Eddie MacMurdo Show 2013

Well, the blog photo uploader is "almost" working again... almost. Not sure what's up with it tonight. Still a few more photos to post, but it's absolutely refusing to upload one particular picture for some reason. Weird damned machine.

My friend and professional photographer Sibbea Browning was on duty once again at the show snapping pictures of everyone with their horses. She's so dang talented! Absolutely love her work! I'm trying to coax her into the endurance world, and she's shown some interest in doing a few ride and tie events. I told her that I'd ride with her on an LD - but when it comes to the running part she's on her own. I'd be a worthless and completely embarassing partner for any sort of ride and tie activity...

My favorite photo that Sibbea took of Tommy and I above. He is in a "real" western pleasure jog instead of his usual teke shuffling.

We did lots of english classes too.

And if you're wondering why my boots look weird and have a bizarre low cut to them, it's beacause they are specially tailored for sidesaddle. I had them cut down to accomodate my knee over the leaping head. I know that it's a fairly dorky look for english pleasure, but they're so darned comfortable that I can't bring myself to wear hightops again!

Eddie MacMurdo Show 2013

Where does time go? It's September already.... and I wanted to be more prepared, but generally never am for anything.

On the 14th and 15th we attended the annual Eddie MacMurdo open horse show in Walla Walla, WA. It was a good show once again - but was super HOT!!!! I think that summertime had it's last hurrah during the week before it decided to give up it's last phase into fall. That weekend had some very weird un-seasonably warm temperatures. On Saturday it was 95 degrees, and on sunday it was 98 degrees. Super sweat city! (I was royally roasting under all of those heavy show clothes!) Also on Sunday there was a gigantic flash flood type of thunderstorm just as the show was getting done. It was amazing. I can't remember the last time that I seen a summer storm that was that big!

(My stupid photo uploader on this thing isn't working properly, so I'll post a few photos in different posts.)

I only took Tommy to the show again this year, because I figured that I would probably be very busy trying to manage one horse and get everything done. It ended up being a good decision. The competition at this show is extremely stiff and I wanted to put all my effort into showing one horse to it's fullest potential without juggling too many things at once.
We did another "all-arounder" weekend this year and went in both english and western disciplines. It's a difficult task for Tommy to fully understand to learn to speed up and then slow way down to a crawl when the time comes, but I thought that he handled it pretty well - (better than last year). There's still a lot of room for improvement but we're slowly getting there...

Lewiston

This is going to be a rant, as I'm thoroughly pissed...

A word of advice to sheep breeders: don't take your lambs to the auction yards. THE PRICES TOTALLY SUCK BIG TIME!!!!! Take your chances with private sales instead.

I just took my second load of young lambs up to the Lewiston livestock auction, and it will be the last time that I ever do so again. Their commission fees are totally ridiculous, and they only have a handful of bidders that even bother to show up to bid on anything. It's not even remotely worth the effort to drive up there. Talk about pathetic!

The first time that I went I took a load of yearling prime butcher wethers up in 2011 to run through the Lewiston sale. The prices were "supposedly" high at that time, but I only managed to get half of what they were worth - (and belive me, my regular private sale asking prices were NOT very high at all!) I thought that maybe I would get a better price this year for yearling breeding ewe lambs instead - maybe the bidders would like them more? WRONG!!!! They went for even less than what the wethers did! Not even a QUARTER of what they were worth!!!!!!! Argh. I'm so totally disgusted at the whole thing right now.

(And don't even get me started on the auction yards down here around our area - they're even worse! I only went to Lewiston because it was rumored to have better prices than LaGrande or Hermiston. Pffff... right!)

Lesson learned. I won't take my lambs to auctions ever again. I'd rather eat all of the extra ones instead.... (which is most likely what will happen from now on.)

Horseflicks

I'm running a little bit behind on my posts lately...

On August 10th Craig and I drove up to the Washington State horse park near Cle-Elum. I had never been to this park before, but had heard some really great things about it. The park itself was all that it was cracked up to be. Nice facilities, outstanding arenas, and some trails and jump obstacles thrown in - a great place for people who love to ride their horses!

