Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Amanda Bailey's Journey to Dressage at Devon - In Her Own Words

The Long and Rainy Road

I had made plans to overnight Saturday night in Ohio and Sunday night at Hilltop Farm in Maryland. It rained and rained and rained some more on Saturday. I felt like Charlie Brown with his little gray cloud following him around everywhere he went. What should have been an eight hour drive from home is Jonesboro, Arkansas, to my overnight destination, turned into over ten because of the unrelenting rain. I pulled into the farm at about 6 pm local time. As I pulled up I came upon what I thought was a booth where somebody was waiting to check health papers. Instead, it turned out to be a ticket stand for the music festival that was taking place there that whole weekend.

The guy at the ticket counter made the executive decision to put me in a stall that was as far away from the action as possible. I had to wait what seemed like forever for a stall assignment, and then they were surprised to hear that I might want shavings in the stall. After about 1/2 an hour sitting on the trailer, I finally unloaded Faulkner. I walked him around and let him eat grass for about another half hour before I was accosted by a group of obviously inebriated individuals who seemed innocent enough to begin with and wanted to "pet the horsey." In short order the petting turned into crude comments from them who had obviously never seen a male horse up close.

I immediately left the scene and put him in his stall, fed him and left. I felt horrible leaving him in such an unsettled environment. There was music blasting and people milling around. I did not sleep well that night and got up very early the next morning to get him on the road as early as possible. When I got there, he had obviously not rested well either. He trashed his stall pacing, had not eaten his dinner, and drank very little water. I left the farm before dawn.