2009 AHACO Arabian Horse Show in Salem - A Little about Fate

Sometimes Fate just has to get her extra laughs. Life isn't complicated enough without throwing one more wrench into the mix. And you can bet that this fickle fingered woman really had fun with me at this horse show.

Stalled right on the same aisle was the woman with the chestnut stallion. Seems like every time I went up towards the arena I had to pass her either sitting there, or in the stall doing something with her horse. It was an awkward situation to say the least.

If I had caused that kind of wreck in a class, I would have tried to locate the person or persons I'd affected so I could apologize. I just couldn't walk away and say nothing. True, my horse has exploded in classes and probably affected others' rides but to actually run into another horse, I've never come even close.

I can remember my first year of showing. My then show horse, Mark, right in the middle of the class began backing up instead of going forward. I think the other riders (all two of them) were jogging which just happened to be the required gait. I was mortified.........and I'm still apologizing to this day to the woman who was behind me as my horse backed. My backing horse did not cause her any kind of issues at all, yet I'm still bugged by the fact my horse was backing in her direction.

This woman, on the other hand, didn't say a word. I'm pretty sure she knew I was the one she'd run into. Her behavior when she would walked by our stalls seemed to be a bit stilted. But that silence was like the elephant in the room. Everyone around seemed to feel it........and it was mentioned more than just a few times. I was constantly being asked if she'd apologized to me. That alone made for a long, slow show.

Of the eleven horses taken to the show one of them just happened to be Louie. We started him way back in November. MiKael Meets Richard......Getting Started.....Louie but between my surgery and Richard's injury we figure he had about sixty-eight days under saddle since that time.

Despite this sporadic training schedule, Louie has been a star. He's coming along quite famously and is very near being ready to show so we decided to take him along to see what we had. If it went well, we'd enter him in a class, if not, it would be a great schooling opportunity and people would get a chance to see another of Legs's babies.

But that fickle fingered woman, Fate, had her way with Louie as well. He developed a burn on the back of his left front fetlock from a bell boot no less. The burn was ugly and for at least one day, Louie was too sore to work............so showing was out of the question........and so was showing off!

Other than that, Louie proved he deserved the confidence we'd placed in him. His first ride in the warm-up he spent little time actually IN the bridle. The young horse was qawking around checking out this new world but he whizzed through traffic like he'd been doing it all his life.

We decided to not ask the young Arabian horse for anything more than forward movement. Richard and I both decided we'd ask him for more when he was ready to handle more and only then. We wanted his first experience at a show to be a positive one.

Louie rewarded our patience by rolling over and booking down the rail when we decided the time was right. One of my trainer friends watched intently as Richard instructed Cody on what to ask from the young horse. The trainer couldn't believe Louie had so little time under saddle, yet used himself so well.

It was nice to see one of my Legs' babies get the attention he so deserved. Before the show was over this trainer was asking lots of questions about my horses and their talent. He even made the comment maybe he had "under estimated MiKael's horses."

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

Walk/Trot Eq


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