Every moment of Youth

Friday evening I left work a little early so that I could meet the farrier at my barn. He is the only horseshoer I've known that is ALWAYS early. Sure enough, he came a few minutes early. But I was ready for him. He is fast too. I was happy to see that the horses were all pretty well behaved. I was kind of worried about Yalla! because she pins her ears and threatens to kick me, on occasion. As a result, I've been really working with her, on picking up those hind feet. As it turned out, I didn't need to worry. She behaved pretty well except for getting a little restless on the third and forth feet. And the best part, my shoer still isn't charging me to trim her. He said it was worth his investment of time to get her behaving right from the beginning.

Afterwards, my mom and I went to the Arabian Youth Nationals because my mom came down for the weekend.

Every July we get our fix because this show is the only time we get to see Freestyle Reining and it's always fun! The rider performs their own choreographed reining pattern to music. They must include figure eights with flying lead changes, slide stops, rollbacks in both directions, reinback, lope, and full gallop. Sometimes the props and sidekicks are even better than the horse's performance!

These first pictures are of the "Thriller" ride. The whole family took part, dressed as zombies.

The little ones were so cute! And they had so much energy!!

This little boy was dressed like Sherlock Holmes with his lantern, investigating the "dead" one.

This was a "jazzercise" reiner.

This was an Indiana Jones skit.

These girls were part of the British invasion.

This group had race cars and played an AC/DC song. Unfortunately, the horse is not a reiner and they received a score of zero for not completing all the required moves: never galloped or performed any slide stops and the rollbacks were really, really sad attempts. I think they had fun anyway.

This one was funny. It was a spoof of the Arizona immigration laws. 

When they announced the winners, Team Thriller began jumping for joy

(I love her hair!)

and the whole gang had to line up for the Reserve Champion photo.

Everybody was happy to see Team Indy win Grand Champion.

Part of being at Youth Nationals is earning and showing off your jacket. It's a good thing it was cool and rainy so they could wear them around. 

Some people were all dressed up

and some weren't,

and some people were completely soaked and muddy like these two, because it poured!

Every moment of Youth - song: Ballad of the Adventurers, artist: David Bowie, album: Baal