“I think I’ve made friends with the mare. She’s green, but she’s got a big, ‘ole stride and you can count it easily. She seems to have a big heart, and she’s not high energy.”

“I think she’s one of the most fun Halter horses I’ve ever gotten to show. She stands like a statue. I only set her up once in that class, and she stood the whole time.”

“It was a ride I will never forget. I’ve always searched for the next horse that could feel like him, and be like him, and I never have. He’s one-of-a-kind.”

After Blythe completed her patterns with both horses, she had to wait to see how she would end up in the final placings. “Nobody would tell me what score I got, so I went in there and I had no idea!”

“The reason why I was so desperate to find a horse is that I lost my dad to a brain tumor; I lost my mom to an accident; and I lost my middle child, Justin, in a car accident. He was two miles from my house, and it was four months before his wedding. I was desperate for a distraction.”

The show, held in Scottsdale October 6-9, 2016, saw an astonishing increase of nearly 2,000 entries over the prior year.