I hope everyone had a good holiday season. I'm ready for the New Year, because the last one had some real low points.
There is no doubt that the economy, war, and massive bailouts for Wall Street and the Auto Industry are going to hurt the horse world. It's costly to show, travel, train and even purchase a good horse. Those of you that train for a living will probably lose some clients, and not find new ones. Those of you planning to start training for a living probably need to reconsider, unless you can go out and win a very big competition in your first year, or you get one of those deep pocketed clients that has a lot of money and little sense, and you're willing to take the one as a bonus for putting up with the other.
My question to readers is:
How are you going to continue showing?
What economies will you practice?
Will you travel less?
The really bad side to the downswing in the economy is that it makes cheating more appealing, and more prevalent. People will *need* to win in order to make their bills. It won't be a case of someone just wanting a pretty blue ribbon, it's now a case of being able to pay the feed bill.
So horses will be started younger, training techniques will be harsher, drugs will be used more, anything that gets a horse into the top ten will be done, just so trainers can make a living. There will be less shows for judges to judge, which means that back scratching on that front will reach epic heights.
What can we do? Because if we don't do something we're not going to have a stable show industry in five years.
