I did not take any dogs along and while I missed them desperately they were better off at home. There were dogs there- Cattle dogs, Corgis, a Swiss Mountain dog, a long-haired Chihuahua, an alpha male Doberman I wouldn't have messed with (this is a story I will tell another time.): and ONE BASSET HOUND named--FLASH! Flash loved everyone, of course, but was kept well away from being underfoot. Some of the other dogs were probably horse-savvy but the first day we were there a cattle dog pup got his paw stepped on by a horse that probably weighed close to a ton. It was not a good place for a city dog.
Horses. Let me tell you!! These were all Percherons, black as coal or Dappled greys very few brown, almost none.
This is how big the medium sized horses are. Look at his feet. I would walk through the barn and put my foot inside, completely, one hoofprint. The shoes they wear differ wildly, and I do not know enough to write about it. The horses who are used primarily in hitches have one kind, those with other jobs have different shoes. Farm horses have yet another kind. There were farm demonstrations, but the one I really wanted to see I forgot--it was last night and when we left, after the 8 hitch classes, it was already 10pm.
This is already a long blog. But I want to say that I was there as a volunteer and we were up at 4:30 every morning and at the Hospitality Room by 6, Susie Spry and I.(There were many other volunteers, all over and helping in hospitality, but Susie and I opened the room every day and closed it down. ) By 6:45 the room was packed with horsepeople, who had already walked, watered and fed the horses, and those first two days it was FREEZING-- the wind whipping across the prairies from wherever and the temps plummeting. When I left home at 5 in the morning on Tues it was 71. When I got to Des Moines about noon, having battled winds that sent semis skittering across I-80 and rain, it was about 40, not counting windchill. People were ready for coffee! We closed the room at 3pm each day but I bailed and did a lot of photography.
The real bathing room was
just inside the barn doors, altho there were three barns full of these horses. This grey is fairly small but not infrequently you saw grown men standing on kitchen ladders or stools to reach the tops of the horses backs, and their heads. One time, walking through the barn I saw a gelding chewing on the overhead stall beam. He was that tall.
ps. If you hate horses, skip the next few blogs.
