Jun

29

What Time Is It?

Filed Under horse shows, horses, tennessee walkers 

It’s horse show time! You know how you can tell? Because my website will go down. The business website and my blog are on the same web space, and without fail it will suddenly become unavailable as soon as I’ve got hundreds of proofs that I would like to upload as quickly as possible.

The horse show yesterday was one of our regular Walking Horse Association shows, which I like a lot. It’s fun to see the regular association folks and to see how the horses change from show to show. It’s also nice because when I’m photographing, I know most of the horses. I know how they move and how I need to adjust my timing to get the best possible picture of them.

I rolled out of bed around 6:30AM, which, for someone who sets their alarm to make sure they’re awake by noon, is quite early. There are few things I don’t mind waking up early for, and luckily horse shows are one of them. School? No way. I hate waking up early to go to class and can find all sorts of reasons to not do so.

I got to the show at 7:40 and set to work in the office. When people sign their horses up for different classes, they have all the horse’s information at the top and then list all the classes they want to be in. Office workers such as myself take those sheets and transfer the horse’s information to each class sheet so that every class has a separate sheet with all the horses entered into it. It’s not too technical, but it does take some time. There are actually three sheets for each class sheet. You write on one and there are two carbon copies behind it. This means that you have to press really hard with the pen to make sure that the writing makes it through to the third sheet. I’ve actually had an achey writing hand the next day from having to write so hard. That’s lame, I know. But by the end of the summer the muscles in my hand will ripple and I’ll have to buy new gloves to encase the body builder-esque physique of my digits.

Tennessee Walkers are popular because of their great, smooth gait. Instead of trotting, which is where diagonal sets of legs hit the ground at the same time (and cause a lot of bounce), they do what’s called a flat walk and a running walk. There’s no time in these gaits where all four feet are off the ground, which means that instead of bouncing around, the rider just floats along. It’s great for people with bad backs or joints especially.

The breed association (The Tennessee Walking Horse Breeders and Exhibitors Association, aka TWHBEA aka “Twee-buh”) gets to use such slogans as:

  • Tennessee Walking Horses: The Glide Ride
  • Smooth Out Life’s Bumpy Road with a Tennessee Walking Horse
  • Put Your Ass on Some Class: Ride a Tennessee Walking Horse

    • Ok, so they don’t actually use that last one, but I’ve seen bumper stickers saying as much. Maybe TWHBEA should consider using it for an edgy marketing campaign…

    Because a smooth gait is such a big emphasis in the TWH breed, there’s a special class at our shows called Water Glass.


    Each rider gets a glass filled with water. The judge asks them to do various gaits and maneuvers and the goal is to spill the least amount of water. Whoever does that wins the class.

    The Water Glass class at this show was one of the more technical I’ve personally seen. The riders had to circle half the arena at the flat walk and running walk, halt repeatedly and then do a series of figure eights across the arena, halting every once in a while. It was pretty impressive, really. I probably would have dropped my entire cup.

    Luckily, yesterday was a pretty nice day. Sometimes our shows are so hot that I’m tempted to run up to competitors, grab the water glass from their hand and douse myself with its contents.

    Comments

    One Response to “What Time Is It?”

    1. Kristin on July 17th, 2008 10:28PM

      Love your blog! That water glass class looks tricky…I’d have that thing emptied in no time!