Christmas Parade

Today Fancy and I will head to the Blythewood Christmas Parade.

I will be going to this parade with mixed emotions! I will once again see people who are totally clueless in regards to horses and their mentalities. Which is to be expected. This year we are going prepared. We will have at least 4 adults walking along with us to keep the spectators away from the horses. The last thing they need is someone running out (adult, kid, dog) to pet the horse without permission. Don't get me wrong, I love for people to come up an pet my horse, however, it needs to be when I am aware they are coming and am prepared for this. Not the surprise kid/dog running up and spooking the horse.

Parades are a VERY stressful situation for horses. My wife has ridden in one parade and will never do it again. I think some people delight in spooking horses. In one parade last year we were staging by the motorcyles, bad move. There was a VERY considerate gentleman on a bike that noticed the stress level in the horses and pleaded with his friend, "Do not backfire your bike until we get down the road a ways." So what does he do, backfires his bike while I am sitting on Fancy and he is about 10 feet from us! She jumped through her skin was stayed put. Afert a parade anything is TOTAL CHAOS. You are trying to get your horse back to the trailer among people in cars trying to get home. So you have little old ladies in classic cars blowing their horns at you. My goal for this year was to teach Fancy to KICK ON DEMAND and put a nice dent in car doors. No, I didn't do this as I don't want to take the chance in her getting hurt during the kick!

So why do I do this? Experience, for Fancy, not me! She is young and all things considered, a great horse. I have only come off her once and it was my own fault. She has never done anything to try to get me off regardless of what horrible situations I put her in. However, I want her to learn to relax in public situations. She does great when we go places for trail rides. She can run barrels faily well on the home course. However, she is HORRIBLE when running barrels somewhere away from home. Of course, it doesn't help that she always seems to be "in season" when we take her to a show. There is nothing like running barrels on a horse that sees some boys watching her over the fence and she decides to go see them rather than round the last barrel! Oh well! It is something to look back upon and laugh at!