Sep

22

Fantastico

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Hopefully you read my last entry and guessed that I went to the Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration.

My dad and I journeyed down to Tennessee where we had a hell of a time. We met fantastic people, got to watch the best horse show on Earth, enjoyed some good ol’ Southern food, and did I mention the horse show? The best of the Tennessee Walking Horse breed come to compete for World Championship and World Grand Championship honors over the 10 days on the Celebration.

We only went for the final 3 days, when the World Grand Champions are crowned, but next time we’re going to need a few more days to fit everything in.

No doubt about it, the final class, aka the Big Stake, is the culmination of the whole event. Over 20,000 people attended the show that night to cheer for their favorites. And cheer we did!

This video is of the entrances by the contenders for the Big Stake — 11 horses were eligible to show and 11 answered the gate call. They are announced one-by-one as they come into the ring and it is pretty clear to see who the favorites are. My cheers went for the mare, Victoria’s Secret. She got reserve in the class, though I maintain that she probably deserved 1st (and a couple of the judges agreed with me). Listen to the crowd when her name is announced!

Sep

11

Guess Where I Went!

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Hint1: It is the greatest horse show in the world.
Hint2: It is in Tennessee.
Hint3: On the final night, over 20,000 people gather to scream for their favorite contenders.



(Click thumbnail for larger view.)

Mar

2

Fun with Arabians!

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This rather horrific video is from a regional Arabian show a number of years ago. The clip is 6 minutes, 47 seconds long which means that I walked into the arena at about 7 minutes, 15 seconds. The arena was empty and they hadn’t started the next class, so Mom and I took our seats and wondered why the heck nothing was going on.

A lot of people seem to make woulda/coulda/shoulda-type comments after seeing this video, but if you’re honest with yourself, you don’t know what the heck you’d do unless you were put into that situation.

No horses or people died or were seriously hurt, though several were taken to the hospital. In fact, at the nationals championship show, people had “I survived the Region XI Driving class” t-shirts.

Oct

23

Anticipation

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This sums up one of the most prevalent horse show emotions: anticipation.

I shot this picture (discreetly, hence the large metal railing pole in the way) right after they’d closed the ingate to a big class. Everyone — trainers, friends, family, workers — at the ingate stops what they’re doing to peek over and see how the class is running, how their favorite is doing and how it will be tied.

Oct

20

Horse Show Office 101

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The horse show was a fantastic time, but man alive did it take it out of me!

I worked in the office for the whole show, which seems rather bizarre to many people because, after all, how much office work can there be in order to get a bunch of horses into a show ring?

The answer to that: A Whole Freakin’ Bunch

Trainers and owners come in and enter their horses in classes. They have a separate sheet for each horse that lists the horse’s name, registration number, Coggins # (a test for highly a highly infectious horse disease called EIA - in order to transport a horse across state lines you must have a negative test result that’s current within 6 months, and most shows require them for ALL horses for liability purposes), exhibitor number, the name/addresses of owners and the name/addresses of trainers. Then they list every class into which they want to enter that horse and who will be riding it in each class (along with appropriate trainer/amateur numbers).

Each class also has a separate sheet. We office workers must take the entry sheets and transfer the exhibitor number, horse’s name, registration number, rider’s name, owner’s name and the town/state where the owner is from onto each class sheet for every class into which the horse is entered. This just puts all of the necessary information the announcer to announce and for knowing how many/which horses are in each class all in one spot.

Class sheets have a few carbon copies, with copies going to the inspection area, the gate announcer (so he knows if all horses that are in the class have entered the gate and it can be closed), and center ring where the announcer uses it to announce and the secretary marks placements on it.

At this show there are paybacks, which means that for first through fifth place you get money back. To make it even MORE complicated, many of the classes qualify you for a stake (championship) class, and first through third places MUST show back in the stake class in order to receive prize money for their qualifying class.

So after the placements are marked on the class sheet, an office worker must go out to center ring and collect them and take them back to the office, where we go BACK to the entry sheets and mark how the horse placed in its class, the payback they receive and check to see if it’s a class require they show back in the stake, in which case that must be marked.

That’s the tip of the iceberg, at least. I won’t even get into charging entry fees, stall fees, etc. But as you can imagine, in a show with over 100 classes, this is rather labor intensive.

Despite it all, it’s a lot of fun. Being around horse people (specifically Tennessee Walking Horse people, who are amongst the nicest horse show people you will ever meet), being around horses, being around the whole show atmosphere is great.

But MAN, does it tucker you out!

Oct

16

Good Times!

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MAN, I love horse shows!

Oct

15

How to Plan Travel Like Someone Who Likes to Plan

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I really like to plan stuff. I like making lists and lists within lists and spreadsheets and spreadsheets with lists. So you can imagine my joy behind getting to plan something like TRAVEL.

Our annual Illinois Walking Horse Association Fall Charity Horse Show is nearly upon us! I’m working in the show office as per usual. Usually this show, which lasts from Thursday until Sunday, coincides perfectly with my midterm break, so taking time off from class is not a concern. This year I was super excited to see that my midterm break consisted of BOTH Thursday and Friday off of classes. Usually they only give us Friday off! It was a sign!

Then I noticed that midterm break occurred exactly one week before the show. Oops. Dang. So I notified my professors as to my impending absence and tried to comfort them as they sobbed in anguish (I’ve never heard a sob sounding like “Woooohooooo!” before, but there’s a first time for everything).

The next step was finding a place to stay. It’s possible to drive back and forth between home and the show, but at 1 ½ hours each way, it gets a little intense when you get done at the show in the late evening hours and need to be there by 8AM the next morning.

Last year I stayed at the hotel recommended by the association and it was nice. But I got sassed by the guy who took my reservation and then I got sassed again by the SAME guy (he had a very distinctive voice and so was instantly recognizable to my keen senses) when checking in. I decided to do some checking around, so I utilized Hotels Combined, a handy-dandy hotel search that goes through a bunch of hotel reservation sites (Orbitz, Price Line, etc.) at the same time. It saves all sorts of time and effort and prevents me from calling every hotel in the whole dang city and seeing what their prices are.

Upon compiling my list of possible hotels, I pulled up my ol’ trusty friend: MapQuest. I checked out how far each hotel was from the show grounds, because let’s face it: The odds of me running late in the morning are astoundingly high. As much as I hate being late, you’d think that I would pull myself out of bed in the morning at a reasonable time in order to not put myself in that position. No dice! MapQuest not only which hotel was closer to the show (both in distance AND in time), it also told me the best way to get from school to the hotel, which is kind of helpful.

Once I had that information, I got to the real nitty-gritty: GasBuddy.Com. You know how there always seems to be that gas station that charges $.05 more per gallon than the gas station right across the intersection? But people go there anyway because they don’t want to deal with turning around, getting in the other lane, etc, for cheaper gas. Not I. I’m slowly coming to the realization that going 15 miles out of your way in order to save $.02/gallon is probably not wise. BUT with a little careful planning ahead, you can scope out which station seems to be cheaper than the rest and schedule your route accordingly.

Intense, eh? I think this planning thing may be some sort of compulsion, albeit a useful one. The nice thing is, no matter how much planning I do, I’m laid-back enough to not get to concerned over completely ignoring the plan and winging it.

Also, the hotel that won out just happened to be the same one I stayed in last year. But I didn’t get sassed when I made my reservation, even though I put the nice guy who answered through a rigorous test by first telling him the completely wrong dates and then changing them halfway through.

I’m on top of my game with this stuff, I just want to make sure everyone else is, too.

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