Desensitizing party

There's always a little bit of community drama in the days and weeks leading up to BreyerFest, but the last twenty four hours have been exceptional, even by model horse hobby standards. Although I am not attending this year's event, some of the kerfuffle has hit close to home. It's been stressful, so instead of featuring more BreyerFest Contest entries today, I'm going to share some photos that make me really happy.

This past Sunday, we had a Summer Potluck and Desensitizing Party at our barn.

The outdoor arena was transformed into a spooky horse's worst nightmare.

Maggie and Cheri, Fortunataa and Laura

There were balls,

Saphira and Reece

bells,

Kourvy and Taylor

buckets...

Roy and Karen

and bubblewrap.

Letty and Taylor

The horses were asked to walk over tarps 

Gambler and Linda

and through multiple obstacles, including a tent,

Guaranteed and Diana

a maze of flags and pinwheels,

Kia and Greg

an aisle of tinsel and more pinwheels...

Gandalf and Pam

and everyone's favorite, the pool noodles.

Psyclone and Reece

Lol. These were not actually everyone's favorite.

Judge and Reece with Olaf looking on

Other's challenges included two photo backdrops,

Dango

a variety of blow up toys,

Olive and Jennifer

a pair of very small jumps,

Ernie and JoAnna

a windsock...

Greg and Mister

and a large umbrella.

The party mailer read: This will be a fun day to let your horse explore new things that they might not normally see. Your horse might walk right up to some toys and not to others. That is okay. Work with the horse your have and please don't compare your horse to others (sometimes that is easier said than done).

I laughed when I read that. I was fully expecting Olive to be the worst horse there.

She wasn't.

Muscatella and Taylor

Not even close.

Judge

In fact, she was completely unbothered by the jumps and the bells. She wasn't thrilled with the balls, but she did let me touch her with them.

Ditto the shark.

She walked through the flags, the tinsel walk through and the noodles.

She went in the tent.

I tried to convince her that she would really like the bucket if she just gave it a chance.

She remained unconvinced.

Similarly, we settled for close to but not touching with the tarp, the bubblewrap...

and the windsock.

Since we do actually see people with umbrellas on the trail, we spent a lot of time on that obstacle.

Olive was suspicious, but she didn't run backwards and her feet stayed on the ground.

That's a win in my book!

This was such a fun party.

I am so proud of my brave, little pony.