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So, until now I thought that horses are ready to show when they have 2 bars per level in all their traits which are needed for the show.
For example, if I want a horse to be ready for level 2 cross country, I wait for it to have 4 bars in heart, speed and strength, then show it and it should place 8th or above, right?
I always saw that sometimes horses like this place 9th or lower, but that wasn't significant until yesterday. This time, however, I entered 135 horses to shows and only 78 of them placed 9th or above. The rest went on 10th or below, though they had 2 bars per level.
As an example, here are two horses which had the bars but still placed 11th and 12th.
https://horseeden.com/horse.php?id=17869047 https://horseeden.com/horse.php?id=18744459
So my question is, when are the horses ready to show? Having the 2 bars per level is not enough?
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I usually wait until they have at least 1 bar more.
For example. My horse is lvl 2 in jumping but has 5 bars in scope and 4 in hrt and spd.
Even better if it has 5 bars in 2 traits. Sometimes even 3 before it levels up.
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https://i.postimg.cc/NMvT7WKD/F33-CF73-A-7-D38-4577-87-CF-C55-B63-EE49-CC.jpg See how some of the horses have green text and others have red? When it is green it means they are ready to show in that. If red then you should train them another week. Also should ALWAYS try your horses in each discipline. If a horse has not tried Dressage, try them there. |
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So here's what I do: Every Monday I go through all my horses manually and see which disciple they have 2 bars per level. Then I show them in that. On Tuesday I show every horse which was green or placed 8th-9th. Then Wednesday rinse and repeat.
Even SD geldings should go into another disciple? Like for example a gelding has 5 bars in all traits for cross country, but just 1 bar (so untrained) in everything else. He's lvl 4 in cross country, and lvl 2 in the others. Will he place well if I put him into a lvl 2 dressage or jumping even though he has only 1 bar in his other skills?
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I don't pay attention to bars, I pay attention to number of training sessions. So I start entering younguns after 5 weeks training. Show them again the next night if they place and the next week if they don't. When they level up, I give them 4 weeks before showing them again in that discipline. I DO show my geldings in other show types if those are lower level than their main show type. My CC geldings made lots of money in D and J this week, as a bunch of them levelled out of CC recently.
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SD geldings can show well in other disciplines too. Sometimes you're just unlucky and your horse get's entered into a group with very strong horses. I had plenty of geldings that were ready to level up and didn't place in the money because they had been competing against very strong horses. There are also tiebreakers if two horses place the same but I don't know them all. I think in some cases the rider's showing experience counts so you might want to have your BM consolidate your horses.
I only pay attention to bars when I first enter horses into shows that haven't shown in 6 months. Otherwise I take their showing results as a marker. For D, I only enter horses with over 75%, CC beneath 15 and SJ beneath 12 faults. This considered I'd say gelding 1 is definitely not ready to show yet, gelding 2 got a little unlucky in D and CC but you should still give him one week to train up.
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Thank you guys for the advices. I'll definitely be more cautious about the points and percentages too in the future.
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Showers Off and On
