Midwest Horse Fair 2012: Hitting the Highlights

Ah, the Midwest Horse Fair!  Acres of horses, ponies, tack, jewelery, costumes, trainers, books, supplements, art, food, pony rides-- basically a giant horse-themed amusement park/mall descends on Madison, WI once a year for three days.

It's hard to even begin to blog about this event, because there's so much material, good and bad, to work with. That's why I've decided to split things up. The snarkiest, nastiest material I have is focused on Asia Voight, an "animal communicator" (a.k.a psychic), and that post will shortly (I hope) be featured over at fuglyblog. I may also do some separate in-depth posts on other subjects. This post right here is just going to hit the highlights-- but oh, what highlights! Strap on your helmets folks, let's start this ro-day-oh:


The Good

The Midwest Renegades is a trick-riding association, and although I'm not pleased about their lack of helmets, they are incredible riders. The young ladies I saw hung upside-down by one leg at a canter! Check out the beginning of their routine in this video. Sorry I didn't get the whole thing; some people directly in front of me decided that the middle of the show would be a great time to stand up and mill around.

The farrier competitions at MWHF are incredible to watch. Teams of expert farriers from across the nation compete against each other to create the best specialty horseshoes from scratch, in front of roaring furnaces and cheering crowds. Pictured here in the green shirt is Tom Petersch and his team from Bozeman, MT and in the black shirt, Robbie Mederos and his team from Danville, CA.

Terry Fenwick and his wife are the good folks behind America's Equine Soccer League, a grassroots effort here in WI to provide a fun way to train your horse, interact with others and do something productive in the winter. The Fenwicks are looking for people to host soccer games in their indoor or outdoor arenas, and are willing to give prospective hosts and players a ton of support. Terry is even willing to do a soccer-ball-desensitization-and-training clinic at your barn for just the cost of gas. By liking their Facebook page, you have a chance to win one of their giant horse soccer balls! The Fenwicks organized several soccer matches in the Nutrena Arena during the fair, and they were a blast to watch. I want to try!!

One of the coolest things about MWHF is the accessibility of the horses. Horses are ridden, driven and led right through the crowds of people milling around. You can get right up close to the most gorgeous equines and talk to their owners. It seems as though the risk to people, many of whom are not horse-experienced, would not be allowed. However, nearly every horse and rider I met seemed calm, competent and very prepared for the excitement. I applaud the professionalism on display.

This is the PRE (Andalusian) stallion Amadeo, my favorite hunk on Stallion Avenue. He's six years old, stabled in Oswego WI, and working on level 2 dressage. I wasn't a huge fan of his handler, but Amadeo was incredible.

I was disappointed that there weren't many horse rescues at the fair, but I was delighted to discover one I'd never heard of before: Holy Land Donkeys from Mount Calvary WI. I have always had a soft spot for the long-eared-fuzzies, but this was the first time I'd seen standard-sized donkeys and mammoth donkeys in person. I fell in love immediately. I hope to volunteer there at their Donkey Days event in October.


The Bad

The Mill Creek Hunt Club is seeking members. But you must ride English and dress in club-approved clothing, you must braid you and your horse's hair in approved fashions, and you absolutely must speak with a slightly snobbish inflection. Oh, and you need to like running down and killing coyotes with dogs. Coyotes will occasionally kill a barn cat or chicken that's been carelessly left out at night, but otherwise they are useful, not dangerous. These small, dog-like animals eat pests like rats, mice and rabbits, and clean up roadkill and other dead animals. Why shoot nature's garbageman? Well, because apparently foxes are in shorter supply.

Unfortunately, the Quarter Horse folks were at it again with their peanut-rolling antics. My mother, who is not a horse person, watched this exhibition with me. As soon as the horses stepped into the arena, she asked, "Are those horses sad or something?" Every one of them had heads drooping down to their knees, stiffly jerking around in a parody of a lope. Don't get me wrong, there were some impressive horses and riders-- I particularly enjoyed the trick-riding cowboy and the lady who reined with no bridle. It's just that I hate to see a working breed reduced to extremely artificial gaits in the name of fashion.

The notorious Asia Voight claims that you can become a horse whisperer in minutes, save thousands of dollars in vet bills, and fix any training problem, including bucking, biting, rearing and bolting...just by psychically talking to your horse. If you don't have the knack, don't worry-- you can pay her $150 for a half-hour phone call, during which she will connect with your horse using only a photograph. I've got video of her doing some hilarious "psychic readings," and some great quotes, but I'll hold off until the Fuglyblog post.

