I’m writing an article about show nerves, hoping to hear from Western exhibitors who show successfully at the regional and national level. Please pm me if you have an interesting story or remedy to share!
Thank you!
remedy to share
Our kids showed both regionally and nationally for about fifteen years. They had contenting horses as mounts and collected a fair share of top awards in several disciplines. Their main show mount was a western pleasure mare who was a regional champ and a res national.
I do not remember our kids having cases of the nerves. I believe mostly they knew they had good mounts and they were prepared.
They had check lists before leaving for a show to make sure they had what was needed. They kept notebooks on the judges. They knew what the judge expected and which ones their horse had no or little chance of success before. They learned to study the horses in the warm up rings … a few classes they withdrew rather than enter a ring of chaos.
We as a family used showing the horses as a way to teach our kids about life, how to survive and continue on after not winning …(I think our Foxie horse won about two or three hundred second place ribbons, we just told her those are first places in Canada)
Aren’t they all in Ohio right now 
?
[QUOTE=katarine;7787669]
Aren’t they all in Ohio right now ?[/QUOTE]
Morgans are headed to Oklahoma City now
I was thinking of the QH Congress 
Yes, we used to show in Columbus… I asked our trainer about that little section of chain link fence they had at the top of the rail …asked weren’t they ever worried about a harness horse hooking a shaft in the fence… happened the next year, tremendous cart wreck
