BMPHC Pre-Mothers Day Show

Tommy and I attended the Blue Mountain Paint Horse Club's open show in Pendleton yesterday.  It was at the Flying X arena, which isn't too far down the road from our house.  This was a Pre-Mother's Day show, and there were a lot of ladies that showed up to get roses.  =:)  There was a floral shop in Hermiston that was gracious enough to donate flowers to the women that competed in the "Mother's Only" classes.

     It was a nice sunny day, with several entrants in attendance.

The mini's were cute.  They did halter, in-hand trail, and driving classes.  Tommy had never seen such small horses before, but he liked them.  I fully expected him to be a big goofy chicken liver with them near, but he kept wanting to nicker at them and follow them around everywhere. 

June Moreland and "Mr. T".  I enjoyed talking to June throughout the show, she's a really nice lady.  The photo above is of the judge evaluating her horse in showmanship.  June rode Mr. T in the western classes too.  (I forgot to ask what the judges name was...dang.)

There were a lot of nicely dressed, (or fully turned-out) entrants at this show in the english classes, so I brought "the little saddle from hell" out of the dungeon.  The huntseat tack makes Tommy look very sharp and appropriate for the show arena, but it's not very much fun for either one of us.  We both hate that damned saddle with a livid passion.  At the next tack swap I'll sell it, and start looking for a better saddle to compete with.

Western and comfy.  Training devices were allowed at this show, so I put the martingale on to work on his headset.  It made a huge difference, and he showed some great improvement.

                     He's spectacular when he gets it right. 

All throughout the day I kept hearing people in the bleachers making comments "an Akhal-what?"....  But Craig was there and was able to give them a condensed version of the breed history.  We were in good company, as there was a group of four local Peruvian Paso's and two Missouri Foxtrotter's in attendance as well.  (It's kind-of nice to not be the only different oddball out there, sometimes...)

We entered about a dozen classes and came away with 3 first place prizes.  Half dollar coins were awarded, which was really neat.  We're improving, slowly but surely.

Schooling Show

Yesterday was the second schooling show at the Umatilla Sage Riders arena.  I didn't go to the first show, because it was held the same day as Home On The Range.  But I went to this one and it was a lot of fun.  I think that they are planning on having one or two more of these schooling shows as the year progresses along.  And what a nice day!  Sunny and in the high 70's.  I even got a sunburn.

Tommy experienced a few more new "firsts" for him at this show, and that was good.  Since my photographer husband had to work and I was there by myself, I took photos of everybody else. =:)

A pretty light isabella palomino and white paint mare doing the showmanship pattern.

There were a lot of halter classes at this show, and Tommy and I spent more time doing halter than we ever have before.  We got a lot of practice in setting up and standing square!  Most of my ticket stubs got used doing halter - And oh, speaking of which.....

This show has the most unique way of entering classes.  Instead of circling which classes that you want to do on a classlist sheet, you just count up how many classes that you would like to do that day.  Then you can buy that number tickets.  When your class comes along, you deposit your ticket into a bucket at the arena gate.  If for some reason, you decide not to do that certain class and you choose to do another, your ticket can be used for a different class that you'd like to do instead.  A good example is that Tommy and I decided to skip most of the equitation classes, (the western pattern was too complicated for my green horse, and my brain couldn't handle it either....) so we used our extra tickets to enter more english classes.  This show has a nice ticket system that is uncomplicated and works for everybody, (for competitors and office staff alike).

The open western pleasure.  Notice how they are moving at a decent rate at the jog and their heads aren't buried in the sand like peanut rollers? Very cool.  The judge appreciated it too.  He thanked them for moving, instead of being stuck in low gear.  (If you've ever seen video's of the QH Congress western pleasure classes...you'll know what low gear looks like.)  So far, Tommy and I have been very fortunate to show under judges that want to see faster traveling horses. 

Colette Carson hard at work.  She was the ticket taker and score keeper at the gate.  She's a very nice lady from Pendleton.

