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I paid $400 to bring a non-competing horse to a show. I just wanted to get him some experience and have him there for one night. You could only buy extended stabling packages so I bought Weds through Saturday (instead of Thursday through Sunday). You had to buy at least 4 bags of shavings from the facility as well and you had to get a veterinary health certificate. The breed show started on Thursday, so I thought it would be less frenetic to take him on Thursday and stay overnight, do another ride on Friday and go home. I got there on Wednesday after work to set up my stall so that when I unloaded him the next morning, it would be ready and he wouldnāt have to stand in the trailer. My assigned stall was full of garbage and pallets, my shavings were drenched, there was a dangerous piece of metal sticking out from a post outside the stall, and the stall they had me in (at the far end of the facity next to the lunge arena) was separated from the next batch of horses by two tack stalls. So my poor young horse would have been completely isolated. There was a tent stall structure that he would be facing in the process of being cleaned out with a tractor. I went to the show office and told them that the stall wasnāt acceptible because it was full of trash and isolated and next to the lunge pen and they told me that being next to the lunge pen would be good for him (rolleyes) and that dressage horses do not wig out in the lunge pen. Then they proceeded to tell me that I was EARLY (even though the stalls two tack stalls down from us were full and I paid for a Wednesday through Saturday package. Then they said they could only ask someone to clean out the stall for me and I could come back the next day or that they would ask the facility if I could have a refund. I elected to leave because even if they cleaned the stall out (which they never did do), the location of the stall would not be acceptible for my young horse and I asked them to apply to the facility for a refund. When I did not hear from the facility, I reached out to the faciity and they told me that the show manager was leasing the facility and had the money and would be the one to give the refund (so she lied to me). The show manager, who was copied, immediately wrote an email to me that said NO REFUND FOR YOU and that she did everything she could for me and I left too early, blah blah blah, and itās all my fault blahblahblah. I was also told by her friends later that I did not deserve a stall, basically, because it was a noncompeting horse, despite the fact that show managerās friends had noncompeting horses in the better stabling. What is the difference between a showing horse and a noncompeting horse if you are paying the same money?
This treatment alone will make me think twice about entering a show. I canāt afford to lose the time or money and the whole experience felt punitive and non inclusive. (And this is in addition to the time and money I spent filling out entry formsāI paid for multi year memberships from the governing organizations to reduce some of the hassle).
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Awful. How can people treat others with such disregard and disrespect?
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What a terrible experience, Cowgirl. I would be upset, too. Did you take pictures of the stall? Thatās totally unacceptable.
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Because they can? What are the alternatives?
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I did take photos. I sent them into USDF and USEF. Nothing happened.
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Facebook.
Instagram.
The messaging site formerly known as Twitter.
Get the right hashtags on them. 
This is what is heard, these days. People who donāt respect people do respect their online reputation.
Post and donāt go back and look at it. Sympathetic people donāt remark, only trolls, and they are not worth reading.
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Exactly. There are no alternatives if you want to show.
This kind of disrespectful treatment is whatās killing recognized dressage shows. 
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Accessibility is a major issue for many would-be competitors.
Used to be I could decide to enter a local recognized show, pay a non-member fee, haul in (for free or cheap) and get my experience. And there were several shows within reach.
Now it is extremely complicated to show when my horse and I are not members, listed or whatever. There are fewer recognized shows within reach. Most of these shows do not offer āopportunityā classes and certainly not at the level I would wish to enter.
Fortunately, there are some nice schooling shows. I do struggle with a couple of things: One facility has a nice show area but is lacking in warmup area (on sloping grass area). The other is that it becomes less enticing when my horse is second level and moving up to third once he figures out he can do a flying change in both directions. 
There are often no other entries at these levels and the L judges are less experienced in judging them.
So mostly I stay home and trainā¦
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I echo this. All the memberships, Safe Sport training for what? One horse that you want to take to a show 1 or 2x per year? Nope. I also say home and train. I will help others with their horse.
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In general yes it is expensive.
But.
Of course there are some errors.
No one is required to join their local club (GMO). (Unless you want local club awards).
No one is required to join breed organizations. (unless you are going for breed awards)
You can join as a USDF group member (a GMO member) and be eligible for Rider awards.
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I would be really interested why it is necessary to pay all these memberships 
. I just paid my fee in order to show next year in Germany ā¦ I paid one fee for me and one fee for my horseā¦. and somehow it worksā¦. Now I can show whatever I wantā¦.rated or non ratedā¦.
But of course somehow all these organizations need to surviveā¦ā¦
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Yes, WHY is it so complex? I have 20 years in as a government bureaucrat and I struggle ever time I have to deal with horse show paperwork. Iām not even trying to qualify or anything like that at this point.
I think my mare will be second level ready next year, but I am totally not excited about doing the recognized shows at this point. Maybe when third is on the radar Iāll feel like itās āworth itā. I can pay $90 to show second at the horse trials/test of choice and not deal with all the cost, pressure and headache. This year I showed opportunity and a) made a mistake in the warmup, got chastised by the ring steward, then after correcting the mistake, got an extra lecture from the TD just because Iām apparently too dumb to understand a rule the first time itās explained, and b) got rung out when it would have been much more helpful to let me finish the test (horse wouldnāt pick up the first canter; maybe because the footing hadnāt been groomed and was quite hard). Rules are rules, but it would be nice if the people showing opportunity could get some leeway, as theyāre there by definition for the experience. It doesnāt make me enthusiastic to pay my fees to come back and show in the regular classes.
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Did you read the article? Itās not just the money. Itās the process. Have you entered a show online lately? Itās a big pain in the ass!
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In Germany the government supports the equine groups. Not so here in the US.
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Yes I have. Uploaded documents as JPEGs from phone. Used drop down menu to enter. It had all the trainers info and my info which was previously entered. Truely no problem at all. Both eqentries and the other one. In fact so easy our GMO uses it for our schooling shows. Very few folks mail an entry in.
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My personal favorite is seeing the $15 online processing fee (say what?!) or the $20 paper copy fee (ummm, what?!!) on top of my office fee and payment processor fees. What other service gets away with charging those fees?
Hint - if you (g) have to use a subscription based SaaS program to process documents, please at least mask the fees you (g) have to pay to use the program within one giant fee, we will be less mad at you.
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Easy way out??? Maybe ask somebody who is organizing a show how much the Government pays himā¦ā¦
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Yeah, the funding and systems are different in the US vs Germany. I prefer the German system, but thatās just me.
Iāve recently been given the opportunity to compete a horse (that doesnāt belong to me) and the processes in addition to the distances weāll have to travel is giving me a slight headache. Never mind the costs (which arenāt all on me, but are justā¦notable). The distance I drive to said horse is time consuming too. I was so, so, spoiled in Germany. Everything was close, cheaper, and better quality. Canāt wait to be back there!
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Re: the US v. other nationās support for horses as a legacy, historical, national pride-esque activity
Other nations, Ireland and the UK come to mind first, are up front in their support. They have tax laws that encourage landownersā to own horses and ride in public. They directly support breeding operations and encourage racing and betting using a broad tax base (not as progressive as the pre-Maggie Thatcher days, but way broader than ours).
Here in the US, we middle and working class taxpayers support the extremely wealthy not
-for-profits like USEA and USDF by allowing them to hoard multi-million dollar endowments without paying any tax. We less flush horse-y taxpayers indirectly support the extremely wealthy by buying into these not-for-profits, imagining that our membership, class and random fee fees go toward the expansion of the sport and the good of the horse.
If anything, as this thread has demonstrated, the upward flow of cash in the industry and the narrowing stream of participants seems more and more like a feature, not a bug.
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