Eddie MacMurdo Show 2013

And a couple of pictures of the sunday afternoon thunderstorm.  Luckily it hit at about 4:30 p.m. just as the show was getting ready to wrap up.  Tommy and I were waiting to go into our last class and the skies opened up in a torrential downpour.  There was some very loud thunder and lightning that scared the crap out of some people's horses.  A few competitors decided to scratch some of the last classes and go home, and more than one person had to get off of a nervous jumpy horse due to the thunder and lightning crashing down. 

(And I was rather proud of Tommy, because he could've cared less about the noise.  He cocked a hind leg and almost went to sleep throughout the whole thing. We have neighbors who target practice on a regular basis, so our horses are kind-of brain dead to loud noises.)

These are a couple of pictures that Craig snapped as we sat underneath the covered warmup arenas.  It's hard to see in the photo above, but there is a small river running down the paved driveway.

Everybody ran for cover and waited for the storm to blow over.  There was a person that was going to load their horse into their trailer to go home, but they opted to wait inside the barn for the rain to go away instead...

Eddie MacMurdo Show 2013

Along with seeing my old friend Sibbea again, I got to meet a couple of new friends and see some old acquintances as well.  Tommy was in a stall across from Travis Locke and the Trafalgar Morgan crew from Walla Walla.  Travis was a really nice guy and I got to watch him hitch up his lovely morgan for the driving classes.  The morgan folks are always entertaining to watch at this show.  They put on their best suits and ties and their park horses are absolutely amazing sights to behold!  I'm always impressed with their turnouts.... 

Oh, and speaking of which - remember when I said that I could only handle one horse at this show?  The Trafalgar crew brought NINE morgans to compete!  There was a crew of half a dozen people getting horses cleaned up and ready to go into the showring through both days.

Along with the real horse people, I also encountered a model horse person at the show as well. Amy Widman was there taking some pictures and enjoying the day. I didn't recognize her at first, but then after she introduced herself I remembered her from when I used to show models. It was good to see her again! (And Amy, congrats on your engagement ring!)

We managed to bring home a couple of ribbons and beverage ware at this show. This years awards for us weren't nearly as lucerative as last years show - but that's just the luck of the draw when you go to events. Last year there were two light breed judges that clearly liked the diversity in the classes and placed a variety of horses quite highly.

This year was completely different. The judges made it quite obvious that they were madly in love with stock horses. None of the light breeds did very well. There were a couple of arabs in the evening western pleasure classes that I thought should have placed much higher than what they did. A lot of the same "stuck-in-first-gear peanut rollers" kept winning over and over again. I was a little bit disappointed, but maybe next year will have some light breed judges come back again.

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...