IL Horse Fair

Last weekend I took Sunny up to the Illiois Horse Fair in Springfield for the Curly breed demo. The focus was on curly gaited horses- we had 5 gaited and then Fiesty. The weather was gorgeous for it!
Friday was set up and practice day. It is totally amazing how much work goes in to one of those events! Sunny had his first bath in a long time, and didn't care for it too much. Alyssa, Joan and I got more wet than he did! He finally got clean though, and then we waited around for the horses to dry off, which took awhile. We had walked through the pattern a bunch of times earlier, because there had been no practices, but really wanted to get on the horses and do it. That was especially true for me, since I was still pretty sure I didn't have it memorized! I got on Sunny before everyone else tacked up and rode him around the indoor for awhile bareback. I'd only ridden him once this year, but he got back into the being ridden mindset right away. We practiced in several different arenas, and finally it started to come together pretty well. My favorite part was riding in the Coliseum, which has been a dream of mine ever since I saw the society show there during State Fair.
There were also several opportunities during the day to talk to people about Curlies, even though the fair hadn't actually opened yet, and that was a lot of fun. By the end of the weekend though, I was pretty sure I was going to scream if I heard "he looks like a big sheep!" one more time. Still, even the repeated questions were fun to answer.
Everyone got to bed fairly early since we were going to be tacked up and ready to ride outside the door of the Livestock Arena at 6 a.m.
Despite everybody's predictions (including mine) Sunny had been doing an awesome job of keeping up with the group (his favorite gait is super duper slow) In fact, he was doing great, especially considering all the factors. This was his very first horse fair, I really hadn't been working with him much lately, and he hasn't been stalled at all in over two years.
Later that morning I took him in Curly Conformation for the 4-H Judging classes. He was so good, he stood perfectly still even when all the kids came at him at once for close inspection. Well, ok, not perfectly, he kept trying to stretch his nose out to say hello, which amused everyone considerably. ;-) He was actually the quietest in that class, which led me to ask him why he never did that for me when I showed him in halter before! He just blew in face. Well, ok then.
He did good in the demo too. We went in in two rows of three, and the two of us on the outside were supposed to split off, circle back around, and meet to come straight up the arena together. Taco had other ideas, he wanted to stick next to his buddy CC. So Taco went around the arena in an interesting fashion and Sunny and I did our thing by ourselves. Supposedly the announcer was saying the script, and threw in something about the "curlies that like to buck". I'm not sure, I didn't hear it... but in any case it was very ironic that he was at the point of the script talking about their gentleness when Taco decided not to cooperate. But we got back together in the pattern right away and finished well!
Sunday we had a tornado come through. Not literally through, but the sirens went off and everything. After that was over, we tacked the horses up and took them out to the covered arena. Pretty soon after we got out there, the wind started gusting again, really hard. I stopped Sunny and was trying to pull my hair back since it (and the dust) was all swirling in my face. We were next to CC, and he was getting nervous- he gets frightened at stuff pretty easily and this was a justifiable time. Right then we heard, "Loose horse!" and see this totally panicked horse come racing up towards us, lunge line flapping around his legs, eyes rolled back white. I decided to forget the hair tie. Sue said, "I think its time to be heading in now," and I was starting to say, "yeah, Sunny's getting pretty freaked, I think I'll get off and lead him back," but I didn't get to finish my sentence. Poor Sunny was feeling majorly blocked in- the fence was several feet behind him with huge wind gusts coming right through, CC was fussing on his right, the crazy loose stallion was swinging in big arcs in front of us, and people were coming up on the left to try and catch him. Sunny reared straight up- totally vertical. Immediately coming down, he went up again, but lost his balance. I, mentally taking note of being grateful for the saddle, jumped off and landed on my knees in the soft footing. Sunny fell next to me, and immediately scrambled up and took off for the far end of the arena, where fortunately Bret caught him. We were both fine, Sunny was more shook up than I was. He was immdiately calm when we got back to the indoor, and seemed more than a little contrite. Maybe that's anthropomorphic of me, but that's how I saw it. After checking him over I got back on and rode some more, and he was back to his calm self.
The demo was the best on Sunday actually! The whole weekend was SO much fun!! I really didn't see much in the way of clinics or other demos. I made it to most of a Liz Graves gaited clinic which was very informative, and of course managed to squeeze in some shopping. All in all it was a terrific weekend. I got to ride, shop, talk to people about the best horses in the world... not much is better than that!