I’ll will tell you honestly that Starlight and I came home
with a fistful of ribbons from the Empire State Paint Horse Club’s Paint-O-Rama. And among that fistful are a blue and a
red.
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| All polished up |
But focusing on ribbons would only tell you a tiny bit of
truth about our day, and it does not tell the real story.
The real report would tell you that, competitively,
Starlight and I were mediocre in halter and abominable in riding. But it would also tell you that I’m proud of every
shampooed, blued, Show-Sheened, braided and powdered hair on Starlight's fat little body,
from the whites of her pasterns to the tips of her pointy ears.
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| Cowgirls! |
She did everything I asked from her at the Chemung County fairgrounds, including displaying patience for all the pre-halter class scrubbing
and fussing, performing like a pro in those classes and standing like a saint
during all the waiting.
She also watched
scooters and bicycles zip by, dogs running, playing and barking, plenty of
flapping things, some very anxious, whirling, rearing young horses who were repeatedly
getting their faces jerked with chains, and all the rest of the activity that
makes a horse show, and she never spooked, shied or deviated from the course I
requested.
Except when she just plain ran out of gas.
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| Before the halter classes. |
She did that in our first riding class, after cantering
around the 150-foot arena in deep sand a couple of times. She just stopped cantering and would not pick
it up again. We tried it once more, in a
second class a few minutes later, and she stopped cantering even sooner. At that point, I knew she was exhausted, and
we scratched from our last two classes.
I didn’t mind doing it.
As you can tell from my posts, Starlight is a good pony who does what I
ask unless she has good reason not to, and I could tell from her lack of energy
and total dullness in those classes that she had given what she could and was
just used up. We had trailered to the show at 6 a.m., been in multiple halter classes, warmed up in three different arenas and had lots of long waits in between. And then she was asked to perform in a huge, deep arena.
Obviously, I had not conditioned her well enough for the
physical exertion required at this show.
And while other horses did not appear to struggle with the footing as much as Starlight did,
I can tell you that the lower arena at the Chemung County show facilities is
too deeply sanded. This would be especially hard
on a pony like Starlight, who has only worked in the grass this summer, except
for one clinic in sand of the correct depth.
Pushing her to keep trying would likely have resulted in an injury.
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| "Let's see, is it heads up/heels down or heads down/heels up?" |
So, I put her back in her rented stall and let her drink and
eat and relax, as my husband and I scurried around again, lugging, packing
and cleaning, until it was done and time to put said tired pony on the trailer
to go home.
She whinnied all the way
through Elmira.
Oh! And the blue ribbon?
It was for a class that required no skill or even good conformation. It was simply the “Tobiano Color” class, and
the judging criteria calls for identifying the horse that is most closely half
white and half colored. Hey, THAT we can
do! We got that.
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| The short kid in class. |
A side note:
Starlight had a mysterious effect on a big huntery critter in front
of us in the second class. She trotted
up behind him when he was cantering slooowwwwly and he suddenly started
bucking. Now, just because Starlight is
new at shows doesn’t mean I am, and I can tell you for certain we did nothing
to crowd this horse.
And my dear husband, who was as great a saint as Starlight
was yesterday, said he overheard the rider saying, after the class, “I don’t know what
happened. That little black and white
one came up and he just went bonkers!”
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| The official groom |
He added it was said without blame, just surprise. So, although I do think Starlight’s little
black and white presence influenced that buck, I have no idea how, since she
didn’t do anything or even get close enough to be a direct cause. But my apologies to the rider, who, unlike
us, was probably having a good class until that point. Incidentally, that was the second horse that
bucked in front of us. So, out of two
classes, two different horses abruptly bucked in front of us. Hmmm.
What is Starlight saying to those horses? Maybe: “Get out of my way, you skinny giant. Roly-poly alpha pony mare coming through!”
One final note.
Although I don’t think I’ll show again in that deep sand, the Empire
State Paint Horse Club did an excellent job on the show. It’s part of a two-day fall futurity, and it
was run very well. My compliments to
them, as I can only begin to imagine the work that goes into making a horse
show work.
