HITS Festival of the Horse

I have to put in a major plug for this event because it seems like nobody knows about it! I attended over the weekend at HITS Saugerties and it was SO MUCH FUN. It was so affordable - classes were anywhere from $25-50 and they offered FREE stabling. I took three horses and my show bill was $465 for three full days of competition.

They offered multiple disciplines. Hunters from xrail to 3’6. Jumpers from xrail to 1.20. Equitation. Dressage. E-cross, a mix of show jumping and cross country jumps (very very similar to arena eventing). They even had young horse/breeding classes, but I’m not sure any of those classes had entries.

The show took such good care of us. They put us up in the permanent barns, which are normally $500/week for the rated shows. They ran all of the jumper classes in the Grand Prix stadium, which was a friggin’ blast and such good experience for all of the horses and riders. They had free snacks and drinks all three days and a free omelet station on Saturday morning. I mean, c’mon!

My only knock on it is that it wasn’t very well advertised and felt a little bit disorganized at times. But it was only their second time running it and their first time at this venue. They had one in Ocala back in March that I heard only had about 40 horses. This past weekend had 150, give or take. There is talk of doing another one this fall - possibly in September? I will do anything to talk this show up because it needs to stick around!

So huge kudos to HITS for this concept and execution. I hope this show becomes a mainstay and expands to all of their venues. It is EXACTLY what this sport needs more of.

Pic of my baby rocking the e-cross. Her first time over real solid jumps and my first time dipping a toe into eventer land. :star_struck:

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You’re making this up :joy::joy::joy:

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lol! I swear to dog. I mean, I guess it’s possible it was a fever dream. :hot_face:

Here’s proof of one of my other mares (the chestnut’s mother) jumping around the GP stadium to take the win in the 1m classic. FUN, I tell you. :laughing:

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I saw this advertised and wanted to attend, but had a conflict. I hope they do one in the fall - it looked incredibly fun. Glad you had a great time!

(Just FYI - those permanent stalls are $400/$500 a week, not $2,000. But certainly not free!!)

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More than one person told me $2k/week! That’ll teach me. I just looked at the prize list and you’re right - the gold permanent stalls are $500/week. I will edit because I hate putting out bad info!

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That looked like a lot of fun!
The HITS Summer Festival in Dorset, Vermont starts this week. I plan to go watch at least one of the Grand Prixs.

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Here are the pro photos from the weekend. Since stabling was free, I did some horse girl math and snuck a little extra into the photo budget. :smile:

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I had no clue it was even a thing until I saw my friend who lives local to the showground post a Facebook story of her with her horse. She had an absolute blast with her horse. Showing at HITS was a bucket list item for her - she goes to watch all the rated dressage shows, but can’t really afford to bring her horse.

They definitely need to advertise this more! I’ve been working on getting my young dressage horse more miles, but am restricted to shows with stabling (realistically no schooling shows for us) because he’s been very overwhelmed on day 1 no matter where we go and I don’t have my own truck and trailer. This would have been PERFECT for him.

I was happily shocked when I did the digging to uncover the show fees. They legit had $0 next to both the stabling and truck-in fees. I think this is an amazing initiative to make showing more accessible, give riders/horses a chance to gain mileage at a big facility at low cost and to make more use of these purpose-built show grounds particularly on weeks where the mileage rule is in effect preventing a rated show from being held.

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A friend of mine took a couple of young horses and a couple of new horse/rider teams and couldn’t say enough about it.

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I’m so glad other people had a good experience too! Honestly, I cannot imagine a better way to give green riders and horses that kind of big show experience. And if you’re like me and your points-chasing days are well in the past, it was just a fun opportunity to show at a nice venue with friends without deeply wounding your pocketbook.

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