A Sigh of Relief

We are less than six days away from the horse trials and I can say with a huge sigh of relief that most of the event is coming together very well.At the zero hour entries have dribbled in. I am very grateful for the entries as it such an ordeal pulling the event together for less than several hours of competition.The cross country course has at least 5 weeks of work with 5 people. It is a crazy thing to do for only a couple hours of jumping. So having a few more horses makes it more worth while.
I WISH the riders would have a better understanding of what leaving entries to the last minute does to the organization of an event.I cannot go out and solicit great things from my local sponsors(IE ) prizes and or money or advertising to make the event bigger and better if there are no entries. Pulling a horse trials of has to be done months in advance.We did not even know if we were going to be able to have a competition as the entries were so slow in coming.

If there are no entries till the last minute,courses cannot be changes around and new jumps built .Everything has to be minimized. All great plans have to go onto the B scale as I call it.One has to live in emergency stress status for weeks.

Also the volunters have to be contacted in a timely manner and now that the numbers have changed so much in the last few days ,so has the entire schedual which means we have to recontact all the volunteers (huge amounts lost time) I do not like to do things more than once. It makes the event look disorganized to our volunteers when we have to keep changing their day around.Without these kind people that donate their time to us,there would be no event.

It all goes in circles. No riders,no event. No volunteers no event. No money coming in ,well you get it.One always hopes there will be money left over for the next event.This time we are just happy to be able to have the event.

So the ship will sail on a little longer and I thank everyone in advance. I can hardly wait to get back to my shrink and dump some of this stress I have been carrying around. I haven't ridden my horses since Kentucky.

XC looks good. Antonio and I put up the dressage arenas in RECORD time this time.Tomorrows project is one of favorites,designing show jumping.Stay tuned.