Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show


First of all, if you are one of my 4 friends on Facebook, please ignore that I’m using basically the same commentary on my blog as I did on my photo album. Not everyone that reads my blog is on Facebook, namely my mom.


So my sister Annie came down to Scottsdale this past weekend for a big horse show (or “whore show”, as Jon calls it. You can’t even really tell the difference when he says it, so it’s easy to get away with). Anyway, Scottsdale is only about two hours from Tucson, plus I have an aunt and uncle that live there, so we went up and met Annie there and got to spend some time with family, which is always fun. We headed up Friday after work and picked up Annie at the event center directly after her first ride of the weekend. After dropping our stuff off at my aunt Stacey’s house and visiting for a while, we went to eat at Pei-Wei (the honey seared crispy chicken is the only thing I have and ever will order from there..amazing). Annie made a huge mess as usual – it was so bad that the old Asian waiter wiped it clean while we were still sitting there, and then pointed to the seat next to her and asked “who was sitting here?” THAT’S how bad her mess was. The spilled rice spread across her entire side of the table. Hilarious.

Anyway, so Saturday we spent the entire day at the event center, Westworld. The show is a huge deal and there were hundreds of vendors, pretty art galleries, and tons of events going on at any given time. We checked out a children’s western showmanship class in the morning (basically a beauty pageant on horses). I regret the terrible condition of these pictures. Looks like I need more practice.


(This girl was my favorite. She took second.)





(This girl was my second favorite. She took first.)





(This kid had no chance whatsoever, but he was so ridiculously cute I had to give him credit.)


Okay so we kind of branched off from Annie for a while because she had other rides to watch, other people to mingle with, and horses to warm up. But every time we bumped into her, I was eating something different. There was the most amazing row of food vendors directly adjacent to the dressage arenas. I began my day with a gyro, followed closely by some roasted corn…

(just ignore the pained look on my face, who knows what that’s about)

The corn was followed by a giant corned dog, followed by Jon’s waffle cone.

Then it was time for her ride.


(This is my favorite picture that I managed to take.)





(I would have liked this one better if Sundance’s ears weren’t pinned back, and if you could see his leg from behind the cone.)




(That’s better.)




All in all, she’s the best person ever born, because she took first place out of her level, which means that the horse is a champion, and that his owner gets a blue ribbon, a plaque, a rosette, and $150. (I believe her exact words were “Yay! That’ll cover one-tenth of his entry fee!”).

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