Vendor Row at Willow Tree
Spent a fun day the Saturday after Thanksgiving at Willow Tree Equestrian Center’s horse seminar, tack sale, and breed demo. As you can see, the interior of the barn has super-wide aisles–enough for a row of vendor spaces on both sides. The horses were mostly out in the pastures for the day, so we didn’t get in each other’s way. I received a lot of interest in my portraits in just this one day–more than I received at some two-day horse shows last summer! There were lots of Western types here too, as is obvious from the photo. They were a very friendly bunch, a lot more willing to stop and talk than most people are when they’re busy competing at a horse show. I was the lucky winner of a Nutrena cap and t-shirt at the nutrition seminar. As an avid reader of Equus (a horse magazine geared toward horse care and medical issues) I have a lot of horse trivia floating around in my brain. I was the only one who knew that forage remains in a horse’s stomach for only about 15-20 minutes before moving along to the next portion of the digestive tract. Score one t-shirt. Someone in the audience asked a question about tying up (a muscular condition in some horses) and the presenter asked if anybody knew what it was. I launched into my 5-minute lecture on tying up and scored the baseball cap. It helped that I had gone through this particular horse nightmare twice with my own horse, so I was somewhat of an expert. A good time was had by all, I met a lot of nice people, and even had a chance to pitch another free portrait to the gal at the humane society table next to mine. We’ll see what happens!
