Model Horse Show VLOG | Mission Mountain Missoula Live 2026

I am so exhausted. I filmed the entire unpack with me video and I am so tired today. I don't know, I've hit a wall. However, we are attending a second live show in a day. We decided super last minute to attend the Missoula bottle horse show. I've always wanted to go. It's been hosted several times and I've missed the date for that particular one multiple times. So we were just chatting about it. We felt like Let's Bitch was good. We really want to get my art in front of some new judges and have some different competition at play. Unfortunately, that means I now need to repack everything I've unpacked over the last three days. I'm going to boot up my laptop and we're going to reprep, but now I need to dig out all of the totes and redo everything. I promise I'll be excited. I just am feeling a little overwhelmed at the current moment, so I will keep you updated on how all of this goes down. Another early morning selfie. Packed all our stuff. I got it down to three totes this time and forced my husband to take that side for me. Said goodbye and then my mom showed up with her truck and we loaded everything in once again. We were both pretty tired. I mean I was exhausted. I got an idea. Let's go to Missoula. How tired are you? I'm not tired at all. Let's go! We went across the border. Made a stop at Target. TJ Maxx for this lobster burger. And of course, Hobby Lobby. How can you not? It's very exciting for us to travel into the U.S. because we don't often get to shop like this. So we're treating this trip a little bit like Briarfest between me and my mom. It's also Mother's Day weekend, so we have lots of fun perusing the stores. And we took basically 12 hours to get to Missoula, which is only a five hour drive, but it was well worth all of the stops that we made. I really wanted to buy this in Walmart. It was so cute, but it didn't fit quite right. And then we stumbled across an ice cream place, so we had to have some of that. And then headed our way to Missoula. And I have a truck avatar. Very cool. And then our last stop was Murdoch's, which is a tack and feed store. Clothing and giftware and horse related things. These giant stuffed animals, which were amazing, that it was a frog and a horse. Like what? Non sale. And then we found some briars, and I decided to get this braille racing horse because he was one that I'm after. So that's always fun to see in person briars. I'm glad I got one because there wasn't a lot of sale stuff at the actual show. And then we drove to Missoula, which we've never been that deep into Montana. And it was very, very pretty. Very similar mountain range to Canada. We met up with Mariah at the show hall to unload all of our stuff the night before. Her briar that she got to paint for the premiere club on a blanket, which was amazing. She brought me these little mini totes, which were so cute. Then we went for a nice dinner, huge salad and some pizza, back to the hotel to try and get a good night's sleep before the chaos ensued. Being that this was a one day show, we were up pretty early, ready to go, got our breakfast and arrived and unpacked everything in the morning. And the show didn't start till 930, so we had lots of time to get ready and sorted, which was great. Met lots of wonderful people and see some new art. And my horses were able to show in the custom division this time in a full class list so that it split up and actually has an opportunity to place well and get a rosette. Mariah's resins were kicking butt just like they did in Lethbridge. This briar did well for me because it was placed ribbon. And Ghost was my first horse out, and he got me the first and a champion, which is crazy because he never places. And the rest of the day was going really well. So lots of firsts, lots of seconds and champions. So there was Enigma getting one, and that was Mariah winning the champion of the resin division, which is crazy. This girl's undefeated in that category. The little goodie bags you see was a wonderful shower who would put one down for any horse that was outstanding on the table. It was such a sweet, kind gesture. I loved it so much. It was just really nice vibes overall during the day. Then we paused for lunch, had the rest of our pizza and got some ice cream, which was incredible, and then proceeded to show for the rest of the day. The show moved really quickly, so I don't have as much footage because it was just a hustle. So Denali got the champion, and Mariah's repainted Lipizzaner got the reserve champion in the Spanish division. That was awesome. More wonderful briars. It was funny to me, my albarozo was like the only one on the table, whereas in Canada it was all albarozos. So I guess all the albarozos are in Canada now. Fun fact. George got a champion, which he also did well in Lethbridge, which was cool. Horses proceeded to do super well. Here was Moscow going out for hopefully a better debut than his first run at the Lethbridge show. This is my mom's favorite class, so she gets very excited about these horses that she gets to keep in her china cabinet. My little fireheart kicked the booty in the stock class, which is crazy because that was a huge class. And