First I would like to start this post with a solemn than you.
Thank you Veterans for your sacrifice and service. Our country is made stronger by you. You deserve more honors than we can bestow upon you.
And though this is more for Memorial Day, my thoughts always go to a high school friend
who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country to uphold our American ideals.
Now onto our parade! I joined the KCRC group on Saturday November 9th for the Colorado Springs Veteran's Day parade. There were 96 entrants and KCRC was dead last. So we did lots of waiting. We arrived early downtown. We had about 9 riders I think and then Loren and Julie's wagon pulled by the beautiful buckskin Angel.
I was signed up with Ann as a pooper scooper. In Monument Marie and I pushed a wheel barrow for the manure. In this parade....we had an ATV!!! Ann didn't want to drive it so I drove and she sat "side saddle" in order to jump off during the parade for clean up. Since I didn't have a horse to get ready I took pictures and helped Loren untangle the fringe on his horse wagon.
We gathered up and walked to the start of the parade and waited on a side street. We waited, and waited and waited. Horses pooped, Ann or I ran to clean up the pile. Our bucket was beginning to fill and we hadn't even started the parade yet! Angel was loving on her momma while we waited in the shade. Below she was trying to find a cookie that Julie just ate and Julie was saying "All gone!" The horses were a bit impatient just standing around so many of the riders walked them up and down the road.
We headed over to where the parade was passing by....not the official start but at least we could listen to the bands and see the motorcycle groups (wow there are so many!) drive by. The noise was loud and echoed downtown. The horses were great! Some were a bit irritated or scared but nothing major. One of the club members mentioned he doesn't bring his guy to the larger down town parades. His horse was freaked out by cars chasing him and revving their engines....so freaked out he backed up through the crowd. I can understand why he's not a fan of the larger parades.
I knew Dani would be freaking at the really loud sounds from the parade. She'd need a lot of work with desensitizing! There are parade sound CD's you can buy and lots of other exercises you can do to get your horse calmer and prepared for parades. The smaller town parades are where we'll start I think! For now I'm fine with being the pooper scooper. I'll eventually get Loki in the parade with a dog cart to haul the poop...perhaps over my Christmas vacation I'll work on that project!
The parade finally started for us...or I guess more accurately, finally finished with us. Ross and Laurie lead our group with our banner. Then Angel followed with a bunch of members in the carriage. Flags for all four branches of the Military were displayed, the American flag, Colorado flag, and our club flag. It was a great turn out! Of course I had the rear view as you can see above!
Below are photos from a parade watcher, thanks Robin!
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