The reason that we were trekking up to the WSHP was to meet up with other northwest members that belonged to the Akhal Teke registry of north america. The registry had plans of doing another Horseflicks video (a sequel to the first one that was released a few years ago), and folks came with their horses to the first of three filming locations held across america. In total, there were 10 northwest Akhal Tekes that came to the park, (most of them purebreds, with two sport crosses). Producer Jon Mays was set to film the event.

On Friday, the night before the filming - there was a HUGE thunderstorm that rolled through the area with lightning that lit up the sky like some sort of half-crazed broken lantern. Craig and I got hardly any sleep at all. Both of our horses were in the little shed stalls that the park had provided, so luckily they were out of the horrible weather. The rain came down in a torrential downpour, (which sounded like a gigantic waterfall on the top of our trailer). All that I could think of was: if it kept this up the following day I really didn't feel like riding in it. That wouldn't be been fun at all. But fortunately, when morning rolled around the skies opened up and the birds started singing a lovely tune again.

The filming on Saturday morning went pretty fast. Everybody had met up on Friday night to discuss plans for the next day, and it was decided that we were going to be pretty quick about filming the different riding disciplines before the afternoon heat began to suck all the life out of us. It was a good plan, as the temperature crept up to a sweating point before too long. I started getting ready at about 6:00 a.m. warming Tommy up. He was feeling pretty snuffy from the big thunderstorm that had hit the night before, so I knew that I had to do some prep work before any kind of filming began. (The very last thing that I needed to happen was to have someone post a "chuckle-it-up" video on youtube of me sailing through the air doing a faceplant in a native turkmen costume.) So we saddled up and warmed up for awhile in one of the bigger arenas.

When 8:00 a.m. rolled around Tommy was pretty well warmed up and ready to get to work. His head had relaxed to a much nicer level, so we tacked up in our lime green western show attire and made our way into the designated dressage filming arena. Jon had us do a circle and asked us to pretend like we were in a class at a real show, so we did that. It was a lot of fun. After the western portion was done, the other riders were ready for english and dressage filming - so it was a good break for Tommy and I to get back to the trailer and change into our native costume outfit. (This would be no small feat to attempt, as it takes me FOREVER to get everything put on for it.) We hustled up and got our tack ready and headed back into the arena to film the next native costume portion. Erin Heatherstone also had a native outfit too, so we did some figure eight patterns together and both of us looked pretty spiffy for Jon's camera.

After the arena riding was done it was around 10:30 a.m. and everybody was ready to do some obstacle course filming out on the trail. I had to really hustle around and hurry to get Tommy put back into his stall and get Octopelle out of his, cleaned up, tacked up, change my clothes, and get ready to head down the trail in endurance attire right away.

Octopelle and I started out with the other riders at the beginning of the trail, but I could tell immediately that Ox needed some warm up time. He was adamant that this was going to be an endurance ride and that we were saddled up to do the REAL THING. He was definitely ready to rock and roll down the trail at a brisk extended trot. I decided to pull him from the group and we went back to the arena to do some proper warm-up exercising. He appreciated this greatly and made it evidently clear that he needed to burn some pent-up energy off. We did about 5 miles worth of laps. After the arena warm up session, we headed back down the trail to meet up with the group. Most of the other riders were galloping up enbankments and charging through water, so I decided to stay on the safe side and try to keep Ox calm and relaxed. He was already amped up enough as it was. We took part in some of the group trotting down the road for the endurance portion of the filming and then everybody called it good for the day.

After the trail filming was done, Octopelle was still convinced that we were on an endurance ride and he just wouldn't let the issue go, so we headed back to the arena and I let him burn some more energy off. (One of the interesting things about this breed is that they generally are never lacking in stamina or excess energy... which can be a good or a bad thing depending on the situation.) When we had done about another 10 miles worth of canter lap work in the arena, he was finally ready to settle into a good mellowing state of mind. At that point we headed back towards the stall and wash rack.

