I think we're all confused.

Many of us saw the Canadian Team Selection and went.... "Huh. Interesting. Not what I expected." Of course, Jessie and Colleen have worked incredibly hard to get to this point, but I don't think anybody expected Canada to ship 17  and 19 year old horses to Tokyo to compete on the world's biggest stage. I think we all had questions, so I went digging. I am not shy about calling up a bunch of random people and asking for their time, and I am so gracious to those that spent hours on the phone with me. I said the same thing, "I want to write about the facts. This isn't gossip. This isn't hearsay. What are the facts? We all have questions."

I would like to start by stating that I interviewed many people involved in the process. Riders, representatives, and committee members. I won't be quoting them directly as I have assured them anonymity. This blog is the result of my direct research and all opinions, and mistakes, are my own. ​

In 2016, Jessica Phoenix sued Equestrian Canada after not being named a member of the 2016 Olympic team that would compete in Rio, citing that the Selection Process was unfair. Equestrian Canada paid $35,000 towards Phoenix's legal costs. She finished in 38th place individually with Team Canada (Rebecca Howard, Jessica Phoenix, Colleen Loach, Kathryn Robinson) placing tenth overall.
​
Back in 2017, Equestrian Canada attempted to change things by getting together an EC Eventing Committee to address the Canadian High Performance Riders’ concerns. A new Chair of Eventing High Performance Committee was named, Rob Stevenson, and there was much discussion on how the High Performance Committee needed to meet the needs of the athletes. But now, there is no Rob Stevenson. There isn't a Coach. There isn't a Technical Advisor. So who is leading the team? 19 riders wrote letters of complaint to Equestrian Canada. Rider representatives were quitting due to conflicts of interest and their voices not being heard. Equestrian Canada then hired a third party for external audit and Ozzie Salwicki appeared on the scene. Somehow, in some way, Mr. Salwicki went from the third party auditor and turned into the Chef D'Equipe for Eventing during 2015. 

The 2018 World Equestrian Games arrived and a team was named. Hawley Bennett-Awad on JollyBo, Lisa Marie Fergusson on Honor Me, Colleen Loach on Qorry Blue d'Argouges, Selena O'Hanlon and Foxwood High, with Jessica Phoenix on Pavarotti. A good placing would give Canada a Team spot in the Olympics. It's also important to remember that Canada was scheduled to host the 2018 WEG at Bromont but they couldn't come up with sufficient funding to back the Games. Team Canada finished in 11th place at WEG, unable to secure an Olympic team spot. 

The 2019 Pan American Games, located in Lima, Peru, gave the Canadian team another chance. Dana Cooke, Colleen Loach, Jessica Phoenix, and Karl Slezak were named. Equestrian Canada looked like they wanted to give the rookies a shot at Lima (with the exception of Pavarotti)  but it backfired when they again didn't qualify a team. The records of the horses are posted below. ​​

I named this Part 1 because I'm sure it's going to be part of a series.

So Part 1. 

I'm sitting in the Grand Oaks show office. Cross country is decorated, show jump is set, dressage rings are ready to go. Rick Dunkerton is putting together packets, dressage tests, waivers, and the multitude of other paperwork he needs to gather. I'm making sure we have enough volunteers, putting together cross country volunteer packets, giving packets out to the officials, and just general paperwork that's necessary.  

And Rick is calling competitors. Because their horses memberships aren't active, or their memberships aren't active, or their owners memberships aren't active, or SafeSport isn't done. You know who gets in trouble if memberships aren't correct before the start of the show?

The organizer. 

Yes, you read that correctly. If rider's don't get their stuff done on time, I get in trouble with the federations. You know what that means? Fines. You know who ends up paying for the fines in their entry fees? The competitor. 

Riders, step up. Please don't wait for Rick to call you Friday morning before the show starts while he's trying to handle so many other things. Take some responsibility. Set a reminder in your phone's Calendar for next year as soon as you renew your memberships.

