Horsey Haven Haflingers and Friends at the 2024 Western States Horse Expo!

June 7-9, 2024  Laura’s Horsey Haven Haflingers (Honey, Sue, Roman, and Lacey) joined up with fellow Haflingers, Holly and Lady Bug, to represent their breed in a driving demonstration.  As driving enthusiasts, this was a wonderful opportunity for us all to gather together as friends & family, drivers, headers, and all around helpers to have a great time promoting Haflingers. This is definitely the longest video I’ve ever strung together but is like a home movie so all the participants can remember this fun adventure we had together.

The video quality of my Sony camera is better but the iPhone is more convenient and faster to edit so it was the easy way to go and won out this time - again.

The first scene is when we arrived Friday morning at the Rancho Murietta Equestrian Center and walked through the main gate. We went between a beautiful lineup of horses and riders who would perform a fantastic musical ride during the Mane Event on Saturday.

The next string of clips is later Friday morning. After washing the horses we walked them through the Rancho Murietta horse Expo grounds on a practice run to the arena where we would drive them later that afternoon.

The next string of clips are from Judy’s iPhone during the Saturday morning driving demonstration.

The longest video sequence is from the Sunday performance and I added zither music throughout because many Haflingers, including Sue and Honey, are descended from Haflingers bred in Austria. On Sunday I couldn’t get there early enough to drive Honey so it was a great opportunity for me to go into my paparazzi / video mode to record all of the the fun and camaraderie from beginning to end: grooming the horses, harnessing, hitching, parade to the arena, driving exhibition, and parade back to the barn. Finally unhitching, unharnessing, bathing the horses, and then returning them to their stalls.

We all certainly had a wonderful time at Horse Expo. Even though it is a lot of work, it is fun to do together; we love our driving horses - and are already excited to be anticipating next year; and we have 12 months to prepare!