This is "Muffin," a 22 year old curly mare who looked pretty miserable. I'm not sure what was going on with her skin/coat, but she looked apathetic and had diarrhea. A posted sign claimed that the marks on her face were halter scars from past abuse (before the current owner). Why bring a horse to the fair in this generally poor condition? The owner appears to be Elizabeth Brownlie, though the tag was hard to read. Poor Muffin.

The gaited horses were a pleasure to watch-- except for this man, who simultaneously rode and drove these Puerto Rican Paso Finos. It looked difficult and just plain dangerous to me, though I admit I'm no expert.

As usual, the Gypsy Vanner crowd provided some entertainment. This particular photo shows a stallion who was obviously unprepared for doing Liberty. He kept running back to the gate and pacing at the fence, frightened. His handler, a guy with a weird mullet-ponytail, didn't help-- he kept running around, cracking the whip and flashing it around the stallion's head to try to get him to run around and show off. The crowd around me eventually got so impatient with the failed show and stupid whip antics, they started calling for the handler to halter the horse.

The Great Lakes Friesians were awesome-- better than last year, actually, and certainly better than some other Friesian organizations. However, this side-saddle rider partially ruined the exhibition for me by holding her horse's head cranked down to its chest the entire time she was in the ring. This picture doesn't even show the worst of it, though he's clearly behind the vertical here.

Oh, and one more thing. PEOPLE! DO. NOT. STOP. IN. THE. MIDDLE. OF. THE. AISLES!!!!! Seriously, I know there's stuff you want to look at, but step off to the side. Other people are trying to move! This applies not only inside, where there are hoards of people, but outside as well, where there are 1,000 pound animals that need to get through! I saw two girls literally stopped to braid each others' hair inside the packed vendor area. I saw women park their double-wide strollers across aisles while they stopped to look at cowgirl bling. Arghh!

The Weird & Wonderful

Just because I don't approve of breeding solely for color doesn't mean I can't appreciate unusual colors. This is a champagne Appaloosa. It's hard to tell in this picture, but he had caramel-colored eyes! He is a stallion, by the way, though I didn't manage to find out his name or owner. Actually, his conformation seemed pretty nice.

Everything you could possibly want to buy, in any color, is available at the Midwest Horse Fair! This saddle was adorned with genuine Swarovsky crystals.

The Belgian "Big Jake," the tallest horse in the world, once again graced the fair with his presence. He stands over 20 hands high, and weighs about 2,600 pounds. That means his shoulder is taller than an average man's head, and he's 2-3 times the weight of an average riding horse. He lives at Smokey Hollow Farm near Poynette, WI. Horses this size can drink 20+ gallons of water per day, and eat 50+ pounds of food per day.

Watching the Oneida tribe do some traditional dances was really cool. However, I was a bit confused. I was expecting Native Americans from the plains region on horseback. Oneidas, of course, didn't traditionally have horses-- horses were of much less use in heavily wooded areas. I think this was MWHF's attempt to throw some of that "heritage" theme into the proceedings. Not that I minded, because the dancers were great; I just think it's funny (or sad?) that most people immediately associate Indians with horses, no matter which tribe, and that's probably really the reason the Oneidas were invited.

Stone Bruises: Annie's Accident

I have a theory about horses. It's called The Equine Universal Bi-factor Dissonance Theory, and it states that, at any given time, the health of your horse is inversely proportional to that horse's current level of training/broke-ness. In other words, if a horse ain't lame, it's sassy, and if it ain't sassy, it's lame.

Sometimes they're lame and sassy!

I bring this up because just when Annie and I had been riding out alone fairly often, trying some new things, getting comfortable with the idea of going on a "real" trail ride, she got a stone bruise. Of course she did.

As I've said before, a horse will eventually take advantage of any opportunity to hurt itself-- which is why Annie's accident is actually my fault for allowing her to be around junk. I board on my family's farm, a gorgeous place on a dead end road, with 12 acres of pasture, with a barn and streams, right next to a huge tree plantation the owners allow anyone to ride on. It's fantastic...and totally free. Yeah, I can feel your jealousy burning into my brain across the internet. However, there's one little problem; my father is nearly a hoarder, and a few pieces of his junk have wound up in my horse areas. Nothing super dangerous, just some covered machinery, but still...

