Mexican Rodeo, part one

Here are my photos from the Mexican Rodeo held Sunday afternoon at the National Western Stock Show in Denver, Colorado.

One of my main reasons for attending the Mexican Rodeo was to get a good look at all the Charro saddles. Unfortunately our seats were way up in the rafters on the wrong end of the very large arena. As a result, a lot of my pictures turned out really, really poorly. However, I did manage to take a few that are good enough to share.

The rodeo started with dancers and fireworks....
followed by the national anthems of Mexico and the United States.
Next up was this drill team of sidesaddle riders.

I had never been to a Mexican Rodeo before and didn't really know what to expect. It turns out that this particular rodeo was long on entertainment and short on actual competition. The only competitive events were bull riding, bareback bronc riding and mutton busting. The bull and bronc riding were similar to what you would see at a PRCA rodeo except that the bulls used were much smaller and the saddle bronc riders held on with two hands.

If you look carefully, you can see the two handed bareback rigging on the chestnut horse.

Luckily for us, most of the entertainment sections of the show were pretty good. These included trick riders...

and a Roman riding demonstration by Staci Diaz and her team of four grey Aztecas.

Another view. They did a little bit of jumping but I wasn't able to get a good picture of that.

Tommie Turvey and his horse Pokerjoe performed a comedy skit. This pair has also been featured at Breyerfest, and an Adios painted as Pokerjoe is part of Breyer's 2010 lineup. You can read about Tommie and Pokerjoe on Tommie's blog: http://equineextremist.blogspot.com/

The sidesaddle drill team came back for a second round of entertainment.

They were followed by the well known Charro, Jerry Diaz (http://charrojerrydiaz.com/)...

and his wife, Staci.

They both showed off several high school dressage movements (piaffe, passage) as well as Spanish Walk. Then Jerry switched horses and wowed the audience with his fancy rope tricks.

Their young son Nicolas also got in on the act.

One of the last events was bull fighting. The announcer made a big deal about how dangerous this bull was, but honestly, it wasn't all that visually impressive. I do like the matador's pink socks, though!

As the show wound down, all the horses and dancers came back into the arena.This is the Diaz family waving goodbye to the crowd as they made one last lap of the ring.

And that's it--the Mexican Rodeo was over. However, my coverage of it will go on for at least one more post. I still have tack pictures to share!

Sunday at the Stock Show

Yesterday I was spent a most wonderful afternoon at the National Western Stock Show with my friend and fellow model horse hobbyist, Teresa Buzzell.

We arrived at the National Western Complex still undecided as to whether we were going to watch the Mexican Rodeo or the Freestyle Reining. As it turned out, the decision was made for us. The reining was sold out, so Mexican Rodeo it was. Because we were feeling just a little bit cheated about not getting to see the Freestyle, we headed over to the Events Center first and spent some time in the barn area where the Freestyle horses were being prepared for their class.
This pretty palomino had bows in his mane...

and tail!

We left the barn area and headed over to the warmup ring. Some of the horses looked completely normal.

Others were all dressed up in their Freestyle attire.

Sparkle butt!

This horse's rider talked on his cell phone throughout their entire warmup!

Eventually we left the Event Center and spent some time walking through the trade show at the Hall of Education. You can buy nearly everything at the trade show--trucks and trailers, hot tubs and sleep number beds, candy and ShamWows... Not surprisingly, Teresa and I were most interested in the booths that had tack.

Happily for us, there was lots of tack to look at. This is a $10,000 Bob's Western Pleasure saddle.

A handmade bit.

Millions of reins!

There were also lots of Breyers. This is Teresa checking out the selection at the Running Creek booth.

Plush, poseable pony!

Of course I had to stop by the Brighton Feed booth and say hello to my old boss.

As the beginning of the Mexican Rodeo drew near, we headed over to the Coliseum. We passed a Llama and Alpaca show on the way.

And then, at last, we reached our destination.

Mexican Rodeo pictures coming tomorrow!

Where's Waldo?

Somewhere in this mess of skiving debris there is a keeper....(this happens a lot)

Stock Show!

Yay it's Stock Show time!

The one hundred and fourth edition of the National Western Stock Show opens today at the National Western Complex in Denver, Colorado. Although I've made plans to attend several events during the next fifteen days, yesterday I couldn't stand to wait for one more minute. I got the kids off to school and headed out to the showgrounds.

Once there, I headed over to the Stadium Arena which was where they were holding the pre-Stock Show Quarter Horse Show trail classes. As usual, I divided my time between the show ring and the small, crowded warm up area.
Tackmakers should always spend some time at the warm up ring. There is no better place to get a close up look at tack actually being used on a horse. It's also a great way to spot current trends. For example, it didn't take long to figure out that this particular crowd likes light oil, heavily tooled, silver trimmed saddles without breastplates. Oh, there were a few saddles that had less tooling and minimal silver, but for the most part, this was the standard look:
Bridles were just as consistent. Nearly everyone was using a silver trimmed, two ear headstall with a curb bit (even in the Junior horse class) and plain, unadorned split reins.
Neat ring and loop construction on this bridle.
Tear drop cheek pieces.
In the past when I've made one or two eared Western bridles, my ear pieces were built to fit like this:

Side view.
I realize now that I should be going smaller. Compare the earpieces on the buckskin to those on the grey...
or this chestnut, or pretty much every other bridle I've posted. The trend seems to be smaller is better. Honestly, I was surprised by how small some of those ear pieces really are!

Of course not quite everyone was using a two eared bridle. This chestnut's bridle had one ear piece which was looped over his right ear.
And this horse's bridle had a single strap headstall with no ear pieces at all!

Before I close, I want to remind everyone that there's a difference between out of fashion and incorrect. There is no rule that says your model Quarter Horse can't enter a trail class all decked out in a rawhide trimmed, browband bridle with matching breastplate and a dark oil saddle. That may not be the current showring trend, but if the tack fits and is legal for the event, it should not be penalized except (maybe) in the case of a tie breaker between two very evenly matched entries.

NAN Auction, take two

We've had a rethink on our NAN Auction donation. It appears there's already a Western sidesaddle set in the line-up, and the auction coordinator was concerned that two separate sidesaddle sets would be redundant. Jane and I agreed. We needed to think of something else. And then it came to me: How about a police horse in riot gear? These pictures were posted in a thread on Model Horse Blab a couple months back. I immediately copied them and saved them to my tack reference file.

I wasn't thinking about the NAN Auction at the time, but now it seems like a perfect fit. I can play to my strengths by building the set around an English saddle, but it's not going to be just another English set.

And look--I'll even be able to include a set of sports medicine boots--woo hoo!

So, now the research phase begins in earnest. We're looking for reference pictures.

Although we're primarily interested in mounted police with from the United States, we're not all that picky. At this stage anything and everything is helpful.

If you have any pictures to share, please send them my way!

Skid boots

Skid boots are designed to protect the back of a horse's fetlocks during hard stops. They are worn on the hind legs only and may be made from either leather or neoprene. This pair, made by Professional's Choice, is typical of the leather variety. Although no discipline mandates the use of skid boots, you would be hard pressed to find a reining horse or roping horse competing without them. They are also used on some barrel racers.

As with all boots, the buckles should go on the outside of the horse's leg and the strap ends should point to the back of the horse.

Helpful? Please let me know. If there's enough interest I will be sure to post more articles like this in the future.