Our judge Tony Jackson.  He was a good judge and gave me a lot of help in the english classes.  I rode in  my endurance tack once again, and he made a joke that I was a "faux english" rider.  It was a hoot.  (My aussie endurance saddle looks like a cross between a dressage/western saddle.)  But this what schooling shows are all about.  You show up to work on your horse, and it doesn't matter what the rider and the tack looks like.  There was a very nice older gentleman in the western classes that had his team roping tack on and he looked like he was about to go to a rodeo somewhere.  But, he did very well because he spent time collecting his roping horse up and practicing his riding.  It was awesome to see that.  It doesn't matter what you look like, just how hard you want to work to improve your horse.

  

Tommy getting ready for the western classes.  The only photo that I got of him all day.  He had his first experience with the loud speaker system at this show.  It was good for him to get used to it. 

The judge asked a few questions about Tommy, like what I did with him, if he had been imported, and what part of the middle east his breed was from.  After answering some questions, I handed him a Breeders Co-Op pamphlet before I left the show. He appreciated the info.  The judge had recently been in Bahrain and recognized some of the middle eastern breeds, but not all of them. 

Being a model horse artist, there were a couple of really pretty horses at the show that were some great inspiration.  I couldn't help myself - I had to take pictures of them.  This weanling frame overo paint filly was lovely, and she competed in halter and longe line.  She had black pigment mascara markings around her blue eyes.  I think that she'll be a really stunning horse when she's mature.

This mare was awesome.  She's a painters dream and nightmare, all in one.  She was a maximum sabino paint that competed in the western classes.  I joked with Colette that it would probably take me a whole year just to paint a pattern like this.  She was such a stunning colored mare, and what a difficult and intricate pattern to attempt!

Our next show will be really local - in Pendleton, next weekend!  Tommy and I will try and squeeze in some more practice before next Saturday.

Heave-Ho!

The older that I get, the more that I start looking for stumps, rocks, ledges, panels, or whatever else that happens to be laying around to help me get aboard my horses. I never used to give mounting up much of a thought, but now it's getting to be one of those things that's becoming more of a "consideration" as the years continue. (My slowly-expanding pant size doesn't help much in that department as well....ugh.) To add a bit of insult, none of my horses are considered to be huge skyscrapers in height either.

So all that I can think of when I see photos of these giant guys is: "Holy S***! How in the hell do they get up on those things...?"

FMJ

The championship round of Full Metal Jousting is on tonight! Wahoo! Ideally, I really wanted Rope Myers and Josh Knowles to have the showdown in the final round. But, Rope will get a shot in the 25k runner-up round.

I'm hoping that "The Beast" Josh Knowles wins the big money tonight! All hail to the redhead!

BTW - Crispin reminds me of a heavy draft version of Nettie.... he's an adorable hairy palomino horse!

ABC Contest

Ox (Octopelle), was one of the winners of the Advanced Biological Concepts photo entrants! I sent in our picture from a few years ago at the Klikitat ride, and was happy to see that we were picked for this week's contest. I do use their electrolyte supplement after our conditioning rides, and Ox seems to like them just fine. Amrita's Akhal Tekes are also on there too, as they were selected a few weeks ago. You can win a goody basket of supplements/minerals and other stuff if your photo is selected. Teke folks, send in your photos! =:)
http://enterprise.abcplus.biz/Home1.aspx?Id=Animal_of_The_Week

Home On The Range

Yesterday was the first endurance ride of the season for the northwest region. "Home On The Range" held by ride manager Gail Williams in Washtucna, Washington.

I was a bit edgey on Friday as we left the house for the ride, because it was raining buckets and the wind was blowing a zillion miles an hour. I told Craig that if the weather was the same as where we were going, I was probably going to be a grumpy camper. Torrential rains and 30 mile an hour winds tend to make for some very unpleasant riding conditions.

But luckily Saturday turned out to be a very pleasant non-rainy and non-windy day. A few raindrops just started to trickle down as we ended our last loop on Saturday afternoon.


50 milers heading out on their first loop. As you can see from the picture, it was muddy - and when I say muddy, it was honest to goodness really MUDDY. The road was bad enough that a big tractor had to be used to pull everybody's truck and trailer into camp. A few people joked that they had never had "vallet" parking at an endurance ride before. =:) Craig helped one lady that had a big horse trailer get un-stuck out of the mud after the tractor had pulled her up on higher ground. Even on the top, it was still slippery and muddy. Which played hell on our hoof boots for the ride...

