The Beginning.....

I am finally home from Scottsdale. What an adventure! I am so glad to be home. Being away for 3 weeks is very hard. Thank goodness my OH sent me some pictures of my animals while I was away! I really missed them all.

I will start at the beginning of the trip. The day before we were to leave for Scottsdale, we basically had to pack both horse trailers. We drive down a semi with a 15 horse van, and we also take a 6 horse. The tack room in the 6 horse basically gets filled to the brim with everything. In the van, we put all the material used for the show set-up. We also had to finish clipping some horses. 2 of the horses we were taking to Scottsdale with us, had sold a few weeks before, so we were basically delivering them to the new barn. One of those horses is the "psycho" horse I have talked about before. She had been on lay-up due to a suspensory injury a year ago, and she healed up, then became unsound again. The farm that bought her will be using her for a broodmare. Hopefully she doesn't pass along the "crazy" genes. My trainer/really good friend, who is the assistant trainer for the farm I work for, was asked by the breeding manager to do a maintenance clip on her, which would be her bridle path and whiskers. Well, the barn manager wanted a show clip done on her face. So "psycho" was aced, and the assistant trainer went to clipping. This horse isn't all bad, she just has her freak out moments. While the AT was clipping her, I was taking care of a few other things not too far away. I heard this awful commotion going on, so I jumped out of the stall I was in, and saw the AT coming out of the groom stall, bent over and holding the side of her face and the "psycho" horse was out of the groom stall right behind her. I just knew that wasn't a good sign. I ran over to her, where she had slid down the side of a stall onto the ground. A couple other people had ran over to her at that point. She was holding the side of her head, and blood was everywhere. She yelled to call an ambulance. I ran to call 911, while the other groom put pressure of her head. The AT said she was in shock, and she could not get up. The ambulance arrived and the medics tended to her injuries. They put her on a back board, and my boss told me to follow the ambulance to the hospital.

She ended up with a few cuts on the left side of her head, one required a couple staples, some huge lumps on the right side of her head, a black eye and more bruising on her face. The CAT scan came back negative, and she was sent home a couple hours later. But she would not be leaving with us the next day.

What happened was the "psycho" horse had one of her freak out moments, reared up and lunged forward, the AT tried getting out of the groom stall, but the horse broke one of the cross ties, and on her way out behind the AT, slammed the AT in the right side of the face with her head, which slammed the left side of her head into the 4" x 6" beam of the groom stall door. The horse also had broken the light fixture in the groom stall which sent glass flying everywhere and cut her ear pretty badly. Luckily the injuries to our AT weren't more serious. It could have been much worse.

Picture taken from our condo balcony, very early in the morning.



So the next morning, I was wondering who was going to be driving the 6 horse to Scottsdale. Our AT usually drives the 6 horse and since she wasn't leaving with us, I figured I would be doing a lot of the driving since I have experience pulling a horse trailer, although not a 6 horse gooseneck. Our AT would be flying out 4 days later to meet up with us. What ended up happening is that our breeding manager, who was going to stay back at the farm, had to go. Since he has his CDL license, he could drive the semi. That left the barn manager driving the 6 horse with me, another groom and a stall cleaner. By the time I got to drive, the weather had turned to rain. I mean alot of rain. I had to drive through the mountain pass at night, hauling a 6 horse trailer, which I have never done before. I was a little nervous, considering there was half a million dollars in truck, trailer, horses and equipment behind me. Plus lack of sleep and that even makes it more nerve wracking. We even drove through a blizzard. Thank goodness I wasn't driving at that point.

Following the semi.



We had left on Thursday around 11:00 a.m. Around 4:00 a.m. Friday morning we pulled into a rest stop in Sacramento, California. We had to deliver a horse to a trainer in that area. That gave me some time to climb in the sleeper of the semi and try to get some sleep. I found sleeping in the truck on the way down to be impossible, so I was hoping that being able to actually lay down might help. By the time I think I dozed off, I heard the semi start up and we were back on the road. I was in the upper bunk of the semi, and every crack, bump, and pothole of the freeway had me flying 2 feet in the air. So much for getting some sleep. I thought I was going to bounce right out of the bunk.



I drove off and on the whole way down. I still couldn't get any sleep. We arrived in Scottsdale around 9:30 Friday night. We unloaded the 16 horses, and made sure they all had food and water, then it was time to go get some dinner, and head to the condo for a good night sleep. We are pretty lucky at this show. Our farm rents a condo for the entire month of February. So we have an actual place to call home. A lot different then a hotel room. We were able to go to the grocery store to stock up the kitchen, we had a washer and dryer, which is a necessity. The only bad thing about the condo were the beds. They were so uncomfortable. But considering we worked 12-15 hour days, I could have slept anywhere, even in that truck!

A hill with Sagauro's!! I loved driving through Arizona. The Saguaro's were huge!



The first few days were spent getting the barn set up. We had to set up the groom rooms, the elaborate decorations for the entrance of the barn, the kitchen, dressing room, living room etc. Once that was all done, we were able to start working horses.

I was in awe of the set-ups for all the barns. It was absolutely crazy. All the big name farms were there. All the money that is spent on it all, amazing. Not only were the set-ups out of this world, but the the trucks, semi's, horse trailers, goodness! I thought we had fancy horse trailers, wow, I have never seen anything like it. There is a lot of money in this industry. Remember, I had never been to this caliber of a horse show, ever!

This is the barn we had to ourselves. After we delivered the "psycho" horse to it's new owners, we had 15 horses in our barn. At the very end of the barn, on the other side of the wall, was our setup area. I did take pictures of the setup, but since I don't name the farm I work for, I can't post them, since our farm name is everywhere!



The weather the first few days was a little cloudy, probably in the 60's. I could just wear a t-shirt. But as the days went on, the warmer it got. By the end of the first week, I was stripping down to my tank tops. We couldn't be any luckier with the weather. It was so nice!

I wasn't able to take a whole lot of pictures, it was crazy busy, and since I was there working, I couldn't just take my camera everywhere I went.

Our pretty backyard at the condo.



Once the show began, everything changed.

To be continued.............