Horse Show! Photos from the Adventure

I took about 1,000 photos (mostly of my friends who actually showed), edited them down to about 500, and am now working on picking my favorites to print. That is always the place I get stuck... finding "print-worthy" images, or maybe not finding them, but narrowing them down to my favorites. I have almost no photos up in my home for this reason, which is sad as a photographer!

Here are few of my picks... maybe someone out there can help me decide which I should make some art with.

Shadows and Dust

Co-Pilot

Gimme the Blues

Cat Nap

The Eye Has It

Wild Thing

Perfect Profile

These were all shot on Sunday in the warm-up pen, and you can see that Abbey is really feeling the full effect of the three-days-in-a-new-place-with-constant-noise-and-activity immersion training that takes place the first time you go to a show. We both were feeling it actually. As good as it is for a horse to be exposed to a high-stress environment, it is just as good for a person. It really solidified us a team, a pair. We could count on each other to be there for support when something new a scary happened (like walking into the huge wash rack, or riding past the bleachers - Oh! The horror!) I was on high-alert just like Abbey the first day, but by the time we loaded back in the trailer it was old hat.

Thanks to L and her horse Zane, who Abbey is now in love with since they were neighbors at the show, we had an uneventful first ride in the outdoor. We walked, we trotted, and by God we even loped! We avoided the less spatially aware horse and rider teams and Rail Hogs that plague every warm-up pen. Eventually it was just me and my pony in the center of our own little sleepy universe as the world went by around us. Just standing and breathing can be a beautiful thing.

Sleepy Abbey