The Royal Alpaca Challenge was a great time this year. We loaded up our alpacas Angelia, Juliet, Cristo, and Randy plus Blizzard from Stone's Throw Alpacas and Serafina owned by Helen Price. They were all very well-behaved and excited about the roadtrip.
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| Cristo |
We arrived and checked in with only a couple of small microchip "glitches". Cristo's chip went missing and had to be replaced and Juliet's paperwork had the wrong number on it. Nothing we couldn't handle! Yeah!
As Magnolia Sponsors this year we were stalled on the end of the barn nearest the arena so we didn't have to walk far and also had good exposure of our stall display to visitors.
We swept out our stalls, lay out our stallmats, brought in the hay and water, then unloaded the alpacas from the trailer. They were quite happy to be out of the cramped trailer, but not too sure of their surroundings. They were just glad to be with (part of) their herd so they followed us without question into the appropriate stalls. It was dinner time for them so we removed their halters, fed them and left them alone while we unloaded and set up the stall display.
After that, it was off to the hotel for a little well-deserved rest. We could have stayed around the arena for the sponsor party but our son Brian was with us and he's not much for adult parties.
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| Angelia |
Saturday morning dawned bright and early and we were all ready to go. The exhibitor's mandatory meeting proved to be very chilly and the metal roof over the arena dripped condensation on our heads as the sun heated it. The judges were introduced, Canadian Kathy Merkley for the suris and from the UK Nick Harrington-Smith for the huacayas. I thought it was great to have some fresh faces (and opinions!) in the ring.
Basic instructions were given and we were dismissed to get ready for the show to start. Production classes were to show first so we had quite a bit of time to wait.
When all the animals were finally shown we ended up with some nice ribbons. Angelia placed 1st in her class, Juliet got 4th, Cristo was 1st, Randy placed 5th, Blizzard and Wendy brought home 6th, and Serafina won 1st. Angelia also won a blue ribbon in Performance with Brian leading her for his very first time in the ring. We're so proud of all of them (and us)! A good time was had by all.
