ties and mostly ready but I'm still chillin in my shorts and t-shirt. No problem there are like 10 classes before I'm supposed to go in. Then the announcement comes "classes ... through ... are canceled and we're looking for model stallions" huh? what? Can you repeat that? Fortunately they gave us 15 min or so to get ready, but I was rushing and couldn't find my "real" show pants so I spent all morning in my full seat saddleseat jods. Not the most comfy pants when it's 80 out doing a lot of running up and down that stinkin hill. We didnt' place, but I didn't really expect to. He was a little pistol and was trying to drag me around a little. He didn't show bad, but didn't show great and from what I could tell was heavier built than a lot of the others. No biggie. Then comes Sr stallions 30-32". Sarah was kind enough to hold the little munchkin while I was showing the first one. And I could hear him screaming while I was showing. He just loves the attention and the ladies lol. Took him in and he showed OK. He could have been better, but he stood MUCH better than the last show! Got a 5th of 7? My baby had to go in next. Hillary showed her little guy in the same class, but hers is better "weaned" than mine. Mine is 2 months old and hasn't been away from mom more than a few min at a time. However, since his last show (at 3 weeks old) I DID teach him to lead. Yay for me!
After their class we went up to try to take a few pics of the babies together since they were all handsome and such, and while we were standing there Hillary's glasses broke. Not a good thing when you really can't see and you have driving classes to come.
My B colt was 6th of 6 in his class which is what I expected and then a 4th maybe? in solid B stallions/geldings. I got lots of compliments on my little buckskin stallion and how he was gorgeous with his dapples so I figured heck, why not sign him up for colour. I think there were around 14 horses in there. I was just hoping for a 6th. He was a good boy for the class and I listened anxiously as they announced 6th, 5th, 4th, then figured ahh well he didn't get anything. There were some gorgeous horses in that class some of which were handled by people who win a lot so no biggie. He won! I gotta tell ya, I almost cried. Yeah, it's only colour, but he still won in a good sized class. The rest of the weekend went pretty well too. My A mare showed well and got a 2nd in her open class with 6 or 7 (another very proud momma moment) and 5th in multi colour, my 2 B mares went 1 and 2 in their open class (only 3 in the class, but hey...) and the mare that won went on to be Reserve Champ Sr B Mare. The other was 2nd in her colour class. I was so proud of her since it was the longest she was forced to be away from her baby. Of course, she set up nicely outside the ring, but in the ring she just wasn't feeling it. And the judge noticed she'd rubbed out almost ALL of her mane LOL oopsie. And Hillary took my buckskin stud into the single pleasure mostly just to get him in the ring driving. I was once again the happiest mom in the world. He was good, didn't fuss too much and they came out alive! He's probably only been hooked 15 times, so that's as good as any blue ribbon to me!
So, I came home with 2 blues, 3 solid reds and a red tri, a third and some 4ths-6ths. I'm sure to a lot of people that show that's nothing, but this is my second year with minis, most of them "bargains" (ie I spent more on tack than on most of my horses) and I do everything myself. For me, it's huge.
And I absolutely LOVED the judge. She was very friendly, VERY patient waiting for people to get horses set up and even would pass by and return for some horses while a lot would just keep going, and she gave some hints and joked around with everyone (not just the "big" people either). She took her time pinning the classes and she seemed fair since the very few I got to see I pinned like she did. and I don't know anyone's name. :bgrin
HUGE thanks to Sarah and Tracy for all their help, to Linda for fixing some feet, barnbum for holding horses (yes something so simple is so HUGE and so greatly appreciated!) and it was great to meet so many new people and they were all FRIENDLY (more than I can say for some people in Maine). I didn't see Jessica, I said a very brief "hi Lyn" as I was walking into my class but didn't actually introduce myself LOL.
Now, can't wait for Nationals! I'm sure I'll be bringing home some more great experiences and hopefully some new friends.
Sorry, no real pics. I think Tracy got a few candids which I might post sometime, and here are some of my windshield. Here's the view from the inside. I put tape over the part that shattered in since glass was still falling off.
And the outside
but that is why I could not do that!
