Polo rained out? No problem! You can have fun anyway. Here's how: dress one of your ponies up like a reindeer and crash the santa claus photo-shoot at the shopping center! Don't forget to bring a good sense of humor, candy canes and your muck bucket (I am happy to say that we didn't need to break out the shovel, but we were certainly prepared).
This was so much fun! So many kids, their parents and even Santa Claus were very excited to see a horse disguised as a reindeer at the event. Lots of smiles all around and we had a lot of free cider and eggnog from the other proprietors at the mall. Many thanks (again) to Toby and Bob, clearly the most intrepid and adventurous of the zero gravity crew. They took a thoroughly mud-caked Morocha and turned her into one of Santa's prettiest reindeer ever. She was a trooper too . . . dealing with a lot of traffic, a set of antlers velcroed to her bridle (the bell was promptly ripped off after it kept getting inside her ear which wasn't going over too well), a big wreath wired to her neck (loose pokey ends extracted from her neck after a second quick head-flinging tantrum alerted us to this situation - no worries, though, not much blood was lost). Then there was the traffic in the Ladera parking lot (always a treat even on a quiet day), millions of kids in line waiting for their turn with an incredibly patient Santa (local philanthropist Bill Lane), flying balloons, candy canes (who ever heard of a horse that like peppermint?) and of course the parents, who think it's a great idea to march over and thrust their little ones right up in front of a horse's head. I think this results in putting the kid off horses for the rest of their life after seeing that monster head with giant nostrils sniffing at them from a few inches away!
All in all it was a wonderful way to spend a rained out polo morning and we were extremely fortunate to catch Susan Ragan at the ranch who grabbed her fancy camera and came over to catch some of the action. THANK YOU SUSAN!
