Horse Expo!

Well, traffic was so bad that it took me many hours to get to the expo. :( I missed out on a lot, but I did get to see some stuff! Some good, some bad, some amusing.

I got to see a haflinger breed show. I love haffies.
Not entirely certain what disciplines some people were showing off, heh, but they all had fun!

Pony soccer?







Dress-age?







Driving miss daisy!



Tarp navigating and mane farming. I mean wow that is a lovely mane!



And the ever popular sport of mouth-yanking.



Some of the horses at the sale barn were cute, calm, and loved. This clyde was one such horse.



Okay, I have heard the arguments for soring a horse's mouth. "Raspberries," they call it. It's a shortcut. Yeah it forces the horse to mind the big more... because the corner of the horse's mouth has been rubbed into raw bleeding flesh! No, no, I am not okay with this practice. This horse was sweet but looked so sad.







Another lighter thing:



And now another thing that made me really mad. This little baby zebra was for sale. Zebras are not horses, not at all. But what made me mad was the photograph of a kid, maybe 8 or so, sitting on the back of this baby. NO NO NO. No you do not put a kid (no helmet, don't remember if she had shoes) on the back of a zebra at all, but you also don't put that kind of weight on a foal either! It's just a baby! I wish I could have gotten a photo of the picture, but that would not have been subtle.









Yes, the zebra was calling a lot.

Okay, back to positive.
Sacramento county has a search and rescue unit that includes some horse and rider pairs.





Hah, look at that snazzy orange!

And my camera died right at the beginning of the Magnificent 7 show. Of course. :(

Here's the daddy of Magic's baby!



After the camera died, a drill team came out and did awesome stuff, but then a cow got loose into the arena somehow. One girl went after the cow, flag and all. The flag never dipped! Magic's babydaddy ended up getting said bovine back in the pen then.
The show itself was cool- all very talented horsemen and horses. It was such a boy's club though. If I were healthy, not disabled, and had the cash and talent, I'd try to train up and enter. But that's not happening. Still it was fun to watch! There was a scary moment though, when a horse slipped and fell on his side, with his rider. The horse stood right back up and waited for his rider. A bunch of people seemed to teleport to the scene, but the rider walked away from it. Lucky guy- a young lady from Hossmoor is in a come after having had her horse fall on her. I'm glad no one was hurt in this event.

When I first headed up, I was stressed, hurting, and in a panic. But I still went, and I am glad I did!