last fair

It was the last fair of the season that my friends where driving in, so of course I took the day off of work to go watch them! Becky was showing Alliecat, Beth was showing Art and Curly, and the elusive Haley was showing Denny and Vella.

Haley usually comes to our circuit shows and has showed up to a few fairs, but she never shows. I really didn't believe that she showed her horses or if she was just all talk (just kidding). Haley did very well with her two Haflingers, she went away from the show a very happy Haley!

Curly, who has been near perfect since Beth started driving him decided that today was the day that he was going to act up. Just a few days ago, I went down to Ohio and he was great.

Beth even had a goal of hooking Curly and Art tandem for this show. The first go around went as well as could be expected. Curly was a bit confused at first since he is used to being next to Art, but he figured it out quickly. Art was the one being a goof and not moving out quick enough.

But at this show, we hooked Curly to the cart and up he went! Holy smokes! He went up a few times, then came down, all leg splayed. He kinda scared himself! Beth was way calmer than I would have been if I was in the cart! After his little rearing escapade, Beth still did the class and they were fine. No more issues like that from Curly.

Later on, we went to hook Curly and Art tandem. Art is in the lead because he has a lot more experience with driving and driving tandem. We got the horses hooked, Beth went to climb in the cart and up Curly went again! What the heck? He went up then he went down. Up and down. At one point, I thought he was going to flip. I was holding Art, who was calmly standing there and not giving Curly the opportunity to move forward.

The wonderful thing about draft people is that we had a bunch of people run over to help us. Curly stopped rearing and was standing splay legged again with the cart shaft between his legs. The people got Art unhooked from Curly and Curly unhooked from the cart. Again, Beth handled it much better than I would have, but she did scratch from the class. We tied the horses to the trailer and they were fine.

Later, Beth hooked them team (side by side) and Curly had no issues. In fact, they gave everyone rides around the fair grounds! We have no idea what the problem was, this was the cart he has used before. The harness was a show harness, but it should not have made that much of a difference. After driving Art and Curly around, they finally got to get unharnessed. During this process Curly stepped on my foot. Ouch.

Alliecat was great for Becky, in fact she was a sleepy pony and was falling asleep every time she was not asked to move forward. It is always fun to watch the shows. It makes me really want to get Shyloh back into work with driving.