a horse show with Kim

I lived just outside of Vancouver in a place called Cloverdale for about 4 or 5 years. The place that I was at had a board facility at the end of the driveway where I boarded Murphy and Indy and I became fast friends with one of the other boarders there that had 2 Arabian horses. We rode together, joked together, helped each other out when we weren't able to feed our own horses (which was very rarely), and generally became pretty good friends. One day she asked me if I wanted to go over to the local arena and watch the Arabian Regional show, and of course I said sure. We went over in the morning and watched way more halter classes than I care to admit (a halter class is when you lead your horse in to the show ring and it is judged on how well built it is). I've shown Quarter Horses at halter before so I had some idea of what was going on but had never seen anything like this! With a QH, you stand at the in gate, wait for the judge to ask you to walk your horse forward and as you get to him (or her) you're told to trot your horse away, find a place in line and stand him up square. Well, in the Arabic world things are fairly different. To start with, the handler slaps the horse across the chest a few times with his crop outside of the ring to 'wake him up'. Ol' horse's eyeball's 'bout jump out of his head and his ears come forward like 'what the heck was that for?'. Then the parade begins. The first horse goes in at a long (very fast) trot, the second horse, suitably awakened, goes after him, and so on, all of them with eyeballs popping out of their heads and nostrils extended. One of the horses was being shown by a man who was obviously new to the game, as his horse broke (out of the trot and in to a lope) and started going in circles around him. When he finally got him stopped everyone else was already lined up and 'stacking' their horse (see picture). This guy finally got his horse stacked and started his 'lion tamer' routine. He stood back as far as his lead shank would allow and kept flicking his whip at his horse like it was going to attack at any moment. Kim and I giggled over that most of the morning. Did he win? Not a hope in hell, but was worth the price of admission!