Photo by Sabrina Pankratz Danika Jackels, a participant riding her horse in the 4-H Fun Horse Show on Friday.

SLAYTON — Madelyn Wendland of Balaton admits she is obsessed with horses and it showed during the 4-H Fun Horse Show on Friday during the Murray County Fair.

“I love horses. I’m obsessed with them, have been since I was born,” the recent Murray County Central graduate said after placing first in two events.

Wendland scored a time of 34 seconds in the one person rat race and a 11.56 seconds in the Texas Barrels.

“I love meeting the new people here who come to this horse event,” Wendland said.

She also said she’s been participating in 4-H for six or seven years and this show was just for fun.

“We get to see a lot of different areas of horses, like now we’ve got a couple pleasure horses doing some games events, Wendland said. “You learn a lot of fun leadership skills and kindness skills, which is awesome.”

Other participants like Brooke Christian participate just for the games part of the show.

“It’s a lot of fun to get your horse ready, the day is kinda long, but otherwise it’s pretty fun,” Christian said.

Christian finished third in the ring race, which required participants place a two rings on a cone and go around a barrel.

Organizer Cassandra Kleinjan, who owns Kleinjan Horse Training, helps the Murray County 4-H Horse Club train for the Horse Show on Tuesday.

“We practice every monday night, and then a lot of them have been every other wednesday night for extra practice,” Kleinjan said.

Kleinjan said the Fun Horse Show is just something different for the girls to do.

“I’m trying to do something different. So just a bunch of fun of activities for the girls to get out their horses out of the stales and to play around,” Kleinjan said.

Other events that were in the fun horse show were the bubble gum race where participants had a blow a bubble and get back on their horse as fast they could.

“My daughter has been riding since she was 2 years old,” Kleinjan said. “I love watching them succeed. They improve every year.”