On the 4th of July I always take a moment to remember Dude and Bestie's inauspicious participation in the local 4th of July parade. It's been a couple of years now. We were told by my co-leader in 4H, "Oh, do it! It's a lot of fun! Willow (her daughter's horse) has done it with Molly for years!" So we get to the barn early and get them all cleaned up. The girls have their show clothes on. The plan was to have the two Western riders flanking Mads on Bestie. Well, Dude never even made it to the intersection of the main road with the road the barn is on. He took one look at the hordes of people with BALLOONS, and STROLLERS, and STREAMERS and started spinning and backing. Katie did her best to urge him forward, but he was having NOTHING to do with it and made a total spectacle of himself. It was like a side show for all the people lined up waiting for the parade. He went back to the barn.
Bestie and Willow went on down to the staging area. Everything was ok. Bestie was sort of taking the measure of all the activity, but she was fine. Amazing, considering there were bands on floats, people in costumes on floats, people waving banners, kids tearing around, a loudspeaker that would crackle and pop ... you get the picture. In retrospect, I truly think that everything would've been fine except that we were camped out in the staging area for a REALLY LONG TIME. The temperature kept climbing, and once Maddie started to sweat, she got cranky. Then Bestie got cranky.
When we finally started to move, it was at a snail's pace. Not a horse's pace. I could tell it was excruciating for Bestie not to be able to step out. Once we got on the main road, it became pretty clear that she wasn't going to be able to last through the whole route. We decided that Maddie and Bestie would peel off once we got to the turn for our road, not that far away. I could see that she was making a huge effort to keep herself together. Maddie was patting her and trying to keep her calm, but it was only a matter of time before it all fell apart.
Right as we got to our road, where we'd decided to turn off, all hell broke loose. A guy dressed in a Chewbacca costume on the float ahead of us jumped off and started throwing candy. As if that weren't enough, he came up along Bestie in his furry suit, and started throwing the candy under her belly to the people on the other side of the road. That was it. Bestie's eyes rolled, she started prancing, and Maddie turned her to get her onto the side road. But there were people in lawn chairs blocking the road. I think I went a little bit crazy. I started yelling, "Move your chairs! Horse coming through!" like a nut, over and over. They all moved, pretty darn quick. Maddie trotted Bestie through the break in the crowd and back they went to the barn. I watched them trotting down the road and felt drained. Sometimes you have to apologize to your horse and this was definitely one of those times.
The next day I opened the newspaper fearfully, expecting a photo with the caption "Mad woman terrifies parade goers." But no. Thank goodness. Now every 4th, we're like, "Remember the parade?"
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