The Show........

Since I have never experienced a show of this caliber before, it was quite the eye opening experience. Not only to work at a show like this, but to just be there. There were over 2,200 Arabians and half Arabians at this show. Talk about a lot of horses! There are some main barns at West World, but they have to put up lots of portables to hold that many horses, and once the show is over, they are there taking down the portables, just that quick.

Once the show began, it was time for me to get into a groove of how things are done. The first day of showing, we only had one horse showing. The second day, we had 6 showing. Then after that, we had at least 4 horses showing everyday of the show, all the way up to 8 in one day. Let's just say I was very happy that we ended up bringing the other groom too. I don't see how it would have been possible to get that many horses ready with just one groom.

Most days we were up at 4:00 a.m. to be at the barn by 5:00. We had to make sure that the horses that needed lunging, got lunged before classes started. If you have ever shown at Scottsdale, you will understand that once classes start at 8:00 a.m., finding lunging space is very limited. You can only lunge at certain times in certain arena's, and most of the arena's you can't even lunge in. Which meant a very long walk to find the 2 arena's that you could lunge in all day. And most times the wait to lunge was around 10-15 minutes. At this point, while standing in line to lunge, my boss was on the walkie talkie to see if I was done. Sorry boss, with waiting times like that, and the distance to get to a lunging area, plus 15-30 minutes lunging time, you are looking at another half an hour at least. Something that he couldn't seem to get figured out. We kept telling him about the lunging scenario, and how difficult it was to find space or we had to wait. We weren't just messing around.

The purple outline is the barn we were in. The blue outline's are the 2 main show arena's. The pink outlines are the warm up arena's. The yellow outlines are the arena's we could lunge in, except the one on the left got shut down for the trail and cow classes. The green line shows you the route we traveled over and over.




We had a blown up show schedule by our groom area. We had all our horses classes highlighted so we had an idea of when we would need to pull that horse out, groom, tack up, put makeup on (I will do a post on Arabian makeup and tails sometime soon,and get it down to the arena for warm up, sometimes we had to lunge the horse again, and for a lesson with a client. We would have the horse down to the warm up arena 2 classes before it's class, one class for our head trainer to ride, the other class for the client to get a lesson, and we needed time to pull the tail, apply additional makeup, and other last minute touches before it went into it's class. It was all about timing. Listening to the announcer's was a must. What was really irritating though was when the announcers for the Equidome and the Wendell arena would talk over one another, and you couldn't make out what they were saying. It made it extremely difficult to figure out exactly what class was going in.

Sometimes we had 2-3 horses going at the same time. There would be one showing in the Equidome and two in the Wendell. That got to be confusing. Or we would have horses showing in back to back classes, which could make it very hectic. And for the horses that weren't being shown that day, they still had to be worked. Not once did a horse just sit in it's stall. Add into our very busy days, we would have to get the horses ready to show a potential buyer. All of that on top of getting the show horses ready, made for some crazy times. Once the horses were done being worked, we put them on the Game Ready, which is an equine cold therapy. They went on the game ready for 30 minutes, so 30 minutes x 15 horses = a lot of time. Most horses had chiropractic work done everyday, along with acupuncture. I have never seen acupuncture before, so that was actually quite interesting. I was a little overwhelmed by all the vet work done to the horses everyday. I guess since they are working horses, and are ridden very hard, it makes sense. But then sometimes I wonder if it is just too much.

And for those of you that told me to wear comfortable shoes, wow, good advice. I have never walked so much in one day in my life. I did buy gel inserts for my boots. Not because my boots hurt my feet, but because the ground is so hard and uneven, it just makes your feet so sore, especially after working a 12-15 hour day.

We did have a golf cart. That came in handy. Everyone had golf carts. Once the show started, there were golf carts everywhere! I can't believe that there weren't some serious accidents with horses, golf carts, dogs etc. I don't know how many times a golf cart came flying up behind a horse I was leading, which spooked the horse. Thank goodness I was able to control the spooking horse. I know that when I drove the golf cart, and came up behind a horse, I made sure to slow down and be a "considerate" golf cart driver. I did not want to be the one to cause a serious horse/golf cart accident.

I have come to the realization that Arizona is definitely an Australian Shepherd state. I saw more Aussie's there then anywhere else. Since I missed my 2 crazy Aussie's so much, I definitely got my Aussie fix! The barn next to us had a young, blue merle Aussie. He was so sweet and he was shaved. Something I have considered doing with Sadie in the summer.

Time to browse the tents was very limited. Remember, I was there to work, so I did not get much time to look around. I did get about an hour on the last day of the show to go buy some t-shirts and a jacket. I will have to take picture's of the things I bought.

The last couple days in Scottsdale, it rained. And when it rains in Scottsdale, it pours. The water has no where to go, so it puddles up like crazy, and that red dirt turns into a chocolate milkshake, that is how I can describe the consistency of the mud. It was nasty, then you have golf carts cruising through it, splashing you up and down in that thick, nasty mud. Leading the horses through the mud made a huge mess on the horse and the human, and goodness, was it ever slippery! Just getting from the warm up arena to the show arena, made it very interesting. So much for a clean horse and tail.

All in all, Scottsdale will definitely be a show I will always remember. It was fun, stressful, exciting, a great learning experience, and totally exhausting. We typically left the barn around 7:30-8:00 at night, go back to the condo, eat dinner, then climb into bed, only to wake up at 4:00 a.m. to start all over again.

Again, I apologize for the lack of photos. I could not carry my camera around with me since I was working. And by the time I could have taken pictures, it was dark and we were so ready to go back to the condo for some down time. I did get to watch some classes, but that was only when I was down at the arena grooming. Then once the horse was in it's class, I could watch it. Other then that, there was no time to be able to go sit, relax and watch a class or two. I guess that is what happens when you work for a big farm. At least we didn't bring 50 horses like some of the barns. Now THAT would have been totally crazy.

Once the show was over, it was time to take apart the set ups, and pack up the horse trailers. We were all really looking forward to getting home at this point. Actually we were supposed to leave on Monday, and we were all packed and ready to go, standing wraps on all the horses, ready to be loaded onto the trailers, when not even 10 minutes after the last standing wrap was put on, our boss said to take the standing wraps off, we were going to stay one more night and leave the next day. Seriously? We were very disappointed. We just wanted to get on the road for that 32 hour drive home, the 32 hour drive home that became very challenging.......




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