An Education for Kendra...and Brad

We had our local county fair this past week and it was yet another learning experience for all involved. Kendra learned that you do actually have to work with your horse more then once or twice before you show it. Especially if that horse is named Lou and she doesn't socialize well :) It didn't help that the arena was wet and muddy. Kendra did well for her first time. She ended up with three blues and three reds. The reds came from the horsemanship and Lou and she got the blues from the riding classes with Dozer.


I titled this blog as An Education for Kendra and Brad because if Kendra learned a lot about how to show a horse then Brad learned a lot about why his dad was always so grumpy by the end of fair week! It used to be a joke about how grumpy Mike would get by the end of the Arkansas Valley Fair and how only the Fromans would be up at 4:00 am washing their steers on show days. Brad may have not been washing steers but he did get to wash his ponies and deal with running back and forth in between events to change halters/headstalls etc. Lou is without a doubt a South Eastern Colorado horse. She doesn't know what puddles are and she doesn't care for any type of water being sprayed in her direction. That includes water from a hose and fly spray. Brad got it done though and it was all totally worth it considering it rained 1.10 inches of rain that night and turned everything into a mud bog. So instead of washing them again before heading out that morning we took a bucket and rags and wiped them down as often as possible.



I love this picture, Brad and Dozer


Kendra's favorite part was the Poles. She did them on Dozer so speediness was not the name of the game. Dozer is a ranch horse, he can drag a calf and hold his own when roping a bull but if it came to a high speed foot race, he would lose. He, along with Lou, are part of the family though so we forgive their shortcomings and are thankful for what they are good at. So when you watch this video it will look nothing like what you see on T.V. but she had a great time!

While all this fair stuff was going on Kendra and Jake were running around having a good time playing on bales and brushing the horses. By the end of the day they were tired and thirsty and ready for bed. I was tired and hot and sun burned and Brad was tired and cranky and had a headache, we were a real "fair family".