Rob, Ginger and I spent Sunday at the Darwell Fair, in Darwell Alberta. What a fun show/fair!

I was judging and Rob and Ginger were there for a day away from the farm. Rob's family also came out to see some of the show as they had been camping nearby.

It was an early start to the day with us leaving at 6:30, and we didn't get home until close to 8pm, so many thanks to Christine and Jessie who looked after the farm in our absence.

The show should have been done earlier, but we had to break at 2:30 to allow the heavy horse pull to take place; that was cool to see! I think they got to 8500 lbs! Lots of teams competed; mostly Belgians and Percherons, but there was a team of HUGE Fjord/QH crosses there that did very well.

As well as the horse show, there was a cow show going on; hearing mooing all day was interesting. They also had face painting, an impromptu water park (thanks to the volunteer fire department), and some other games going on. Definitely a fun day out for a family.

The show itself was pretty good. Class sizes were decent enough, and the people running the show were a lot of fun and did a great job. The riders represented a variety of skill levels and brought an assortment of horses, which made things interesting and fun. I wish we had fairs like that locally.

This week in lessons, riders who are planning to show dressage next weekend can practice their tests. They still have stalls available, so if you are wanting to come, please let me know!

For jumping and flat work we are going to continue to work on getting the horses to listen between jumps with lots of transitions. I think I may even add some leg yielding to the course this week to keep it interesting and to make sure riders are still using their legs while negotiating the course. It sounds like rain is expected for most of the week, so likely riding inside again for lessons.

Karen