The Kane County Fair Horse Show features vast array of equine disciplines to be mastered

The perennial Kane County Fair Horse Show took to the Car­roll Arena of the North Events Center at 10 a.m. Saturday morn­ing, August 2. A full schedule of categories ranging from Show­manship, Western Pleasure, Trail, Ranch Riding Barrels and Poles foretold a long, hot, breeze-blown and sometimes dusty day. However, these intrep­id equestrians’ hopes for an enjoyable outing were not to be denied.

Left to right, photos by Jerry Melrose:

• Chanley Iverson, trotting his Palomino “Mr. Sunshine.”

• Three generations of Utah Horse Culture surrounding Rosie the donkey awaiting her turn with Rylan Iverson handling the reins, and her mom Jessi alongside her mom, Gina Tullie.

• Jessi Iverson pacing “Horcasida” for the Walk Over the Bridge second obstacle in the Trail Pattern.

• Star-crossed sampling of Fredonia’s Stotlar family consisting here of (left-to-right): Shane with Roxy, Dune with Lollipop, Nadi with Gonny and Echo with Shikes. Their combined total of 23 rainbow assortment of ribbons awarded them $101 in cash prize money! When asked for the secret of their success, Shane said, “I guess they just keep trying! You can’t give up, right? They just get back on.” To which grandmother Sandra Robinson standing by added to everyone’s delight, “And grandma won’t let them quit!” Then, Shane’s rejoinder, “And grandma won’t let us quit!”

Hosted by noted local Best Friends ‘Horse Whisperer’ Ann Hep­worth, along with her husband Marty, this season’s gathering at­tracted three genera­tions of four different family groupings from well beyond the im­mediate vicinity of the Orderville rodeo grounds.

As Ann afterwards described, “We had a really great show! It was a really fun day. We had people come that have never come before. We’ve had people come from far and wide who seemed really excited and had a really fun time at the show. This Horse Show for the County Fair has been going on for a long, long time. I remember Darlynn Sorensen saying that he used to come up here with his dad when he was a little kid. I don’t know how long it’s been with the fair, but it’s been a long time and it’s nice to keep this tradition going.

“This year we tried a couple fun new things. Instead of having High Point Awards and Tro­phy Classes, we hand­ed out money. We call them Bronco Bucks with a ribbon. If they got a first-place, they got six Bronco Bucks; and if they got sixth-place, then they got one. There was a whole range of money that they could earn with their ribbon, and they got to come and shop at the store for prizes.

The more Classes that they entered, the more Bronco Bucks that they earned, and everybody seemed to think that was really fun!

“It’s not a normal thing that most people do at horse shows. It’s something we decided to try this year for a little bit of a change-up, and I think it was successful, and I’ll probably do it again. This is a very fun, low-key kind of show. Everybody’s really nice to each other here. When they meet people that they’ve never met before, they’ve come to learn their names, and by the end of the show root for them and tell them that they’ve done a great job! And I really love that about it. It’s so low-key and no-pressure. It’s not super competitive. But we have people come and do a good job, and we really have a good time. And we just want it to be a fun, supportive family atmosphere.”