Home, Sweet Home!

I am home, thank goodness! This horse show was miserable. I'll try to keep it as positive as I can since I hate to be negative. We left Thursday morning at 7:30 so we could get there as early in the day as possible. We need to do the barn set up and take care of the horses of course. We ended up taking 11 horses, but we had 2 more that were there with our barn. A client had just started leasing a horse from us after her own horse had to have unexpected surgery and she had just taken the leased horse to her own house, so she hauled the horse to the show, but during the show she ended up buying the horse. We are really excited for this client. The client is super nice and she just bought herself a very nice horse, who happens to be one of my favorites. The other girl had bought a horse from us a couple months ago and she stays with us at the shows.

The show facility was at a fairgrounds, which is an older facility. All the stalls have dirt floors which have many dips and holes from horses digging and pawing. We always set up 2 groom rooms in 2 of the stalls but we forgot our stall mats. Thankfully our halter trainer was coming down later that day and he brought them for us. There are only a couple shows that we have to bring the stall mats too because most of the barns at the show facilities already have them. Putting the stall mats down helped a little, but the uneven ground really made walking around the groom rooms, stalls and aisle a little difficult. You would go to turn around and you would fall a good foot down. I really thought I was going to sprain my ankle or twist my knees that already have serious issues. But I made it through without any injuries. I did have to wear my knee brace on one day due to some pain and instability issues, which I think was due to the uneven ground.

This yearling was being body clipped for the show and it just decided to lay down.



We had arrived around 1:30 in the afternoon and it only took us a few hours to get the barn set up and then we had lessons with clients the rest of the afternoon and evening. We got back to the motel room around 10:30 p.m.

We were back up at 5:00 a.m. so we could get to the barn so our barn help could feed, water, clean stalls, while the assistant trainer and I could start sanding hooves and put on hoof polish. The show was starting at 8:00 a.m. and we had 5 horses showing in halter classes. Halter horses are really easy to get ready and the halter classes usually go really fast. Not to be this morning. At this show you have morning classes that start at 8:00 a.m., afternoon classes that start at 1:00 p.m. and evening classes that start at 7:00 p.m. By the time 1:00 came around, halter classes were still going. What surprised us was that there weren't many horses in the halter classes, anywhere from 1-4 horses per class, and a lot of the classes were scratched due to no entries. So why the delay? Not to sure. What I do know is that the weather was absolutely terrible. I had gone online and checked the weather report for that area during the time I would be at the show so I could pack a little better. I know weather reports aren't 100 % accurate, but usually they are pretty close. Boy, was that weather report totally WRONG. I didn't realize I should have brought long underwear, thermal tops, thicker gloves and maybe a hat or two. It felt like December. Actually, the weather on Friday for that day in May was the coldest it's ever been, yep, broke a record for being the coldest day. And on top of that, it rained, and rained and rained and rained, IT.WOULD.NOT.STOP. I was thankful for the show grounds set up, our barn was very close to the warm up arena. So we didn't have far to walk to get to the arena. But it rained so hard, that no matter how close we were to the arena, I would get soaked to the bone.

Once the 1:00 hour hit, and halter classes were still going, we were patiently waiting for the afternoon classes to start. The announcer wasn't very good about keeping us updated on what was going on. We pretty much sat around, froze our butts off and waited....and waited......and waited. We finally heard an announcement that the afternoon classes would start around 3:15 p.m. Since the afternoon classes were delayed, that would delay the evening classes. Afternoon classes went well into the evening and the announcer finally made an announcement that since it was getting so late, all of the evening classes would not be held that night. They would go to class # 105 and resume evening classes on Saturday morning. We had horses showing in class 106 and a couple horses in another evening class. So we were able to head out at around 11:00 p.m. with the show still going and that even included young kids that still had classes.

Again, we got up very early to get to the barn. The first class at 8:00 would be one of our classes from the night before. Since so many classes from the day before were now being held on Saturday, we knew it was going to be a really.long.day. We had a lot of horses being shown on Saturday in the first place, but with the delay in the classes from the day before, now we had a lot more horses being shown. We were running around like crazy. We knew that the afternoon classes wouldn't start on time since a lot of the Friday evening classes were held in the morning and we were starting to wonder if this show was even going to end on Sunday. Once 1:00 p.m. came around, things started to quiet down a little. Reining classes were going on, and we don't do reining so we were waiting around again. And we waited, and waited, and waited. At least it wasn't quite as cold as the day before, but it was still raining. The sun would come out every now and then. But before you knew it a huge rain shower moved in. And when it rained, it REALLY rained. I felt like I was in a rain forest. We continued waiting. We finally heard an announcement that said the afternoon classes would start after a half hour break which would be around 4:45-5:00. This was getting ridiculous. Once afternoon classes started we again knew it would be a really late night. The evening classes still needed to be held too. Somehow they moved through some classes pretty quickly and the word was that the show would continue until midnight, to get as many classes done that night. The announcer said that the rest of the reining would not be held that night, and instead would be held at 8:00 on Sunday morning. We got out at 11:30 p.m. Since we knew reining would be first thing in the morning, we were able to go into the barn a little later in the morning. We arrived at 8:00 a.m.

We thought we were going to be at this show pretty late into the afternoon or evening. We even started to think that one of our clients wasn't going to be able to show because she had to catch a flight. We would see how the day would go. The announcer was really on people to make sure they were ready to go when he called their classes. He was trying to get people in the arena as quickly as possible. I do have to say that on Sunday the classes started to move much quicker and somehow they were starting to catch up to where they should be at this show. The weather was a little better, warmer with some sun breaks and still more rain showers.

We finally finished our last class in the afternoon and most everything was already torn down and loaded into the trailers, all we needed to do was put standing wraps on the horses, load them up and hit the road. We pulled out at 3:45 p.m., much sooner then we were expecting. The show was still going on and I have no idea when it actually ended, all I knew was that I was glad to be done and heading home. By the time we got home, unloaded the horses, it was 9:30 p.m and I was done. I just wanted to go home, eat and go to bed. I went to bed at 11:15 p.m. and passed out. I slept until 11:30 a.m. this morning. Obviously I was exhausted.

Everyone at the show was very frustrated, not just our barn, every barn. They all kept saying that they had never seen a show ran this way and some said they would not be coming back. I heard that this show use to be a 4 day show, and they turned it into a 3 day show due to the economy. But it just didn't work. I think they just made a lot of people angry and very frustrated.

We leave on Thursday for another show, but I am staying at the farm to take care of the horses there. Thank goodness. I need a break from the shows and will resume my show schedule in a couple weeks.

I go back to work tomorrow and I hope to get some stuff done around the house and with my own horses this week. It is supposed to rain all week again though, so it looks like I still won't get any time with my horses. I have had to deal with enough rain in the last few days and that is the last thing I want to do is go out in it. I hope you all had a great week and I am looking forward to catching up on what has been going on!