the last class of the day was the fantasy division, which was a ton of incredible art. These little pegasus were crazy. Mariah's avatar horse was crazy, and Kai and Tallulah. So the judge had split it like four ways to even out the placings and just wanted to give everybody a ribbon because there was so much cool stuff on the table. Mariah's prize horse got the champion, and this was the customs callback table. So these are like mostly my horses with the champion rosettes there. Anything with blue is a champion, anything with red is a reserve. So my odds were looking pretty good. Here was the judge placing that overall champion and reserve. I was genuinely floored. I didn't expect to win both awards, but here we are. The judge also placed third, fourth, and fifth as kind of like a top five. So there was just way too much pretty art on the table, and it was really neat to see all the customs going head to head. So then the rest of the briar division continued. We started to pack things up, but there was an overall award at the end of the day for best in show. So this is where all of the overall grand champion and reserves come back at the end of the day, and it's a people's choice vote on who gets to win. So once this briar division was done, all the models moved to the far tables, and then everyone grabbed a pink ribbon and you got to vote on which model was your favorite at the end of the day. The stone winners from the day, the OF mini and briar, here were the customs and resin, as well as flexibility champion and reserve, and then also the performance champion and reserve. Grand champion this year is Briar Best in Show, and I got the champion best in show with Moscow. So how special to achieve this top prize, but to achieve it with one of my closest friends and inspirations. Here was the outcome of the day, and I cried. I didn't get it on camera, but I sobbed because this has been such a long journey. I've never received top prize. I've always kind of landed second best, and how special to do it with the piece that I made for my mom, and through her cancer diagnosis, and how special to achieve this with Mariah last minute as a spontaneous trip that we thought would be fun. Then we went for some celebratory ice cream. There happened to be a night market on the other side of the river. In Missoula, there's this weird thing where people surf on the break in the river, which is so cool. I wish I brought a wetsuit and a surfboard, like hello. So this was a whole Asian market that we wandered around for a little bit, but we mostly found ourselves gravitating to watching the surfers, and just enjoyed our last night together before we headed off home in the morning. So we stayed an extra night in the hotel, even though the show ended at a record-breaking 6 p.m., we both decided to stay an extra night just so that we weren't driving home in the dark. Feeling very satisfied with the outcome of the weekend. It was just good vibes overall. So doing two shows back-to-back is not recommended, but we had fun. My mom was judging me for having to stand on the inside of the truck because I'm too short to reach the windshield. So we headed home, we did stop at the antique market on the way back. This is lightning! I always wanted that one. How much? Six dollars. I found some briars that were extremely overpriced, but there was a ton of Beanie Babies, which was killing me. I wanted to buy all of them because they were like five dollars each. You got a frame with somebody. That is really special. And we continued to look through the rest of the thrift store. It's a really awesome one. There's also a really cool shop upstairs. Finger goats. And we ended up having lunch at this very American diner that offers milkshakes and burgers and fries, so how could you not? And we had one last stop at the toy store, which had the entire briar line. It was so awesome. So I managed to get a bunch of cool things. There was some mystery bags that we spent some time fondling in the store as well. I bought way too much stuff, so that'll be in the final haul. And then we stopped at a few more little gift shops just before heading out. Oh, we also stopped for cheese. Okay, we weren't gonna be bad, but instead we ended up with cheese and more. We had ice cream like way too many times on this trip, but it was so worth it. That's our thing. We do this all the time. We love ice cream, so Tillamook cheese too is amazing. So then we had to cross through the border to get back into Canada. Going both in and out of Canada, we had a really easy time. The security guards were really nice, but once we made it home, I then had to unpack everything. So I just went for it while I talked to my husband about the show, and I hope to reattend that particular show, but honestly, I feel like I can retire. I feel like that was such a good outcome. It feels like the end of an era, the end of a story, the end of a chapter, and I will be making a video on my journey through and how I was able to go from nobody to an overall Best in Show winner. So thank you so, so much for watching. Be sure to like this video and subscribe to my channel if you want to see more content like this, and I will see you guys in the next one.