After un-tacking Ox and giving him a bath, Craig and I set up our chairs under the park BBQ tent. Cathy had brought some hamburgers and hotdogs and was grilling them up for everybody for lunch. Somebody else had gone to the store and had gotten some watermelon as well, so there was some delicious slices of sweet melon that I loaded my plate up with. We sat around the tent and visited for about an hour and then started packing things into the truck for the journey home.

It was a really fun weekend at the horsepark, and I'm excited to see photos from the other two filming locations in Minnesota and Kentucky that will happen next month. I hope that the next Horseflicks film will be just as good as the first one - if not better! =:)

Some nice "click n' paste" photo links from the event:

http://annahoychuk.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Horse-Party/G0000myxFHez.b8k/I0000ZZvt0.FCYGI

http://annahoychuk.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Horse-Party/G0000myxFHez.b8k/I0000NiqFsU3aT_I

http://annahoychuk.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Horse-Party/G0000myxFHez.b8k/I00003hh0Q22ivdY

http://annahoychuk.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Horse-Party/G0000myxFHez.b8k/I0000bMB4yy02rPI

http://monicabretherton.smugmug.com/Animals/Akhal-Tekes/Washington-Horse-Park-Akhal/i-KLjzFNs/0/L/IMG_0727_shannon_jog-L.jpg

http://monicabretherton.smugmug.com/Animals/Akhal-Tekes/Washington-Horse-Park-Akhal/i-4DHXmPG/0/L/IMG_1102_shannon_wendy-L.jpg

http://monicabretherton.smugmug.com/Animals/Akhal-Tekes/Washington-Horse-Park-Akhal/i-dPZNHzq/0/L/IMG_1157_ripley_craig-L.jpg

A re-tweaked Pam Demuth "Seize Aire" arab foal resin recently completed in the studio. A photo of the orginial unpainted version can be seen here: http://www.equineresindirectory.com/showresin.asp?resinid=1504

I moved this little guys legs around to extend the trot out some more, added a bit of length to the neck, flipped the tail, painted him as a buckskin pinto (to match a mare that the customer owns), and created a custom stained wooden base. He's a cute little buggar!

Bronze, El Numero Uno

I recieved a casting bid on my first sculpture to go into bronze today! Shortly after I got the message Craig and I drove up to the foundry in Joseph to drop the piece off. All that I can say is that - I'M SO DARNED EXCITED!!!!! I CAN HARDLY STAND IT!!!!! I'm going to have to try and wait patiently over the next two months for a phone call...

While we were touring Valley Bronze I kept oogling over all of the lovely patinas that were available and the different sculptures that were in the works. (I'm sure that the people who worked there probably thought I was a total nutjob... My eyes were bugging out most of the time!) The foundry gets projects from sculptors all over america, so the art in the place is really phenomenal! Craig and I took a tour, and I asked about a million questions...

While I'm waiting (impatiently) for the next couple of months, I've started on the next piece to try and keep my mind pre-occupied. (By the way, have I mentioned that I'M REALLY EXCITED...? The damned wait is going to absolutely kill me!!!!) And I'm working on customers models to be painted as well. My plan is that if I can keep enough stuff crammed in front of my face, then maybe the time will fly by faster for that phone call....

Costume

I finally got the mounted native costume done! Yay!!!!!! It's been FOREVER in the making... but now, finally it's finished... =:)

Some of the components I had to hunt a long time for in order to put stuff together and make it look correct and authentic. It's very difficult trying to find some of the smaller antique decorations that won't cost a small fortune! After 2 years worth of hunting things down and building/putting stuff together - it's finally finished. Not sure if I'll ever get around to doing another complete native costume... as this one was a boatload of work to do!

I'm attempting to get the show board committee of the Eddie McMurdo to consider changing the evening "Arab/Half Arab mounted native costume" class into an "Open mounted native costume" class so that people with different horses (like me!) can compete. Last year there was a gentleman on a beautiful appaloosa in authentic pioneer/mountain man clothing that had to use the kiddy Halloween costume class that was full of goofy finger-painted up ponies. I thought that was a shame because his authentic costume was totally awesome, so I'm going to see if the board will allow a little bit of leeway with their program. One thing is for sure, the spectators always go nuts over the mounted native costume classes... =:)