​Rocking Horse is currently sitting at 547 entries as of 11:30 am January 22nd. For those math people, that means Rick has to check 1,641 different things to make sure the organizer doesn't get fined.
Add on trainers membership and SafeSport for USEF and we're at over 2,000 things that need to be checked. 
Add on checking qualifications for Modified and above. 

I asked Rick what his biggest complaints are about riders entering horse shows. 
Here's his list: 
1) Updating their memberships
2) Not completing entries 
3) Not filling out information on the horse and rider
4) Not filling out complete email addresses, phone numbers, mailing address (how are you going to get a refund check if your address isn't updated? Short answer. You aren't.)
5) Not entering their horses breed, age, sire, and dam. (Y'all, this takes five seconds. Give us breeders some credit, please. If you don't know where to find the information, email me and I will gladly help. Also, if you're horse is super fancy, us breeders want to know how to breed another one!)
6) Not sending in signed waivers
7) Not uploading current coggins

Riders, if you don't want to do your entries thoroughly, I will do them for you. For a fee, of course. :)

Interested in finding out more? You can visit Emily at www.emilyholmesequestrian.com for more Equestrian Marketing Tips, Complaints about Competitors, and other Ocala based Equestrian stuff. You can also find Emily on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and her decidedly boring TikTok. @eholmes611

I started this blog post a week ago and went on a proper rant. When I opened it up to finish it this morning, that rant was gone and disappeared into the internet.

Good? Bad? Frustrating. But maybe a good thing, because I was very honest in the original. Maybe a bit rude. But as an event organizer, and the Area III Organizer Representative, I'm at my wits end. 

Before every horse trials, I constantly post on social media about needing volunteers for events. A horse trials uses between 25-75 volunteers, depending on the size. FEI events can use upwards of 100 volunteers across the course of a week. Every organizer does this, desperately hoping people will sign up to volunteer and we aren't frantically calling our friends and family to fill in spots. 

And we never have enough volunteers. 

Yet here is the kicker: volunteering doesn't always mean you have to give up showing that weekend. We need volunteers the week before the show and the week after the show. It takes almost four days to decorate cross country, which involves lifting heavy plants and tubs, setting flowers, and dumping mulch in front of jumps. Setting show jump takes two hours of an afternoon. Labeling and stuffing packets can be done at any time before the show. Painting and staining cross country jumps. And all of this stuff has to be removed or taken down once the show is over. 

I was mulling this over this morning as I was about to post the www.eventingvolunteers.com link for Barnstaple South. It is now a week before the event. We don't have any Dressage Stewards for Saturday and only three Cross Country jump judges for Sunday. We can't run the event until spots are filled, or we have to pay people. 

Dressage and Hunter/Jumper shows are infinitely more expensive than Eventing. When I got my Bronze Medal in Dressage last year, I was shocked at the costs. I could have run an Advanced Horse Trials for less than what I paid for three dressage tests and a ship-in fee. Dressage shows use arenas, judges booths, and hire judges. But they also pay scribes, in-gate people, office personnel, etc. Hunter/Jumper shows use arenas, sets of jumps, and judges. They also pay everybody: office personnel, gate people, jump crew, etc. Eventing uses the same infrastructure as Dressage and the Hunter/Jumpers, and also need hundreds of acres, cross country jumps for all levels, banks, ditches, water complexes, irrigation, grass seed, aeration, labor, etc etc. Infrastructure costs are insane. The list goes on. 

And yet Eventing competition fees are much cheaper than Dressage and Hunter/Jumper. 

And this is solely because of volunteers. All of the personnel that Dressage and H/J pay? We use volunteers. If events continue to struggle to get volunteers, they'll have to move to start paying people. And if we have to start paying people, entry fees are going to skyrocket. Those large entry fees at the Dressage and Hunter/Jumper shows will look small compared to how many "volunteers" event organizers would have to pay. 

Let me be very clear here. Events must make money to survive. There has to be profit, otherwise, event organizers will stop running shows. It is not a crime for event organizers to make money. Running events is a business with a huge upfront cost, a lot of overhead, and all the unpredictability that comes with hosting an outdoor event for horses. 

