Day 5: Chelsea finally makes it!

Tuesday morning we were all feeling a little sleepy from our previous night's adventures.  However, we woke up still prepared to present.

Dr. White and Holly preparing to teach Basic Nutrition

We started with Nutrition, given by Holly and Dr. White, followed with Exercise Physiology given by Brenda and Frankie.  Today we learned more about how they take care of their horses and the types of feedstuffs available in Paraguay.

Brenda and Frankie teaching Exercise Physiology

We were most surprised to find out that they don't keep water in their horses stall when they are at the horse show. Instead, they take their horses out of the stall 3 times a day to drink out of a bucket near the wash rack. Next we saw that they gather fresh cut grass, which is very marsh looking, with long runners and sparsely placed blades of grass.

How much work it must be to cut all those long runners of grass, bag them up, and haul them hours to the horse show at the expo! They also have alfalfa and several other species of grass hay. When talking about feedstuffs for concentrate rations, Giovana asked about coconut oil byproducts for horse feed. Since we were unfamiliar with that particular feedstuff, Dr. White had to look it up and talk with her about it later. It was a great opportunity to meet with a new friend and continue to learn and share about horses and better ways to manage them. When talking about exercise physiology, there was a lot of interest in different training programs for speed event horse, reining horses, pleasure, and other show horses. Brenda explained biphase breathing and to get everyone involved, she passed out a rubber band and had a fun exercise, that included a lot of deep breaths and exhales, stretching the rubber band, and very little translating.

Dr. White demonstrating biphase breathing with the rubber rubberband

Again, thanks to Kenny things went very smoothly even though the majority of the group doesn't speak english.   We finished right after noon and once again headed off to lunch at another fabulous restaurant.  This time, we ate barbecue.  Surprise, surprise!!  After eating an assortment of meat again, some of us ventured out into some delicious lasagna, spaghetti and ribs.  Again, all the food was amazing.  From lunch we proceeded to a horse farm which focused primarily on jumping, dressage and polo.   Pause for a moment...we have another hilarious Marcelo story from the drive over.  A window washer approached the truck (keeping in mind Marcelo hates them) and as Marcelo vigorously shook his hand at him in disapproval, he proceeded to wash his windows anyway.

Marcelo's truck getting washed

Angry that the man actually made the windows more dirty instead of clean, Marcelo refused to pay and used his own windshield wiper fluid to clean off the mans job.  The man then hit Marcelo's truck as he walked off.  Marcelo says, " They are like Mosquitos in the summer time, you can't get rid of them, but you want to".  Oh Marcelo!

Christopher's truck getting washed

At the horse farm, Frankie, our jumper in the group, was in heaven.  We thought it was possible she wouldn't get back in the car.  After being shown around the facility, we got the chance to ride a horse at the farm. For some of us ( Abby and Holly) it was their first time riding an English saddle.

Frankie riding

Hannah riding

Deanna riding

Abby riding

Lyndi riding

Holly also met Marcelo's friend, William, that was practicing polo in the neighboring field and allowed her to ride his horse and learn how to play. She was very excited to have such an opportunity. How fun!

Holly and William 

There was a beautiful show jumping arena, complete with a permanent water jump, and grassy multi-level hill near the center with several railroad tie jumps.

After taking lots of pictures and enjoying the experience we took off for the hotel.  As Marcelo, Dr. White and Lyndi went to pick up Chelsea from the airport, the rest of us took yet another nap before our night time barbecue.   Chelsea's airport adventures were a great story when she arrived. Here, they eat dinner very late and it is a very long process!  Marcelo picked us up around 8:30 and we headed back to the expo for the barbecue.  Here we got to see Chelsea react to all the things we've all become familiar with.  It was fun to watch her enjoy it so much.  The food was phenomenal as usual and around 11 pm  we took off for some shut eye for another early morning. See you for tomorrow's adventures! NMSU Aggies in Paraguay