Pink Ribbon Classic 2014

Last Saturday was the big Pink Ribbon Classic open show in Walla Walla, Wa. I took little Ira, (well, maybe I should rephrase that.... he's growing like a weed and honestly he isn't quite so little anymore...) to partake in a few of the halter classes. The baby boy did totally awesome!
 
We went under USEF judge Lewis McKim of British Columbia for in-hand halter. We placed: first in the 5 and under halter class, first in the light breed halter class, and third in the solid colored equine class. Ira won two pink buckets with some matching pink brushes! Here are some photos from the horse show, courtesy of Entirely Equine Marketing.

The first thing that the judge asked me was about his breed....(because he's so big for a yearling).  After explaining that he wasn't a warmblood, the judge exclaimed that he looked like he was going to be a really nice horse to ride in the future.  And I said "yes!"

Can anyone guess that I love this horse..?  I had a huge beaming smile after winning two classes.

We received very high compliments from the judge, the announcer, the photographer, and also even a few fellow competitors.  Everyone really loved the little guy and thought that he was very beautiful!  Ira was a very well mannered young fellow at the show, and I was very proud of him.  



Getting ready to trot out from the line.  He was watching Sibbea with her camera at that moment.

Looking forward to our next show in September!

Feed Your Tekes

A quick rant about feeding.  (Yeah, it's my blog - I can talk about whatever I want sometimes...)

People amaze me.  With as much nutritional information that is available in the world today, and with such an amazingly vast array of supplements and grains and forages that are available in feed stores - why in the hell do people still think it's okay to have skinny animals? 

One thing that you will never EVER see me do, is post pictures of skinny horses from my farm!  That does not happen here.  I like seeing nice fat healthy horses with no ribs showing, no matter what the situation is!  I guess that the only exception would be if it was an extremely old (30+ years) horse, or one that is in failing health - but NOT EVEN THEN would I find it okay to post emaciated photos, thinking that it was satisfactory to keep an animal in such poor shape.  There is such a thing as humane euthanization at a certain point...    

WHY for the love of god, are there still akhal teke people out there who think it's okay to have/ride/own skinny malnourished animals - and then,  post photos of them - like they are so proud to have a skinny rail thin horse?  Are they just stupid and can't see it....?  I am getting so dang sick and tired of it!  I've seen multiple photos in the last week of horses from one "breeder" that are ribby, rail-spined, sacral joints showing, and hip bones protruding terribly in the photos!  (And they are young horses.)  Ugh.  Sadly, I know that there are just as many, if not more, horses out there that don't get their photos taken - so nobody will know about their situation.

On the photos that were posted this week, I couldn't take it.  I didn't sit back and stay quiet.  The person has heard my opinion in a private e-mail.  Maybe now that it has been brought to their attention, they will start feeding their horses..... but most likely they probably won't.  They'll probably think that I'm just a quack, and dis-regard it altogether.

Sadly, off the top of my head, I can count at least three major offenders in the north american akhal teke breeders population that have proudly posted photos of their malnourished horses on some very public sites.  Why?!?!?!  The general public already has the impression that akhal tekes are willowy types of horses that are "greyhound-ish" in appearance - which is okay.
BUT........ could we possibly steer-clear of adding "starving" to the overall impression?  Please, pretty please....???????    

Good words of wisdom, no matter what you attempt in life:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=536894586440265

Post by The Logical Indian.

"In It 2 Win It" - Part II

Friday night was the last In It 2 Win It schooling show in Pendleton. Luckily the weather gave us a little bit of a break and reached only the mid 90's. The show was re-scheduled from Monday night because of the heat and other various reasons. But this was some more good practice for little Ira! The more practice that he gets the better, because this upcoming weekend we're planning on attending a bigger open regional show.

He won his very first little ribbons at this show too! (It's one of those "proud momma moments" when you save his first baby awards and paste them into the scrapbook...)

A New Start and Some Older Progress

While I'm waiting for my second bronze to reach the patinization stage at the foundry, I'm getting ready to start on a new OOAK (one of a kind) project.  I'm pretty excited to delve into it.  He already has a name, with thanks to a foreign friend that helped me translate the meaning of the word that I was trying to find.  Yay!  Very exciting stuff.


And in old news the studio, I'm happy to say that I'm only two backlog orders away from being free!  This is really thrilling.  When I get these two customer orders done, I'm going to throw a private little shindig of joy.  It's been a stressful few years doing paintwork for other people, and I've reached the decision that I'm just not going to do it anymore.  I work ultra snail-paced slow and it takes me forever to get stuff done, so I don't think that it's very fair for people to have to wait forever for their models.  But in the future, I will have several of my own finished sales pieces available to put up on MHSP as they are completed.  Lord knows I've got enough naked resins hanging around here in my private stash, it'll probably keep me busy painting for the rest of my life!

Scorcher!

Will this infernal heat wave never end?  Jeesh, we've been having a serious temperature spike here in our high desert part of the country.  For the past week it's been hovering steady at around 105 degrees every day!  I've been spending most of my time trying to keep water going to the plants outside, in an attempt to keep our two organic vegetable gardens alive. 

Due to the heat, the second "In It 2 Win It" show has been moved from Monday to Friday night when the forecast predicts that it may hopefully cool down a little bit.  The only good thing about this  - is that the heirloom tomatoes are growing bigger than my head!

"In It 2 Win It" - Part I

Little Ira went to his very first local schooling show on Monday! Paula Post hosts the "In It 2 Win It" evening show series in Pendleton for the local exhibitors. Ira was totally amazing at his first public outing, and I totally love him. We did the halter classes and also some of the showmanship classes. We've never practiced 180 haunch turns or sidepasses before, but he did sooooooooo well! Picked it up immediately. He was extremely well mannered with the loud noises (when the crowd clapped), and seeing new spooky objects beside the arena. He was quiet when horses zinged by him in the warmup arena, and stood quietly for setting up in halter. This is going to be a very nice colt - and I am in love with him!

Techno-Disaster

My old dinosaur of a computer finally crashed! I'll be without any e-mail for awhile until my husband can figure out how to set everything up onto a new computer. (I'm using his machine at the moment.) Epic bummer. A lot of my pictures have been banished forever...