Scottsdale Horse Show

My wife Sara spent the weekend at West World in Scottsdale (home of the Barrett- Jackson Auto Show :) showing her Arabian horse Kizzy, or Kizzard Lips as he is better known. His real name is TAL Kisz Thegirl, but that's way too long!

Sara has been showing horses in Dressage for most of her life. Dressage can be likened to ballet on horseback, but Sara jokes that for the spectator, it's about as fun as watching paint dry!

If you ever have a chance to watch it in the Olympics, you'll see that it is a beautiful and VERY challenging sport. The arena is marked with letters around the edges and the rider must memorize a specific pattern to ride along with cues to give the horse at certain points. The horse is highly trained to respond to the cues by changing his gait, and this is where the ballet part comes in. It is awesome to see the horse skip and cross-step almost as if they are dancing.

The rider's cues are supposed to be unnoticed by the judges, which helps in getting a higher score. You can see Sara in the clip below.