I came from the hunter world so tack stalls and grooming stalls are the “norm” for me. I met my driving husband 20 years ago and have been in the driving world pretty much from then on. When moving into a show, we do either get a tack stall where we can put our feed, hay, harness, tack, wheelbarrow, cleaning supplies etc and do everything from the stalls - as long as there is somewhere safe where we can store our carriage. This past weekend we did just this as it was pouring rain and we didn’t want to get our pleasure carriage and harness wet and the facility was perfect as we never had to take a step outside. So we hooked in the aisle and drove right into the ring (which was so nice when it was pouring and it was surprisingly cooler in there as well. We are having a heat wave here in Ontario with 100F humid weather, so indoors was a godsend!).
We much prefer to work out of our trailer though. We did have a 52’ custom horse trailer built just for this in mind (complete down to where we wanted some plugs where we tie our ponies to the side of the trailer so we can put a fan on them as we harness or unharness). We attach a 20 x 10’ tent to the side of the trailer and the pony or ponies tie under the tent side by side. We keep the clean harness in the trailer on hooks (we have rings on the ceiling and use the 4 hooked harness hooks that attach to that) and we bring them outside to hang under the tent. This way we can easily harness them without going in and out of the trailer. We have lots of cubbies in the trailer that my husband built that store blankets, boots, whips and wraps. Buckets are stored under our large tack box. There is 18’ of empty space in the middle of the trailer so we can take 2 carriages, a 4 wheeler and good harness and our zilco harness. Lots of room. The back 10’ that is for the horses has a swinging gate that opens up and when we are parked at a show, we clean the back right out, and slide the partitions to one side. This way we can put our phaeton in the back and clean it right inside. So we still have tons of room.
I don’t have too many pictures here at work on our set up with the tent out and harness hung, but I’ll attach a few so you can get the idea and see the hooks on the ceiling (at the top left in the picture with the 4 wheeler). You can see in the back horse stalls how all the partitions are on sliders so we can slide them to a side to give us room to put the carriage for cleaning right at the back. We swing that big gate right open when we arrive to a show so we have 28’ long and 8’ wide to work.
We are at Orleton Pleasure show next week and will be working out of our trailer there so I will take a few pictures so you have an idea.
That would be a great way to do a multi-day show.