Horse Show Hangover

Horse Show Hangover (noun): The inability to focus and function without large amounts of caffeine after a long weekend of horse shows.

This is exactly how I felt this whole week. Let me rewind to last week…

All week long the Becker College Equestrian Team had been getting ready for our annual home horse show on October 19th. With no school on Monday and Tuesday, I was well rested and ready for the whirlwind of preparations that were to come that week. Or so I thought. Wednesday was plain and boring compared to the rest of the week; try to stay awake during classes, lesson, ride the Prince, procrastinate, shower, procrastinate, homework, procrastinate some more, and then go to bed way too late. A typical weekday in the life of Terise. Then came Thursday. My normal afternoon lesson had been moved to the morning so that there was more time to get ready for the weekend. So at 8:00 Thursday morning already overtired Terise was at the barn stumbling through tacking up good old’ Jake for the lesson. Thankfully this lesson was nice and easy because I may have tumbled off the side of my horse due to lack of sleep. So much for being well rested. With some extra time before I had to head back to class, I decided to do some more show prep. Well just my luck, my class got canceled. Don’t get me wrong, normally I have no problem being at the barn all day, in fact I love it. But when that whole day will be spent assigning horse holders, organizing tack, and doing other horse show organization, I don’t love it so much. At least I wasn’t driving between campus and the barn for lessons, classes, and practice. Fast forward a few hours, practice is over and I am rushing back to campus because this brilliant mind almost forgot that she was on rounds at 8:00. Oops. As if I wasn’t tired enough, I now had to stay up until 2:00 AM. Sleep was quite welcome that night.

Friday morning came a few hours too soon, five hours of sleep is not enough for me. But our future programs were waiting to printed so sleeping was not an option. Go to the barn, drop the programs at the printers, back to the barn, rush to class, back to the barn. Not what I call a nice and relaxing Friday. Of all the perks of putting on a horse show, stress is not one of them.

Skip forward to Saturday, show day. Up and at the barn before the sun was up, our team was as groggy as every, except this time we couldn’t sleep on the bus on the way to the show. Because this was our show and our horses were limited, I decided to allow the Prince to be used in the upper level flat classes, Open and Intermediate. Naturally, I was crossing my fingers that I would draw my own horse, plus my parents were there and I was looking forward to them seeing him go. I am not that lucky, but I drew Redford, one of my favorites. One thing about Red, he only needs one bad ride to turn into a grump. Of course, by the time my class came Redford was full out fire breathing dragon. We spent most of our class hopping in place and taking off with his head in the air like a llama. It was all I could do not to laugh at his crazy antics and I did not place. But it was a fun ride. The craziness of putting on a horse show was enough to distract us from our riding and our team came in fifth. My crazy day was ended with a delicious dinner with my parents.

My bed became my best friend that night, but I hated it the next morning. Sunday morning brought the Becker College Interscholastic Equestrian Association show. Another day of horse showing, except this time we weren’t actually showing. IEA is run a bit differently than IHSA, but we ended around the same time as Saturday. My lack of sleep made that day a bit blurry, so fast forward to after the show. A quick pick up of the barn, a blanket change on the Prince, and I was off to dinner with my old IEA coach. A great way to end my chaotic weekend. Right then I knew that my horse show hangover would be one for the record books.

This weekend BCET is off to Rhode Island for the Roger Williams University IHSA show.

-TC