Horse show dramatics

[DesignFox]

I have 7 horses, so I've grown up around it all.

you have 7 horses! Woo! now I'm really jealous! I'm lucky I can afford to have 1...and he's not even mine! I just lease him!

How awesome! If you ever want to chat about horses, PM me

and yea, key in or not, very sucky for someone to steal the runner's vehicle! I've only been to two shows...small scale...so I haven't yet had the pleasure of dealing with the idiocy I'm sure occurs...I've heard some drama stories...but I haven't experienced much of it...and the barn I'm at doesn't have much drama- we're small, but my instructor is well respected in the community...any students or parents that were causing problems either A) left because no one put up with their crap or B) were asked to leave.

[VampireSlave]

I have 7 horses, so I've grown up around it all. I use to jump, but dressage is what I work with now with my pony.

And I was a bit naive at that point. This was my first summer I was allowed to drive the carts by myself, and I had no idea the key came out. *dies* I've learned my lesson now, but keys or not, it was still sucky for them to take it.

[DesignFox]

ooh I'm jealous, too! I just started showing last season and am about to start up this season to do more. Dressage is my primary discipline, although I am also learning to jump and love to go out on trail rides and hunter paces.

Too bad you never found the jerk that stole the golf cart....what a horrible thing for someone to do! I think I will learn from this and if I ever have to be a runner at a big show ground, I'll be taking the keys with me!

[Ad_Astra]

I show horses---I understand entirely the crazy entitlement that happens everywhere at shows..
I'm guessing that your cart was stolen by someone who waited too long to reserve one for themselves and still felt the urge to be a jerk.

In other news: muy jealous of your mom--dressage is what I want to learn but the barns in my area are so expensive for lessons and such, I'll stick to my western pleasure for now I suppose =)

[VampireSlave]

So, at the moment I don't actually have a job of my own, but during the summer I helped my mom at horse shows. As the president of a dressage chapter, my mom often has to steal me to work on gathering tests, making sure who's in the ring is in there ect. Normally it goes fine, but this one show it just made everything hell.

It's about 2 in the afternoon. I had been there since 7 in the morning, had yet to eaten and had been driving a golf cart around since then to gather tests from the five different rings. The rings are sometimes close together, but there's about a quarter mile, about a ten minute walk or so, between ring five and the office where I'm supposed to send the tests.

The wonderful things about these golf carts is that you can park them almost anywhere, and it makes collecting tests easy. Takes me about fifteen minutes at the most to go around and get tests and take them to the office. It's the sort of circle where you're constantly in motion, because there's a test going on at all times. On occasion I have to sit there and wait for the tests. As well, to get the tests themselves I have to get out of the cart, go into the ring and get the test from the judges then go back to my golf cart and go to the next.

Well, this one specific time, I had done just that. Turned my golf cart off, went to go get the test, headed back...and the cart was gone. Someone had just made off with my golf cart, my clipboard and my walkie talkie. I could have understood if it was a golf cart that the riders could have rented out, and some confusion taking place, but it was obvious it wasn't. On the front and back of the cart was the word "Runner" which is what I had been doing. I was a runner for the show. Most people at horse shows know what this is.

So little me, at age of 17 and with short legs, have to walk all the way from ring six back to the office, telling them that my cart was stolen. Since there were no other carts open, I had to walk around the entire show grounds for two hours collecting tests without a break. There were points when I literally had to run to get the tests in time. While I'm doing this, everyone who was staffing the show was trying to find my golf cart. It wasn't until the end of the show that we actually found the cart, parked in the very far, far parking lot and behind a trailer.

Who really has the balls to go and steal a golf cart with an open label on it, with a walkie talkie and everything? Let alone from someone who needed it more then everyone else. Bah, stupid people bug me. We never found out who took it either.

-VS