USEF Pony Finals

That, that kind of leads into an interesting question.

How do you choose which ones to do or which order or prioritize? I know that, you know, some of it has to do with when each horse is, is showing, but if you have a, a big night and a, a lot of braiding, you know, like at Pony Finals, like, they basically all need to be ready at essentially the same time in the morning, um, all the ones that are modeling and hacking that day.

How do you kind of prioritize and, and pick your list and, and make it happen for, for yourself and obviously not at Pony Finals, but at, at regular horse shows? Um, my horse goes in the turnout overnight, and I'm very, very spoiled by my braider, Susan Workman-

[laughs]

... who, um, braids him when he comes in from the turnout.

You have a fantastic braider, that is for sure.

I know that those horses like their turnout time, so every little bit counts, for sure.

So on a, at a normal horse show, um, Pony Finals is a little bit different, um, but at a normal horse show, we kind of go off of, we know who rubs, we know who is not going to touch their braids, we know who is gonna get braided four times that week, maybe five times that week, or maybe this one's only doing the equitation on Friday, and it's only getting braided once.

And then combinations play into this pretty heavily as well.

Where, when, how do you start introducing combinations to horses? I think it was interesting for me that there were no combinations in the regular jumper courses at Pony Finals this year.

But then you walk up the hill and all of the children the same age as on the same size ponies are clearly capable of jumping whatever they set that year, a two stride, a one stride, going towards the gate, going away from the gate, as we routinely see in the hunters.

Right.

And the shipping.

That's the other thing for Pony Finals.

We're partnering up with another kiddo that's local and her mom is going to ship Phoebe to And also like she has to charge for it and it's $1,400 to get from, you know, Richmond to Kentucky, which I think is kind of a steal based on the going rates and mileage costs.

I'm

So she did that.

And then once she purchased Phoebe, Initially, she was contributing $200 a month just towards the care.

And then Pony Finals has messed all of us up.

Of course.

Ultimately, myself and Alvin Topping became co-chairs of that committee back in probably 2000.

Because that was the year we were at Fairfield, was the last time that Pony Finals was there.

And so from there, just a few years later, I had started to serve on some different committees of USA Equestrian, the hearing committee.

I was appointed to that.

Like, oh, my mom doesn't think I can handle this.

That realization hits pretty close to home for me because, as you'll hear in today's episode, that's exactly what I was doing as we prepped for pony finals.

So today we're talking about how to support our kids through the mental side of riding, especially as the jumps and shows and expectations get bigger, without accidentally handing them our own fears along the way.

Welcome to Broke Horse Moms, the podcast for non-horsey horse moms who are figuring out this wild world of equestrian life together as we go.

We also talk about something that I wasn't totally expecting, our own anxiety.

Courtney helped me realize how easily the things that we say because we're nervous are might sound to our kids like we don't trust them or their abilities.

And I even had my own revelation in the middle of the conversation when I was talking about Pony Finals, because we recorded this episode before we actually left for Kentucky.

So whether your rider is getting ready for their first off-property show, maybe they're moving up a division or heading into the biggest competition they've ever done, I think this conversation will change the way you think about what they need from us when things start to feel a little scary.