Here we are before the ride with all of our hoof boots on. The boots lasted a grand total of halfway through the first 15 mile loop of the ride before the mud claimed them. One by one, the mud sucked each one of them off. I was getting really exasperated having to get off and on about every 10 minutes to pick up another blasted boot. I rode with Cathy Leddy and Monica Bretherton on the first loop and they experienced the same problems with their hoof boots as well. When we were about 3 miles from camp, I yanked the last boot off of Tommy and said, "screw it, we're going barefoot". The boots were more of a nuisance rather than a help. Tommy was more than happy to keep going without hoof boots, and I was a much more relaxed about not having to worry over the damned things popping off every few miles.


Aarene Storms and her standarbred mare Fiddle, getting ready for the 50 miler. Aarene is a great writer who has published some articles in Endurance News and has a nice blog as well: http://haikufarm.blogspot.com/ She always dresses very nicely in her purple ensemble for the rides, and I always admire Fiddle's big black beautiful hard hooves too. That mare has some stunning feet!

Dr. Dick Root DVM. My favorite vet. He knows his stuff very well, and I always look forward to seeing him at the rides. I've affectionately coined the term, "Dick knows the deal-io". Not only is he a super knowlegeable head veterinarian at several northwest endurance events, but he's also an avid endurance competitor himself. Dick has accumulated almost 8000 miles in AERC, which is not an easy task to accomplish. He knows what to look for when horses come into the checks, and how to handle stuff when it does occur. He's one of those vets that I'd really love to see at ALL of the northwest endurance rides. (And yes.... he does wear that signature polka dot hat just about all the time....)

I was interested to find out at this ride that Tommy's heart skips a beat. He has developed a slight arythmia that I wasn't aware of. I asked Dr. Dick what I should do about it, and he said not to worry too much. He had an endurance horse that competed 2000 miles with the same condition, so it wasn't something to get too worked up about. Cathy said that Astrakhan developed an arythmia when he got older, so I guess it runs in the family a bit. It doesn't seem to effect Tommy's performance at all, so we'll carry on doing what we're doing.


The three amigos. I rode with Cathy and Monica on the first loop of the LD 25 miler. This was Danny's (Magdan's), first ride that Monica piloted him on. He did very well for a young green horse at his first endurance competition. I complimented Monica on her turquoise jacket, as it almost matched the HOTR completion prize shirts.

Earlier that morning before the start of the ride, Galen and Danny decided to take an "unauthorized" stroll around camp to get warmed up. I was fast asleep at the time, and only heard about the tales of whoa later on. I was relieved that Tommy thought it was much more important to eat his hay in his pen, rather than joining the other two in their fun. You can read more about Galen and Danny's escaping escapades on Monica's blog: http://blog.seattlepi.com/horsebytes/

Cathy on Galen and Monica on Danny trucking along at the trot.

When Tommy and I were on the second loop, one lady asked me if I was riding a National Show Horse and another lady thought that I was on a straight Saddlebred. I explained what he was, and then told them that we had a trio of Teke's at the ride. There were several people admiring our little group and recognized that our horses were different from the rest of the pack out there.


Boot check. We took turns telling each other when our hoof boots were falling off. We each lost at least one hoof boot apiece - and Monica and I lost almost all of ours. Luckily, we were watching each other pretty closely going down the trail and managed to tie most our boots onto the saddle after they popped off. The deep sinking mud was hellashius on boots.


Craig snapped this photo from his phone of us coming into the vet check on the end of our second loop.


Tommy was getting a little bit "race-brainey" after the first 15 mile loop, so we split up from our riding group and traveled alone for the second 10 miles. I wanted the mind of my level headed show/trail horse to return to me. And it did. We travelled at a calm rolling walk on the last loop and the strategy made a huge difference, as we ended the ride on a great relaxed note. We cruised into camp as two happy campers. It was a great ride, and I'm already looking forward for our next one.

Las Vegas

This is going to be a long blog post, as I took A LOT of photos......

