Busy Weekend

Well, this was an exciting weekend.  First, there was a horse clinic that Derek and his younger son Andrew attended.  It was a clinic on Western Horsemanship given by Bob Mayhew.  They took Elka and both of the other interns wih them, leaving me manning the fort all by myself.  The first time I stayed alone at the barn, I thought it was a coincidence that Bozo, the half spaniel half border collie, stayed close to me all day.  He did it again on Saturday.  I think he knows what a klutz I am and he's waiting for his opportunity to pull off a Lassie-esque rescue.

Sunday, the three of us interns went to a horse fair in Banaher.  That was an experience.  It was the first horse fair I've ever been to.  It was really sad and occationally scary.  The town closed it's main street and filled it with horses people were trying to sell.  It was pandemonium waiting to happen.  There were some horses that hadn't been handled almost at all in the middle of a packed crowd of horses and people moving around.  They all looked more or less taken care of, no starving or half dead nags, but some of them could have used a proper grooming.  Many of the foals were wandering without halters.  Some of the stories people told about their horses made us laugh.  One thing I noticed, everyone carried sticks.  They looked like walking sticks for the most part, but many of them were too skinny to actually be used as walking sticks.  These appeared to have two purposes.  The first, and apparently primary intended, use was to help direct the horses.  This could be either using it as a guide or as a form of rather forceful motivation.  However, about halfway through our tour, we found out the second use for the sticks.

We managed to find ourselves in the middle of a street brawl.  We were right there, but I still couldn't tell you what started it.  Some guy started singing and that got a group of men really really mad.  There was lots of shouting and the Garda were unable to keep the two groups (singer guy had friends) apart.  The second use for the sticks was demonstrated when two of the guys got within swinging distance of each other and each started to beat at the other with these ~3ft wooden canes.  During the chaos that ensued, some horses broke loose.  I think that more than anything was what finally ended the fight.  We were caught in the middle of these two groups and sought refuge along the side of the road, right along the back ends of the horses who were tied shoulder to shoulder along that section of road.  I'm just very grateful that they were calm horses who didn't start to panic when the shouting and running started.  We finished touring the fair and came back to the barn in time to finish the evening chores.