I recently put a post on my Facebook page, asking people why it's important for riders to volunteer. The responses were all similar in thread. I will post some below with names and photos blacked out. Interestingly enough, I believe only one professional rider commented. 

• To set an example
• To give back to the sport
• To see how some competitors treat volunteers. I will never forget the rider that called me "Hey starter" while I was running cross country warmup. I have many, many more examples that are much worse. 
• To understand how shows are run. 
• To appreciate the hard work that goes into running an event. 
• To keep costs down.
• The support the people and the sport we love. 

I love my regular volunteers, but they're getting burned out from being needed every. single. weekend. during the season and working their own full time jobs. Shoutout to the regular volunteers. I LOVE YOU SO MUCH for being educated, reliable, upbeat, happy, and always willing to pitch in. You are truly the lifeblood of this sport. We cannot cannot do this without you. And if you've read this blog, hey! You might start getting paid if we can't rustle up enough of you! HA!

Professional riders, I implore you to help me. To help all event organizers across the country. Please encourage your students to volunteer. Please consider volunteering yourself. Please help us keep costs down so that Eventing is accessible to people from all income levels. Let's keep the "grassroots" part of our sport alive. 

​Please. 

I'm sitting here after scheduling 250 rides for the Partners of the Park (POP) Show that is this Sunday at the Florida Horse Park. Of course, after scheduling all the rides in three dressage arenas, show jumping, and cross country, I then move onto the stall chart. After that is complete, I email out the ride times and the stall chart only to get responses like this back:

"We entered at the same time and we use the same equipment but we aren't stabled together."
"I entered a Combined Test but I don't know what dressage test I'm doing"
"Can I enter three more horses?"
"I don't see my name on there."
​
Y'all, us show organizers and secretary's are not mind readers!






​So people, I am here to talk you through exactly how to enter a POP show. I will decode, give insider tips, and tells you what annoys us organizer's/secretary's the most!

If you're a regular EventEntries user, skip to Step 6.

Step 1: Create an EventEntries.com account, or login to your account
​
​Step 2: Click on People. Add a person. Click on Horses. Add a horse

Step 3: ​Find the show you want to enter by either going to Show Map or back to the Home page and using the Filter bar

​Step 4: Click on the name of the show you want to enter. Then hit Register for this show

​Step 5: Under Rider, click the person's name. Under Horse, click the Horse's name 

​Step 6: Now here comes the hard part:
​Divisions. 

Let's decode some of these Divisions:
CT: Combined Test. This is a mixture of a Dressage Test and a Show Jumping Round at that level. POP offers a CT for every single National level. Riders can either sign up for CTA or CTB for each level, which basically means Combined Test A or Combined Test B. Let's say for instance I'm signing up for BN-CTB. That means I'm signing up for Beginner Novice Test B and Show Jumping 2'7"

XCPC: Cross Country schooling for Pony Club only because yes, they get a discount. No, you can't just sign up for XCPC and hope that I don't notice. I will charge you the additional $25

3-Phases: Every single month we alternate which dressage tests (A or B) the 3-Phases will ride. This information can always be found on www.flhorsepark.com . Let me make it clearer. Please check the website BEFORE you email me!

SJ: Show Jump rounds only. The heights listed are the maximum heights for the United States Eventing Association (USEA) National levels. Yes, you can get a ribbon. 

XC-SUN: Yes, you can sign up to do only cross country (the best part of Eventing, in my humble opinion). No, you do not get a ribbon. 

Step 7: Okay, you've made it this far and it's been super easy. Right? PAY ATTENTION
Let's you want to add an additional division or you're riding a second horse. This means another dressage test, another show jump round, a cross country round, or another horse: you have to click that little blue button that says "Add Additional Division Entry". Repeat the steps. 

Step 8: Enter your Emergency Contact. No, we never check these. I know of someone that write random names in here ("Ball and Chain") when she does entries for her husband. 

Click Continue to Stabling. 

THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE ENTIRE BLOG POST PEOPLE

Step 9: Under Stabling Selection, click Stabling. Then click the dates you are arriving and departing. 

