A Baby Boomer Dreams of Arabian Horses - The Third Foal Crop Part 6

Part One of the Baby Boomer Series

The Third Foal Crop Part 1

In just next couple of weeks, we had the Daffodil Arabian Spring Show at the Puyallup Fairgrounds . Eric Krichten was going to show Legs in the Stallion Halter division and we were taking several other horses as well. I also was still on foal watch with one more mare to foal. Thankfully Lilly didn't do much to make me think that she was serious about foaling until after the horse show.

Working as a groom at that show, I didn't have much time to focus on my own horse, I had several others to deal with as well.

Because I was working for halter trainer, Eric Krichten, at the time, all of the horses we took to the show were showing in classes one right after the other. It was a blast of an hour and a half of classes and then everything was over for the entire show except for the Championships which were shown on Saturday evening. If a horse didn't place first or second, it didn't show in the championship. With all of the horses showing that quickly it makes a groom's life pretty hectic and stress filled.

With Arabian halter horses they want them coming up to the ring as fresh as possible. It's not good to have them standing around ahead of time because the horses get bored.

The trainer only wants a few minutes to school the horse right before the class. Other than those couple of minutes, the trainer doesn't even want to be near the horse until it's time to go into the class. So the trick is to get the timing right so the horse is groomed up and at the ring just those few minutes before the class for the trainer to school.




To accomplish this,I had all of my show clipping and bathing done the night before the show. I'd also done some preliminary sanding of hooves ahead of time. The day we showed, I came in early before breakfast and polished horses' feet. Once those were dry, I turned the horses back into their stalls to eat their breakfast. That way when it was time to show, all I needed to do was brush the horses off, untangle their manes and tails and apply face make-up.

At the time of this show, I had that process down to about five minutes a horse and my timing was great. It actually took me longer to walk the horses up to the ring than to get them groomed up. Some of the classes were small so for a couple of the horses I had to have runners to take the horse up for it's class and bring back the hand off while I got the next one ready.

The purebred stallion class was at the end of the session of halter classes. They also had the classes split by age with the oldest horses being last. That put my horse's class the last one of the session. That meant I actually got to see a class, and better yet, it was mine!



Legs won his age division so later showed back in the championship class. A client really wanted Eric not to show my horse in that championship and show his instead. One Halter Trainer with Integrity and Class addresses that conflict over the championship. You'll have to read the other post to see how this whole thing went down.

As for the championship itself, Legs was named the Daffodil Arabian Spring Show Stallion Champion. The really exciting part of this for me was that he beat a horse by the name of Baywatch V http://www.danaarabians.com/stallions/BaywatchV/ who has gone on to be a Canadian National Champion Futurity Champion. Baywatch foals are selling all over the world for some pretty big bucks!

to be continued..............

The Third Foal Crop - Part 7

The middle picture is the client's stallion. The last picture is me walking Legs across the courtyard up to his class. I can't tell you how proud I am of this horse to have him go to horse shows and behave so quietly like this!! In the halter class, he was a snorting blowing thing with his tail over his back showing them all how cool he can be!



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