Hi!
Recently we went to the Midwest Horse Fair again! It is always such a fun couple of days that I always look forward to! We’ve gone several times in a row now.
This year, because of the homeschool drama performances I was in, we only went on Saturday, versus the Friday and Saturday that we’ve been doing. Also, something in particular we were looking forward to this year was that Amber Marshall was going to be presenting! She plays the main character in one of the favorite shows of my mom, my siblings, and me: Heartland. I was soooo excited to see her!!!
I think it was very doable to do it all in one day. It was a big, long day but I had a lot of fun! We left relatively early in the morning but it wasn’t crazy. It was mainly hard because I had the second and last drama show the night before and we had our Grandparents over that night. But we got to the Fair around 10:00am and we, at least I was, able to do everything we wanted to do. We saw some good clinics, we got to walk around and see the horses, Ro and I each got some souvenirs and we saw a lot of neat stuff. I don’t think I would’ve needed the second day, other than just being able to see more clinics. I do regret not seeing the session from Elizabeth James because she seems very cool, she’s talked about as being an equine entrepreneur which got my attention and the actual session topic seemed super neat and interesting. We ended up going to the Grand March which I also always love.
We also enjoyed the liberty run, as usual! There was one black horse who was really into it, he kept running the entire time! It’s always so fun to watch. The Friesian was so beautiful, and the Shetland had this really funny, high-stepping gallop! The little Miniature horse was into it as well!
Mom let us each get a souvenir at the end and she bought for me a really neat, blue Midwest Horse Fair sweatshirt! It has a horse and rider silhouette on it and it’s super soft on the inside! I’m excited to wear it!
Overall, it was a very fun day! I loved spending time with Mom and Ro and we went to Pizza Ranch afterward which was fun! It’s been our tradition to go out to eat after, which is a treat and always makes it more special!
I’ll go into some more below.
What’s something you liked about it (and why)? I loved Amber Marshall’s session!!! It was a liberty demo with Dan James!! I was really excited about it, so were Mom and Ro, liberty is one of our favorite things to watch! Just seeing her in person was so amazing, she had such a fun, silly, positive, gracious and grateful personality. I know this shines through in her character but it’s true in real life too. I love how she’s not this sassy cowgirl or anything like that but she’s got such a genuine, kind personality that just emanates from her. I loved feeling this in real life, and she made lots of little jokes which were really fun! I also loved seeing her because I tend to geek out at seeing celebrities, as most people do. She was super humble, always putting the emphasis on the trainers like Dan James, and not giving herself enough credit because I know she’s very comfortable around horses too. She was very gracious about everything and was so grateful to be an ambassador of horses and inspire others to work with them. As my mom and I were saying later, she could be resentful because, as a celebrity, she can’t do many things. It was so cool to see that she doesn’t resent it but is actually very grateful for it! It was a good reminder in that it’s all in how you look at it. So I loved seeing her great personality.
I also loved the premise of the session- Dan James was there with his horses (which was my first time seeing a full session from him), Amber talked about the show, they demonstrated certain liberty moves that they’d use in the show and they reenacted some specific scenes, like the one when Amy gets struck in the head by a horse and temporarily goes blind. They had a camera that they projected up on the screens and they did it, between Dan giving cues to the horse, Amber pretend falling and the camera man getting it all at the right angle to look real (she was a safe distance away from Swampy). They did this for a few other scenes and examples. It was very cool to see how they did this, it’s not something you think about as you watch the show! It’s amazing how well the horses are trained too! Amber was very humble in showing that she didn’t always know what she was doing and let Dan help her know what to do. She did some other liberty things and an amazing rear and pivot on Vegemite! I loved all this because it was so neat, inspirational and powerful to watch. It was kind of surreal, seeing Amber Marshall, in real life, doing all these amazing things with horses!
Overall, it was so awesome! I’m so glad we were able to go and see her! They had to close the Coliseum at a certain point because it was at max capacity so I’m so glad that we got in. And we got pretty great seats! Her session was what I was most looking forward to and it was definitely the highlight of the day!
What’s something you disliked about it (and why)? I think this was the case last time but I didn’t always like figuring out what I wanted to go to. It’s kind of a nightmare because there’s so much and a lot of it overlaps times. There’s a lot of topics that sound interesting and feel like they’d be beneficial to me but I might make some of them into “shoulds.” And it’s kind of irritating having that pressure of Mom and Ro waiting to hear what I wanted to see throughout the day. There were a couple clinics that we went to that I thought would be helpful but weren’t what I thought, because they were coming from a different focus and discipline than I expected and the clinicians weren’t very engaging. So I disliked that too, it takes a while to get to the clinic in the first place because of all the people and by going you decide to miss out on everything else you could be doing at that time. Then when it’s not what you hoped, it’s disappointing and you don’t know if you should stay. At the one, I was with our friend that we met up with at the Fair, in the afternoon she went to go see that clinic with me so I would’ve felt bad to leave as soon as I wanted to.
I also didn’t like the sound system, at least in the Coliseum and the other Pavilion Arenas. I know that venue has had that problem before but it was really bad this year. It was extremely hard to hear the Grand March and the other clinics. So that was pretty annoying, it makes it a lot less interesting and you just zone out.
What was your biggest takeaway or lesson? My biggest takeaway was probably the experience of seeing Amber Marshall. But also, through that session and through the other stuff, just delighting in horses! I had been in the horse mood before we went but it was fun to keep it going and just delight in them, to be inspired by the liberty, the riding, the lateral work clinic I watched, the working equitation, all the different kinds of horses, the whole horse world and just horses in general! Even though I got burnt out with what I was doing at the barn, I still love horses. I knew this before the trip to the Midwest Horse Fair but it was still probably my biggest takeaway, to just delight in them.
In a different sense, there were a few lines from the lateral work clinic I watched with JJ Tate that stood out! Such as, “Teaching is repeating,” and you must do so positively and patiently, and, “Every touch teaches.” Also the idea that you want to help your horse, who is born crooked, to be ambidextrous, and that the point of dressage is to help them move straight, balanced and forward (I think balanced was one, there were three and I can’t remember if that one’s what she said!). These are all very profound, true and really got my attention!
What is something you’re curious to learn more about as a result of this experience? Liberty! It was so amazing watching Dan James and Amber Marshall work with Dan’s wonderfully trained horses, especially Swampy and Vegemite. It got me really interested in learning more about liberty. If I was still riding and working with horses right now I’d probably want to try some of that and just keep developing the bond between my horse and I! I can see myself going deeper into that if I have a horse of my own someday. It was so inspiring and cool to watch them. I loved all of the tricks and good training, of course, but also just the bond that Dan and Swampy have… how Swampy barely had a halter on for any of it, he just followed Dan wherever he went and kept paying attention for when he’d give him another cue. I’d love to have that connection with a horse, to have them follow you out of their own free will. And then to be able to teach them all of these neat things while still on that foundation of a good relationship. So, yes, I really enjoyed watching the liberty this year and I’m curious to learn more about it!
As always, the Midwest Horse Fair was so much fun and I always love spending that special time with my Mom and sister.
Thank you so much for reading!
Lucy
