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California State Fair 2008

Peruvian Dancing Horses

Cavalcade of Horses 2008 ~ Linda Frankland

Friday, August 15th MUST have been the hottest day of the year! We were scheduled to perform our Musical Ride at 7:00 pm so we – as quickly as we could in that heat – got the horses settled and set up the tack room. Debbie Abrams had trailered in from Lodi and had Connie tucked in her stall by the time we arrived. Pooped and dripping, we dragged ourselves to our hotel Air conditioning was cranked up to the max and we flopped on our respective beds until show time.

Arriving at the fairgrounds it was still over 100 degrees. “Get a move on!” called Debbie “they’ve moved us to 6:00 pm!” Galvanized into action, teamwork got us tacked up, in our show clothes, and ready to go in time.

All the horses worked beautifully together and we pulled off a musical ride, which the crowd loved. Exiting to shouts and cheers is very gratifying after all the hard work we all put into practicing over and over again.

Following the musical ride, Luis gave a demonstration with Joven, of a young horse just starting his training as an enfrenadura horse. The crowd loved it and Luis and Karen were delighted with Joven’s demonstration of his agility and intelligence.

The final performance was with Luis riding Dennis’ stallion, Merengue who is also being trained by Luis as an enfrenadura horse. He is more advanced than Joven but not yet finished and, again, the crowd was highly entertained and showed their appreciation with their hands.

Saturday at 6:00 pm was thankfully a little cooler than Friday and we rode to packed bleachers and changed the program a little to keep everyone interested as well as demonstrate the horses’ versatility. Our musical ride was again greeted with gratifying enthusiasm and then Debbie did a solo champagne ride on Connie which the audience loved. Karen riding Joven, demonstrating her start as an enfrenadura rider and then came Dennis doing his own musical exercise performance with Merengue who seemed to have his fans in the audience. We all came back in for a barrida and were sent off with rousing applause

Sunday was our final performance and although we had all enjoyed performing, we were tired and looking forward to sleeping in our own beds. We felt sure the horses were of the same mind, even though they were all troopers – dealing with the heat, the hundreds of people passing by their stalls, and music into the night, with great aplomb. After leaving the arena on Sunday to the cheers of the audience, we packed up with amazing speed and set off for home, tired – but happy.