Craig and I made a recent visit to Las Vegas for a couple of days last week, for Craig's Dynomometer school training. It's been 7 years since the last time we went to Vegas, and this time I remembered to bring the camera. While my husband was in a classroom learning new techno-geek stuff for 2 days, I walked around Vegas taking pictures. I think that I wore out the soles off of my shoes walking everywhere.

A shot of the Ruby mountains on the drive down. The basque shepherds refer to this mountain range as "the man killers". It's a tough part of the country to run sheep flocks in. We passed a basque truck and vardo camp on the highway.

" Las Wages." I love the enchantment of the architecture in Vegas. There's nothing dull about it.

We stayed in the Luxor (the giant black egyptian pyramid), and had some great views of the strip from our room.

The Bellagio, Sinatra's turf. The last time that we were here we watched the infamous "Oceans Eleven" musical fountains shooting off at night. But Craig was pretty tired after he got out of class this time, so we didn't catch the show this time around.

Poolside at the Bellagio.

The awesome waterfall pool at the Mirage.

The Wynn casino had a bunch of really cool waterfalls. There was a resaurant built right next to one of the falls. You could eat a sandwich while watching the water cascading.

The Mirage, (Sigfreid and Roy's home base) had water everywhere too.

One of the pirate ships at Treasure Island. They put on a great outdoor show at night.

The inside of the Venetian. I love this casino! It is built as a replica of Venice, with the water taxi's and walking bridges.

The boat captains would sing in italian while they rowed, just like in Venice. It's hard to believe that this is actually inside of a casino.....

The inside of the Wynn casino had an enchanted forest. They had lights on the trees for a pretty walkthrough at night.

Caesar's Palace had a lot of grandeur. The statues were big, the fountains were big, the columns were big....... there was a whole lot of "big" everywhere in the architecture.

One of the neatest things about Ceasars Palace was that the Forum shops had a sky celing. You're indoors, but had the effect that you were outdoors. There was about a mile of painted sky ceiling. I thought that it was a neat touch.

There's a giant aquarium at the east end of the Forum shops at Ceasars. It's huge!

The rays in the aquarium liked to look at the people just as much as the people liked to look at them....

A chocolate waterfall at the Bellagio. There was a big candy shop right next to the fall, with huge easter eggs on the ceiling and chunks of chocolate as big as your head. If my mother was there, she would probably be spending most of the time trying to figure out how to break into that chocolate waterfall.....

The Bellagio also a nice Holland exhibit with flowers everywhere. There were some huge bumblebees hanging from the celing were made of flowers as well.

The main entrance to the lobby of the Bellagio had a HUGE blown glass ceiling display. They looked like giant glass flowers growing down through the skylight.

One of the restaurants in the Bellagio had a fabulous example of a blown glass sculpture. It was exquisite!

The Chandelier lounge. I referred to these lounges as "floating bars", because they were located half-way between two levels in a mall. These lounges had their own special floor levels all to themselves.

The Chandelier lounge was opulent and quite spectacular!

I took this photo standing on the second level of the mall. It's hard to describe a floating bar, but they are in their own little world. The Chandelier had two levels, which you can barely see through the actual chandelier.

The Chandelier lounge was a sight to behold with all of it's "blingy" chandelier covering. I was rather mesmerized by it.....

Another floating bar, this one was in the Gucci fashion mall. This particular one tied into the second level of the mall, but in the Chandelier's case, it was all on it's own between the two floors.

I thought that this was a neat store. Their windows had hundreds of old replica sewing machines as decoration.

And the shopping.....holy crap, the shopping! This town is a high-rollers paradise. There were a couple of jewelry store fronts that I looked into that had diamonds rolling loosely around inside of huge glitzy jewel encrusted watches. I had no idea such things existed....

Alas, I'm a huge fan of Las Vegas and all that it has to offer - but Las Vegas doesn't get too excited to have patrons like me and my husband. (My big purchase of the trip was two $15 coffee mugs.) I don't gamble, drink, party, or spend extravagant amounts of money on clothing or jewelry, and neither does Craig. So it's safe to say that we were both very conservative "tourists".

But it was fun to walk around and look at all of the high-falutin' stores.

The pink and yellow decorative circle is made from arrows, with a handbag in the middle of it.

