Our First Show

We had an absolutely crazy weekend. I’m not yet recovered but not sure when I’ll get to put my feet up and relax. I promise that I’ll get pics this week of some of the herd.

Friday I took Chaos over to a friends to give him a bath in preparation for our first ever horse show. I’ve never participated in a show and haven’t even been to one as a spectator in years. Least to say, I was nervous. We spent a few hours in the evening prepping both Chaos and my friend’s horse for the show. It was midnight before we had our two boys settled for the night. I was running late so I still had chores to take care of after that. At 1AM the bed never felt so good. But I only got a “nap” in before getting up at 4:30AM to throw everything into the truck, load the boys, and get to the fairgrounds by 6:30AM.

For having never shown before and having very little practice time, Chaos did amazingly well. He’s never been in an enclosed arena with a loud speaker. He wasn’t happy with it but settled down after a bit. He took everything in and appeared to be relaxed for the majority of the day.

We did showmanship and walk-trot. Knowing that we wouldn’t get any ribbons (but hoping for one none the less), Chaos did come in fourth in one of the walk-trot classes where he alone was being judged. The class where I was judged we didn’t place (sorry Chaos). The last class we were in Chaos was judged. I blame it on myself for getting in his way. There were 11 riders and I felt claustrophic. I was at his mouth the entire time asking him to slow down. When we did the line-up, we ended up under a loudspeaker and he got mad. I was at his mouth the entire time. We were the last ones out of the ring, and I was at his mouth the entire time trying to get in line but not getting the chance to get out. Unfortunately Chaos reared, twice. I know why he reared (I was at his mouth the entire time). I’m not happy about it but I know the reasoning behind it. I’m extremely pleased that we even received a ribbon in a class and I’ll do my best next time to stay out of Chaos’s mouth and to do him justice.

We stayed at the fairgrounds for most of the day but late in the day I started to fade. When they were on the last few gaming events, I decided to call it quits and go home. I still had chores to tackle. Unfortunately for the herd, I only did minimal chores.

I gave myself Sunday morning off and slept in. I had thought about going to the Parker Saddle Club Play Day but decided against it. I was too tired, none of the horses (except Chaos) were clean enough to be presentable and I wanted to give Chaos the day off, and the wind was blowing like crazy. Instead, I puttered around for the afternoon but about 6pm we decided the wind wasn’t going to go down and we better get to Madison.

I am out of hay. We burned through 70 large squares of hay. I still don’t know what the bill is but figure it’s $100 per ton. The bill will be over $3K. I finally have the weight tickets so I can write the check. I just haven’t looked at the tickets yet. So we will be faced with additional costs for this winter because we’ll need additional hay.

I had four spare bales from two years ago and an additional bale in the shed at Grandma’s (apparently not enough room at mom and dad’s). We did score an extra hay bale and an alfalfa bale. I’ll have to do something special for my uncle (who’s my hay guy). I have it figured out that we’ll have enough hay to get through until Monday of next week. Hopefully the weather will stay nice enough that I can start getting the horses out on the lawn to adjust to grass. But this week isn’t looking like I’ll have time to do any “lawn pasture time”.

Unfortunately through the entire loading and hauling of hay, the wind was blowing 25 mph or so. The wind makes life difficult. We had to use a tarp, twine, and bungee cords to secure the half bale we tossed in the bed of the truck. No sense in letting any hay go to waste. Not only did the wind make the drive interesting, but the county decided to rip up our road. And when I say rip, I mean literally rip up the road with a ripper on the back of a dozer. We had to go an extra two miles to avoid the ripped up portions of the road. The county is trying to dry out the gravel but it makes life interesting trying to maneuver around the gigantic holes of “quick mud/gravel”. I’m betting if I were to drive a car into it, I’d get stuck in an instant.

I’ll be feeding the horses from the back of the truck tonight. And then will back out the trailer and feed the horses from the trailer. It’ll be handy only to some degree. I have a group riding lesson tonight with Chaos. But with the back of the truck loaded full of hay, I’ll have to bum a ride with a friend. Thank goodness for friends.

I’ll hopefully have more stories to tell but need to get caught up on a few things before I tell any more stories.