I am thinking about moving from the PNW to Missouri in a couple of years. I would love to know how active dressage is, it seems there is a big show barn around St Louis.
I’d love to hear from anyone that lives, trains and competes there!
You could start with trainers in Missouri, and find out where they work/travel. I’m in the Northwest part of the state, North of Kansas City. We travel to shows in Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, St. Louis and Oklahoma. One can show a lot if that is your choice.
https://slads.org/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=709170&module_id=320383
the weather in the summertime is pretty oppressive here. There can be weeks at a time when the combined heat and humidity puts comfort level at over 100. And the horseflies are out for months and months. It’s not prohibitively expensive to purchase a house with enough land around it to build your own barn and put in fencing.
Hay is plentiful, inexpensive and good quality.
boarding barns abundant and reasonable.
Don’t know about showing, i don’t do that yet.
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SLADS is the local dressage society and it’s quite active. There are a number of good dressage barns in the area, and it’s hard to get into most. Actually boarding around here can be quite scarce and most trainers require you to be in their program, so interview early. I ended up buying my own property.
@eightpondfarm is right about the heat. It’s miserably hot and humid and the flies are…awful. I gave up on August as a training month, the stable flies bite and were just thick. The heat index was up over 110 most days. Think Florida with no breeze (I know I’m really selling it). However, spring and fall can be lovely and the winters have been pretty mild.
Loads of good farriers and vets depending on how close to STL you are, and the NEC is a great show venue, brings in a lot of people.
St. Louis is a strange place - many people say it’s difficult to make friends here but I haven’t found that part too bad, at least in the horsey realm. There’s lots to do in the city, and that part I’m really falling in love with, sort of this rural/city blend. PM me if you have more questions 
This was a very strange summer. Way hotter than we normally get. I think you can probably say that about most of the country though.
If you can ride before noon it is usually bearable and the flies aren’t too bad if you fly spray them well.
The best thing is the affordability of the area and the fact that you can get to neighboring states fairly quickly. STL area does have a large number of good farriers.
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I’m about an hour from STL, but I think we have a nice little dressage scene. You’re not going to have the same quality as the coast, but there are some really nice barns and trainers. And people are really nice. I ripped a pair of breeches a couple weeks ago at the SLADS show and had numerous people trying to help me out–some of which I had only met at the show that weekend. You’ll see anything from nice WBs to OTTBs and mustangs competing.
The NEC is a good show venue. They have a series of schooling shows too that will only put you out $100 for a full weekend and you get to show at the same facility as the recognized shows.
As others have said–cheaper to live here. I pay $3.50/bale of nice quality grass hay. We went the route of having our own place as I like the horses at home (which is also why we’re outside of the city area).
Summer usually has a few weeks or a month where it’s very miserable. So many freaking horse flies + hot and humid. But if you ride first thing and lather on the fly spray it’s doable.
Winter also usually has a few weeks or a month where it’s very miserable. We don’t have an indoor and I still average riding about 4 days/week in our well-drained outdoor. Only time I don’t is when it’s sub-20 and generally those colder snaps don’t last more than a week (last winter was an exception with a two week stretch).
Feel free to PM.
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Fly predators for the win. My barn uses them and we have very few flies inside.
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I don’t stall my horses and my shelter is a 3 sided run and a large lean-to off the barn. So sadly fly predators wouldn’t make a difference in my situation.
Wait, why not? Don’t you just sprinkle them wherever the horses poop, or near the manure pile? Why wouldn’t they work for horses turned out 24/7? Even if you have an extremely large turnout like 100 acres, surely your horses congregate near the water source? (If not the shelter?) Just spread the fly predators there. Unless I’m missing something?
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I had three horses…just three. They had an open barn attached to a 3 acre pasture. I bought the package the fly parasite folks suggested. No change on fly situation. I stepped up to the next tier of fly parasites, that was for…i think 9-12 horses. Still didn’t dampen the volume …so i asked they send every other week instead of every third week. After a small fortune over two years of getting the extra delivery and higher number of horses, i gave up. AND i’m an assiduous poop cleaner. What works the best for me, are giant floor fans. For my 19 horses, i have four separate areas, in an open barns (free to come and go from pasture 24/7) for them to spread themselves over and they spend their days, flyfree because of the fans.
Anywhere where there are predatory ants, not just fire ants, but also the larger black ones, the fly predators will get preyed upon. Even when you bury their egg capsules underneath a pile of poop.
Oh! i have a question…often i find a crawling actual wasp underneath a pile of poop. Do you think they are there to eat fly egg sacks? Rarely do i have maggots, i get it up too quickly for that, so i’m thinking egg sacks is all they could be after… Because they are wasps, and wasps are really a problem for us here, i squish them. But perhaps i should let them hunt?
Well, yeah, there are contraindications for fly predators (eg., don’t put them down where your chickens are, or if you are xx feet away from other farms which don’t use them), but just having your horses out 24/7 is not, by itself, a contraindication.
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that’s not what i asked.
I wasn’t answering your question, I was responding to your comment about how they didn’t work for you, which looked like it was in response (though not relevant) to my question.
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I know nothing about how fly predators work but I thought it was for a barn type situation. We spread our manure pile / drag our pastures ( yearly ) and clean the dry lot daily and my horses have never congregated anywhere specific, so I really have no idea where the flies are coming from or where it would be beneficial to spread predators?
My neighbors have cows and we have hog barns so flies are a part of life we just get used to?
Glad it works for you guys though.
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Oh, yeah, if you have nearby neighbors that don’t have their flies under control then its probably a no-go, since the flies from their place will just come over to yours If you were alone, then you just spread them around manure, whether it’s the formal manure pile or where the horses leave them. Bummer since they do otherwise work really well for some folk! Can’t wait for science to catch up on the fly control research! 
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as pesky as stable flies are, they’re nothing compared to the horseflies here. Starting with the deer flies, then come those green-headed devils, then the common horseflys then the dark giant horrible ones. They JUST ended last week. Seems they lasted a lot longer this years. I have all kinds of things i’ve bought to rid ourselves of them…including one of these things:
Did that thing work? I was eyeing it up this year.
i didnt’ dump it out at all during the season, but it did fill up with big old dead horseflies
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I have to admit…I’m not sure if I care so much as to whether it reduces the numbers as just kills them 
I hate those suckers!
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