I remember Sarah Jessica Parker's favorite pair of shoes in "Sex In The City" - they were Jimmy Choo's.

Cha-ching!

And more Cha-Ching!

Okay, this guy was super-cool. I loved him. He was a lifesized jewel-encrusted peacock in one of the stores at the Wynn casino. He was TOTALLY AWESOME!

His price tag was a cool $15k, and the litle red card below him said that he was on hold for someone. Man, I loved that peacock! I was drooling over him in the store. He was really stunning to see in person. Some lucky rich person will have him perched over their mantle soon.

And alas! I looked across the store, and there was another one. A white one! Dreams of owning jewel-encrusted life sized peacocks keep dancing around in my head.

For other folks, owning some actual wearable jewelry instead of an elaborate stuffed bird is more their speed. There was a russian woman who kept peering through the window at these sets and exclaiming, "very nice!" in a thick drawling accent.

There were more than a few couples wearing wedding clothes along the strip in Vegas. Some of the cakes in the shops were very impressive. Those are real pearls on the cake.

The statues were great too. This griffon doesn't look very big in the photo, but when I stood next to him I was about the size of one of his paws.

One of four marble pegasus in the west side fountain of Caesar's Palace.

A happy little hippogriff bronze statue that was poolside at the Bellagio.

A giant ceiling mural at the Wynn casino.

In the lobby at Caesar's Palace there was a totally awesome tile mural behind the front desk. I know how hard it is to do tile muraling, so I had a deep profound respect and fascination for this big piece. It's extremely hard to match colors up in tiny 1/2" inch broken tile pieces to make huge fresco murals.

This was neat. It was a flower painting in the Bellagio. Literally - flowers that were put together to make a "painting"!

One of the highlights of the trip was getting to tour a few of the fine art galleries. There were two artists spotlighted in particular that blew my mind. One was Richard MacDonald. His sculptures capture mostly human movement pieces, and concentrates primarily on the royal ballet and Cirque Du Soleil as subjects. His sculptures are jam packed with emotion and movement - two themes in which I relished. The gallery at the Bellagio of his works was absolutely amazing. Very high end and professional. Fresh cut flowers adorned the entrance to the gallery, with lifesized as well as smaller sculptures dotted everywhere. http://www.richardmacdonald.com/

My favorite piece was "nightfall" the woman cloaked in a cape. http://www.artrenewal.org/pages/artwork.php?artworkid=39996&size=large I so dearly wanted to take that mysterious bronze home.....

Stunning works.

I also visited the Martin Lawrence gallery in Caesar's Palace. It is reputedly one of the largest galleries on the west coast. After walking through it, I could see why. It had a large rear "wing" where new gallery artists works were on display. The front was deceptive, because it really didn't look that big from the outside. That was the first gallery in which I discovered Vladimir Kush's artwork, and fell head over heels in love with his style. If you've never seen his paintings - they're a real trip! His label for his artwork style is: "The world in the mirror of metaphor". His stuff reminded me a bit of Salvador Dahli's, yet more functional to the imagination and modern. I LOVED IT!
http://vladimirkush.com/

I spoke to a gentlemen in this gallery and picked his brain about bronze patinas. There was the most fascinating holographic works of art in this gallery, and also gear driven art too. Giant funky looking clocks, and a coffee table that was in a continual state of gear-driven motion. I think that Craig would've liked to take the coffee table home. There was another onlooker in the gallery that said that it was the coolest coffee table he had ever seen as well....

The fellow that ran the Wyland gallery was a really helpful and informative guy. I was looking at some of the marine life sculptures and noticed that there was a glossy finish to them. The guy that worked there said that they had just came out with a glossy final finish for bronzes a couple of years ago. It is reputed to hold up well with time, and it looked really nice and slick on the marine turtles and whale sculptures in the gallery.

http://www.wylandgalleries.com/sculpture/ And my favorite artist Vladimir Kush had his own galleries in Vegas too. He also has galleries located in Laguna Beach and Maui as well. I could've camped out in that gallery all day long....

Overall, it was a really fun time in Las Vegas. Craig said that he learned a lot in his classes and couldn't wait to try out some new dyno techniques when he got home. And I had fun walking around taking tons of photos of everything!