An Afternoon at the Finals

We spent yesterday afternoon and evening at the Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show at the WestWorld complex.

This is the huge tent that the 80+ vendors are housed in. You go through this tent past all the vendors to enter the main arena, the Ford Equidome --

A quick picture of The Recycled Spoon, the booth of our friends Dennis and Colleen (the goldish orange and blue vests are actually in the booth behind them). I wandered around and actually found an interesting (I hope!) present for our granddaughter's August birthday. We visited with our friends for a bit and bought another ring for our friend Juni's daughter, then went to see the horse show finals.

I'll make my apologies ahead of time. The reserved seat tickets were all sold out so we had to seek vantage points wherever we could. Most of these pictures are take from a LONG way away! This is an English Pleasure Hunter class. I must admit, I really do not like the wrapped tails! (This would be fox-hunting attire...)

This is another English Pleasure class with the riders in frock coats --

Look at the tails on these Arabians! (As they leave the ring, a handler immediately comes up behind them and ties the tail up in a loose knot...)

This lady is riding in a Western Sidesaddle class. What an uncomfortable looking way to ride to my contemporary eyes!

This class of Half-Arabian/Anglo-Arabian Park Horses was a real crowd-pleaser --

These horses do strut their stuff --

They push off from the rear, which gives the very high front action --

Beautiful animals! This is the only class that seemed to work up a sweat...

There were four entries in this Pleasure Driving Championship class.

The horses are pulling these little two-wheeled carts. Someone behind us remarked that these tend to be very dangerous and unstable rigs...

This is a portion of the Championship Hunter Pleasure class --

Another crowd favorite that I had been anxious to see. This is the Liberty class. The horse is turned loose for two minutes to show its stuff to music --

The handles have long rods with ribbons on the ends to guide and encourage the horse as it flies around the ring --

Once the music stops, the handler and the assistant have another two minutes to catch and re-halter the horse --

Talk about grace and beauty!

 

This horse and ride won Reserve Champion in the Western Pleasure class --

I had been looking forward to this class which was the Arabian Mounted Native Costume Championship --

Glitter, tassels and bling --

 

 

The champion!

Not sure how she got out of order, but another Ladies Western Sidesaddle entrant --

The last class we watched (that I didn't get any pictures of) was a class of yearling fillies. They billed it as "Stallion Auction Championship Classic Yearling Fillies." There were nine young fillies led in a halter for judging. The Champion received a $40,000 prize while the Reserve Champion took home $20,000 and each of the others $6800. There was no real explanation from the announcer about the connection with a Stallion Auction and no one around us seemed to know either. They were gorgeous young creatures, but sure wish I knew the rest of the story...