Region 10 Conference Report

REGION 10 2006 CONFERENCE REPORT

            What a great time everyone had at the Region 10 Conference that was held at the Santa Fe Horse Park in Santa Fe, New Mexico from June 16-18^th, 2006.  I have attached pictures of some presenters, crowds, the park, and the Petite Elite performance.   As you can see in the pictures, the horse park is beautiful with a lot of show barns, outside stalls, inside arenas and, of course, many beautiful horses of all sizes and types.  Being horsey people, we all got our “fix” of gazing at the horses in motion.  In fact, I did see a few people drooling (me being one of them) over the gorgeous setting and magnificent horses.

            The attendance was over whelming.  We had 71 attendees, 9 extra paying lunch guests, 11 extra non-paying lunch guests - which gave us a total of 91 people.  We had a lot of nice items donated for our Silent Auction table and we made $156.00 (plus some outstanding) for Region 10.  NARHA had supplied Region 10 with NARHA bracelets and NARHA blank note cards to sell and we earned $95.00 from those sales.  A complete financial report will be available at the Region 10 meeting at the November NARHA National Conference.  Thanks for the support, attendees!

            It was fun to watch a polo match on the green grass of a polo field while being shaded by a big tent and enjoying a delicious buffet lunch.  The only things missing were the big hats the ladies always wore at the matches and the striped coats of the gentlemen.  Of course, they might not have gone with everyone’s Levis, shorts and capris.  By the way, wasn’t that avocado dip delicious!

            The Petite Elite Drill Team composed of miniature horses and AZ Miniature Horse Assn. members gave a spell binding performance in (almost) perfect precision form.  (Of course, you could say I’m a little prejudiced because I happen to be on the team.)  The audience gave us great reviews and after the performance, many people enjoyed taking a turn at either driving, riding in the cart, and/or taking a mini through an obstacle course.  I do think those minis won over a great many hearts.  I also know that Dale Brown, NARHA Board Member, took over driving Coughdrop, my little mini, and Peebles Turbeville, another NARHA Board Member, and I didn’t think he was ever coming back to us.  Dale drove him around and around and around and all the time, kept his thumbs in the up position.  I had told him to hold the reins like “ice cream cones” and he took me quite literally.

            We all learned a lot from the great presentations and we had good selection of sessions to choose to attend.  In fact, I heard some comments that people wanted to attend everything and had a hard time making a choice of which session to go to.  Because of the overwhelming success of attendance, we had to move things around and hold the sessions in the show barn and the arena.  Everyone pitched in helped move chairs and tables when needed.  We all got pretty good at dodging the pigeon droppings and the swooping of the swallows who were trying to eat as many flies as they could in the barn. 

            I would like to thank the following people for volunteering their time and effort in helping to make our conference a great success.

Nina Turley – who gave the First Aid and CPR course.
Mary Gwinner – who gave the CAT course.
Gregg Goodman – who presented “Planning a Sensory Trail.
Michele LaFleur – who took over for Jacqueline Tiley and presented “Disabilities 101”
and who also presented “Designing a Lesson”.
Ann Clemson – who talked on Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy and Equine Assisted Learning.
Christina Savitsky – who demonstrated and made “Your Very Own Plastic Horse”.
Melanie Tidman – who talked on “How to Create and Run Your Fee-for Service” as well as gave a presentation on “Selection and Training of the Riding Horse”.
Jann Goodman – who presented Hippotherapy and the Down’s Syndrome Patient.
Melissa Shandley – who talked about “Weaving Expressive Art and Equine Guided Education.
Petite Elite Drill Team – who came up from AZ and gave a Drill Team Performance and on-hands demonstration of minis with obstacles and driving.
Pebbles Turbeville – who presented “The Community Alphabet” with the help of Vanna – better known as Dale Brown.
Dale Brown – who gave us an update on NARHA and the direction where they are going.
Max Roundtree – our guest speaker who spoke on “Being an Adult Rider in a Therapeutic riding class.
Pippin Warfield-Hine and Christina Savitsky from the Equistars Therapy Riding Center for donating the use of their center and their hospitality and help.
Santa Fe Equistars students – who came and volunteered to ride in one presentation.
David, Santa Fe Horse Park Mgr. – who made our “behind the scenes” run so perfectly – always with a smile and was always there.
Marla – the owner of The Santa Fe Horse Park who donated the use of the Park for all of our activities and everyone else that I might have missed.

I made the announcement at the conference about my decision to retire from the Region 10 Rep position.  There are times when we have to move on to other things and this is one of my times.  My heart will always be in NARHA and the therapeutic riding field but I feel that this position of Region Rep needs to go to a younger person who is still directly connected to this field.  I found that person in Michele LaFleur who has taken on the Region Rep position for the rest of my tenure – November 2006.  Michele brings a vast amount of experience to this position and I know all of Region 10 will benefit from it.   I would like to thank her from taking on this task and also like to take this time to thank everyone in Region 10 for supporting me these past 3 years.  Remember, this is the year to elect a new Region 10 Rep and the ballots will be coming out later this year.  Michele will be on the ballot as well as anyone else who is interested.  Vote – it is important because that position represents you – the members.

It’s been fun!!

Submitted by Shirlee E. Callahan