May 17, 2006
This week's update is from Adrienne DeMaster. Pictures are from the Midwest and the Minnesota Horse Expos.
Susan and Randy far right represent Norway, Janimal and Rachel represent St. Lucia and Sweden (with Danielle holding), Zachary (Susan's son) the Viking!
We had some great successes. In spite of the rain (all 3 days!), we had a lot of people stop and talk; many, many taking brochures and several coming back more than once. Several people took info from both.
The Expo folks deserve a big thanks, as they would not let Linda pay for the extra stall for Biskit, or the tack stall which they graciously shared with us. They also fed my kids hot food when they looked cold, borrowed us the use of a staple gun, shovel, etc, and gave us some free shavings.
Thanks are also in order for Triple C Carts of Cannon Falls. Vern and Roxanne came through with a cart for us to use on Friday, and helped us out getting things adjusted so Brody could pull it (their draft horse cart was a bit too short so we couldn't get the holdbacks in the right place). By Saturday they had sold every single cart they had there. Hope we helped with that!
Most of all, don't forget Linda, Patti, Kim and Vivien, who answered countless questions, cleaned stalls, held horses & jackets, took pictures and about a zillion other things. We never could have done it without them. Nancy stopped by to show me the watch that she had made. It is gorgeous; she takes apart an inexpensive watch, and puts a (tiny) picture of your horse on the face of it. She had a picture with, and told me that she was donating one of these watches for the next ASAP fundraiser/raffle in memory of a horse who died recently.
Buck was his usual lovey self, staying on the job all three days without fail, and sharing his stall with Brody during the day so they both could be seen and petted. Brody only gave him a couple thumps; otherwise they amazed people by coexisting peacefully in that none-too-large stall. Kathleen demoed Buck in Western gear all weekend. Decorations worked out great, and everyone thought Biskit was absolutely handsome. He gave Cristin a bit of a hard time when she rode him bareback on Saturday. A couple different people told me they were cheering her on, as in “Don't fall off!! Stay on him!” She did, but she wasn't two feet out the gate before she bailed off. It was so easy to get him to side-pass, as EVERYTHING was scary. He did pretty well in the hang-your-head out-the-stall-door competition, although he did go take a couple naps out of the reach of petting hands.
Brody, of course was a perfect gentleman, as always. I ground drove him on Saturday (one-hand for the trip around the arena), then Cristin rode him on Sunday in the Aussie saddle. He just takes it all in stride.