Step 10: Enter how many bags of shavings you want. PRE-ORDER YOUR SHAVINGS! I can't begin to tell you how annoying it is to drag one bag of shavings to the barns when people show at at 9 am during the show day and we're all crazy busy.  Everyone that signs up for a stall at a POP show gets one bag of shavings included. I usually recommend a minimum of two if the horse is staying overnight because the stalls are a true 12'x12' and they're on concrete. 

Step 11: THIS GIANT PRETTY PARAGRAPH BOX IS A LIE. 

This is all we get for information from that massive paragraph box. These are actual snippets of the Stabling Report from the December POP Show. SO STOP BEING POLITE. Type as little as possible and if you can get away with abbreviations like "TN" or "Waterford", that's best. Just make sure all of your group members are on the same page. NOTHING is more annoying than someone writing things like "Can you please stable us next to" ....... and that's all I get for information. Be succinct! Be brief! Use acronyms and abbreviations! 

Click Continue to Fees. I don't even know what step we're on at this point. Just keep going.

You want to camp with a RV? Cool. Put how many nights you're staying. Not how many RV's you're bringing.  Yes, people have done this. 

The office fee is per horse. This pays for dressage tests, the secretary, WiFi, printers, and all the other admin stuff that adds up. 

The Online Entry Fee is so that the Dunkerton family can put food on their table, because this is their livelihood, their brainchild, and we appreciate the hard work and years they have put into this platform. Don't complain about this Online Entry Fee because I refuse to run POP shows without this program. If I have to go back to scheduling shows using Excel, this will be a $30 fee instead of $3. No complaining. 

Click Continue to Forms. 

Please for the love of all that's holy TAKE THE TIME TO ENTER YOUR COGGINS AND WAIVER. Most veterinarian's will happily email you a PDF copy of your horses Coggins test and it's incredibly easy to upload. I know for a fact that every equine veterinary clinic in the Ocala area will do this. This saves us (me and​ you) so much time!

If you're struggling to upload the Waiver, I suggest printing it off, signing it, and then using a PDF app on your phone like Genius Scan to email it to yourself. Then upload the Waiver to EventEntries under the Forms section. 

CONGRATS! You've almost made it!

POP Entries are only accepted if you pay with a card online. There are a few reasons we moved to this: 1) COVID, 2) reconciliation of checks and cash takes hours, and sometimes days, 3) easier to keep track, 4) lots of people would enter the show, not pay, and then never show up. So yes, you'll have to pay some credit card processing fees. But you can blame everyone else (and COVID) if you want.

(I've been blaming 2020 and COVID on everything.... weight gain, my horse being lame, my broodmare being lame, etc etc etc.)

 Click Submit with Payment.

You will get a confirmation email. The secretary will also get a confirmation email. This means that if you didn't actually enter, and you swear you did, we will know. We will know.......

I always suggest double checking your entry by clicking on My Entries on the Navigation Bar of EventEntries. It will tell you which shows you've entered and the date, what date/time you submitted your entry, and whether you Submitted with Payment or Submitted Without Payment. 

​Before you even start reading this and rolling your eyes, I already know.

I know that you are up at all hours of the day and night.
I know that you’re awake and in the barn before the sun rises, you do hard physical labor all day, and you’re exhausted when you finally stumble into the house at night.
I know that half the time you shower with the water as hot as possible to pound on your tired and sore back.
I know the last thing you want to think about is more work when you finally sit on the couch with a glass of …. whatever your flavor is…. and a good television show.

​I know this, because I’m one of you. Well, the amateur-ish version of a professional.

As a professional equestrian, you are responsible for taking care of the horses you compete and that includes feeding them. Riding them. Dragging the arena. Cleaning the tack. Washing their bandages. And so much more.

If you’re anything like me, it’s a struggle to pay for it all.

One way many top riders get help is by attracting sponsors.

Sponsors will frequently give away product in exchange for the rider acting as their spokesperson. The philosophy being, if the professional rider is using the product, it must be awesome and everyone will want to use it because maybe they’ll ride like the professional. (We all can dream). Then the riders can reduce costs by getting some free or reduced-cost stuff.