Equine Affaire 11/08

We started our day mighty early this morning. We call it "0 dark 30". I think we could've slept in a little but I didn't want to feel hurried in any way. I just wanted the whole experience to be a relaxing one.

G was his ornary self about loading in the trailer ~ I think I wanna - one hoof in, but no never mind, okay I'll try - two hooves in, but I don't like it. After the 4th or 5th request (I forget) he finally got all four hooves in and walked up to his manger for breakfast. Okay, so there is a reason to start early! Pulled into the Expo center at 7:45 to find out the office didn't open until 8:00. We opened up the trailer window and out pops this big ole head and he starts a whinneying ~ "Hey who's out there?" nothing, he calls again and this time he gets a response. I swear if he coulda climbed out of the window he would've. I got a bit nervous at this point as he really looked wound up and just kept calling and calling. We managed to get checked in and found the daily horse parking and when we opened the trailer doors we were overtaken by the smell of pee and poop! Nasty!! This is when it's really nice to have a groom with you All I can say is I was thinking straight when I braided and bagged his tail, cause "icky pooh" not pretty. I manage to take down his tail, brush it out and decide I should clean his rear hooves when I hear "honey, he's gonna pooo...." and with that I hear splat splat splat and at that point I don't want to look. Luckilly he only managed to hit the rear sleeve of my jacket; the bottom hem of my jods; and of course my right Ariat terrain. Yep, he's a bit nerved up. However he's happily eating hay, so I put him on a 12' lead and took him over to the grassy area to move him around before heading into a stall for 3 hours. Hubby snapped this pic....
Dianne the president of the NEWHA met us at the back door of the Stroh building to walk us to the stall. Now I'm aware that we will have to walk through the whole building to get to the stall so I'm preparing myself for a lengthy trip as he has to stop and stare and snort at everything....NOT! He didn't look cross eyed at anything; never stopped; snorted; or baulked. He just followed me right into the stall. Got him situated with hay and water and he did call out a few times, got an answer from a couple aisles over and with that he started munching hay. 15 minutes later he pooped, then pee'd and looked like he'd been in this place his whole life! 9:00 the doors open, and here come the peeps. Yep there's a happy horse mom.
Hubby and I stood back against a column that was in the middle of the aisle in front of the booth and watched as folks came up and G pretty much had to stick his nose out the bars to get a scratch or a pet. A couple times when little kids came by too short to see into the stall I opened the door so they could get a look and a pet. Having never watched other people as they approached horses, it was really fun to watch. It made me extremely proud to see women just falling in love with him as they stroked his nose and talked quietly to him and when they pulled away they had this wonderful smile on their faces. I know that look! I got it the first time I looked into those big soft eyes of his. And you could see that he was soaking it all up! Strangely enough I even noticed a few men doing the same thing, lol. Something I did notice however is that people would walk up, look at the sign that read "New England Walking Horse Association" and they immediately looked down at his hooves and then back up to his face. I truly wondered if they were looking for plantation or platform shoes, as I believe that's what most folks do think of when they see Walking Horse. I did have a couple people ask what kind of shoes we wore and that's when I opened the door and showed his bare hooves. They seemed surprised. More surprised though when I said I do his tootsies myself, lol.

Oh, and we met ADKMTN (Joan) and her husband (oops, I forgot his name) from New York, who stopped by the booth. Another real nice couple, so we talked about Walkers and trail riding and hopefully I'll get a chance to meet up with them again tomorrow when I go back.

Well we signed up for a fifteen minutes slot at the small corraled area so he could stretch his legs. This is when our group from the barn showed up...a nice lady offered to take our picture. Left to right is JoAnn, G, Gina, Kate, Deb (my dressage instructor), Mary, Zeke and Hannah. (picture)

G just amazed me. He just loved meeting and greeting everyone as I answered questions about the breed and particulars about him. One woman asked if we do expos all the time and when I told her it was our first one she asked what we gave him. I'm like what? She said, "did you give him Quietex or something?". I laughed and said "nope, this is who he is". She was amazed. She then asked if he was "hot under saddle" cause that's what she's been told all Walkers are. So I explained that he really depends on the bloodlines of the particular horse; it's training and then the relationship between the horse and its owner. Yes, for the most part they are very forward thinking horses. And because their gait is faster than a normal walk some people associate it with "hot". G then fell in love with a little blonde girl in pink who was all of four years old. She showed him her stuffed pony; he sniffed it; she giggled; he sniffed her hair. It went on for a good 5 minutes. The little girls mom said "she's been raised with horses since birth, so she has no fear". I said it definitely showed and G was loving it. I wish Zeke had gotten a picture of the two of them, cause they were so cute.

And here I am the new poster girl for TWHBEA (or so hubby says)
Our shift was over at noon so Diane walked us out and since I'm going back tomorrow afternoon, told her I'd stop by the booth. She asked if I thought we'd like to participate in the breed demo next year as well as the breed pavillion and I said "yes! I think we will be ready". I can't say enough how proud I am of him. He took the whole thing in stride - even drank strange water!! Woohoo, lol. I know small thing, but after hearing stories about horses not drinking and getting sick, it's one of those things I worried about. We all had a long day; G was so happy to be turned back out in his paddock where he immediately rolled, and me? I spent three hours on the couch wrapped in my horsie comfy while I dozed on and off, lol. Little buckaroo had a busy, but a MOST EXCELLENT day