Recently, Annie decided to squeeze into a two-foot gap between a parked tractor/compressor and the wooden fence. (No, I don't know why, except that my horse has the survival instincts of a lemming.) Once there, she couldn't or wouldn't back out, found out 1,200 pound car-length critters like her can't turn around in two feet of space, panicked, and bulldozed through the fence. In the process, she got totally scraped up and jammed her hoof onto a nasty metal bit.

Of course this was the morning that my car chose to break down. As a result, the friend I had arranged to go riding with that morning found Annie first, still hung up, scratched to hell. This friend, Squidbunny, heroically freed Annie and called me.

The very least I can do to thank her is to plug her awesome, gorgeous western-steampunk webcomic again. Read it here!

Annie punctured the toe of her sole, not terribly deeply, but enough to cause bleeding. I knew immediately that she would probably get a stone bruise, and that is indeed what happened. I just thank God she didn't hit any major structures. You can see where it happened here, after my farrier got through trimming the hoof and further opening the wound site:

A stone bruise is caused when there's blunt-force trauma to a horse's sole, often from stepping heavily on a sharp rock. Usually there isn't even a puncture. Stone bruises cause lameness for days or even weeks. Worse, they are notorious for becoming abscessed. An abscess is a pocket of pus underneath the skin (or sole), and they'll make a horse even more lame until they burst, drain and heal. Unfortunately, when this happens inside a horse's hoof, it's very hard for the abscess to burst because it's surrounded by such dense, tough material. Often, they burst through the coronet band, heel bulbs or frog. Some horses (like thin-soled TBs) are so prone to these that by the time one heals, another has developed. Many horses develop abscesses if they're usually shod, then are suddenly switched to going barefoot.

The only treatment for stone bruises (and abscesses) is daily soaking, usually in Epsom salts and warm water. Soaking a horse's hoof is usually like trying to put a cranky toddler in a formal outfit; you may get it in there, but it's not going to stay in there for long. Luckily, Annie is as angelic about this as she is for nearly everything else, and I don't even have to stand next to her to keep her leg still.

Soaking the hoof draws out the pus and reduces pain and inflammation. The more you soak, the sooner an abscess will burst and drain. In Annie's case, the puncture already allows any pus to drain, but the soaking removes it faster, reducing the risk of a more serious infection to her coffin bone.

Often, it's a good idea to wrap, boot or otherwise protect a horse's hoof after a stone bruise. Doing so can prevent further injury by protecting the bruised sole from contact with rocks. In Annie's case, it's more about preventing dirt and bacteria from being packed into the wound. I was overjoyed to be able to use one of the expensive boots I had purchased for just this sort of occasion. Of course Annie got it off in 20 minutes. Thank God for vet wrap, the duct tape of the horse world. I also used Ichthammol around the puncture. It's a salve that actually draws infection out of a wound-- good stuff.

That's all for now folks-- tune in next time for daily reports on the Midwest Horse Fair! I just can't wait to tell you all about the seminars with Asia Voight, the animal psychic who charges $150 for half-hour telephone consultations. I also hope to be able to go to some local horse auctions.

Farriers

Finding the right farrier has got to be one of the most frustrating experiences on earth.

• You can't tell how good of a job they're doing until they've done it-- and then you have to pay them.
• It's hard to pick a farrier based on qualifications, because there's no universal standard of qualification for farrierwork. Yes, there are farrier schools, but there's no universal standard for what it takes to graduate from them. Some have two month courses, some have two year courses.
• Many of them have a set of beliefs and techniques they're pretty glued to, which may not work for you.
• If you turn away a mediocre farrier, there's no guarantee you'll be able to find a better one.
• The most reliable farriers tend to be the busiest-- so they won't always take on new clients.
• As a layperson, it's sometimes hard to tell if they're doing a good job (though this guide can help).

Not that the client-farrier relationship is all one way; farriers often get beyond frustrated with clients for good reason (hilarious stuff in that there link, folks).

Rate My Horse PRO is a nice website for checking reviews of farriers and other horse professionals, but in my opinion it doesn't have the breadth it should have. Of all the Wisconsin farriers I have dealt with in the past or know of in the area, only one is listed there. Really, I should just do the free-sign-up-in-exchange-for-rating-five-professionals, but I'm pretty lazy, and I don't like to mess around with credit cards on the internet.

Anyway, I'm having a new farrier come out in a week or so-- wish me luck!