Equine Affaire, and a sad loss.

I'll start with the loss: My aunt made the hard decision to put down her old mare Anna on Parade yesterday. Anna was 26, and had been slowly declining for about three months. As of last week something was very wrong with her hip, and although she was bright and alert, the choice was made to let her go because she was in pain. Anna, on top of having been a very nice Park mare in her younger years, was the mother of Heiress on Parade/Frankie (who we lost to colic a few years ago), and Radiant Roy, our somewhat infamous one-eyed pony. She will be missed.



On a much happier note, Duke and I participated in this year's Equine Affaire this past weekend, both in the breed demo and the petting stall. Duke was a hit in the petting stall, partially because he's big and white and sweet, and partially because he's a mooch for peppermints! In the breed demo we demonstrated In Hand, showing off his conformation. I wish I could have had a tailer, because without one Du' doesn't get very flashy, but we didn't want to give people the impression that Saddlebreds are so crazy that they need two handlers.

Kristi Pike (a friend and fellow AOT) was kind enough to take some pictures using my camera. She's not familiar with DSLR's so I made sure to turn on the Auto-focus and the Vibration Reduction features, but stupid here forgot to increase the shutter speed which means that almost everything is too blurry! This picture from the end turned out pretty well though, although I wish his ears were up!