Gird your loins, ladies and gents, this one is gonna be LONG. But hopefully entertaining, and it’s got lots of pics and some videos, so… ya know. It’s just not possible (for me anyway) to write a brief and concise blog post about an experience as vast and incredible as the RRP Makeover. Also, it consumed an entire week of my life from start to finish, so there’s a lot to cover.

We left Ocala on Sunday the 4th. Technically you couldn’t arrive at the Kentucky Horse Park before noon on Monday the 5th, but I really wanted to make the drive up (which is about 12 hours for us) and let him have a little bit of relaxation time, then move into KHP as soon as they’d let us. So, we left here around 4:45am on Sunday, and pulled into a friend’s place, True Blue Farm, in Lexington around dinner time. Bingo stayed the night there, and it was also the location of my airbnb for the week. He traveled GREAT, and came off the trailer alert but not too wild.

On Monday morning I handwalked him a bit and he was WILD. There may have been a couple airs above the ground. I decided to give him a short ride before we headed over to KHP, since honestly he’s easier to ride than he is to lunge. I got on and let him have a little canter and play to let off some steam before going on a hack. That seemed to do the trick, and after we were done we got everything loaded back up in the trailer and off we went to the show grounds with Bingo in tow.

For RRP they have a two-stage arrival exam that all horses must undergo before they’re officially accepted to start the competition. Sorta like FEI in-barns, if you will. The first stage was a vet and a team of vet students coming by his stall, looking at his coggins and health cert, checking his respiratory rate, heart, temperature, and giving him a general once over. All horses at RRP must be at least a 4 on the Henneke body condition scale in order to compete, so they’re also assessing and grading the horse’s condition.

I’ll be honest, getting weight on Bingo has been a challenge because he really just seems to keep adding height and mass instead of weight. His muscle condition is good, but his ribs still aren’t 100% covered. He’s a big, wide-sprung creature. But the vet thought he looked fantastic, with great muscle tone, a nice coat, and a very appropriate weight for a young TB event horse. They gave him a body condition score of 5, which I was absolutely elated about. I told the vet she made my day with that (I wasn’t lying).

After passing the first part of the arrival exam, they sent us over to another set of barns to be seen by another vet team, where they took a close look at his legs and feet and had us walk them on concrete in a straight line and on a circle both ways to check for basic soundness. Once we were cleared there, they gave us a blue sticker to put on our bridle number to indicate that we were cleared by the vets and officially allowed to compete.

I honestly was not sure what to expect from Bingo behavior-wise, which is the main reason why I wanted to get there so early. I figured that if he was upset, unsettled, or wild, we would spend the afternoon handwalking and letting him see the sights. But if he was good, I wanted to get on him and take him for his first look around some of the showgrounds.

He seemed pretty calm, all things considered, so I just went for it. I put his tack on him, hopped aboard, and went for a walk up towards the Stonlea and Claiborne rings. Not many of the riding areas were open on Monday, but several of the warmup rings were, so we walked around those, and once he seemed settled, we did a little flatwork. He behaved much better than I expected, honestly, so after a little bop around we went back to the barns and got him settled in for the night.

Tuesday was another arrival/schooling day, but more of the schooling rings were open for riding and the show rings had ticketed schooling. In our show packet we’d been given two tickets that we could use for schooling in any of the competition rings, but you had to pick which two you wanted to use them in, and once you used them, you couldn’t go back in. I chose the two rings I’d be doing dressage in, and also spent some time in the warm-up areas for those rings. He was a little on his toes when we started, but once again settled in super quickly once he had work to do. We ended up doing just a little bit of work in each of our dressage rings, mostly to give him a chance to see the judge’s booths and all the big bright flowers along the sides of the rings.

Since it was kind of a long day, I also got back on him in the afternoon and went for a hack with Jen Ruberto from Wire 2 Wire Thoroughbreds, which is who I bought Bingo from when he first came off the track. It was great to finally meet her in person, and Bingo loved having a buddy to hack with.

I also walked my Eventing jump course that day. I had entered Bingo in Eventing and Dressage – it was so tempting to enter Show Jumping instead of Dressage, but I knew that his sometimes very unimpressed style of loping over little show jumps was probably not going to score as well as his flatwork. The format for the disciplines at RRP is a little bit different from the standard. For Eventing you do a dressage test (this year it was Novice Test B) and then come out later to the XC field and do a jumping phase that is a mix of show jumps and cross country jumps – basically if you’ve seen a YEH competition, it’s just like that.

We had 5 show jumps to start, and then you just keep cantering and start the XC portion. At RRP they hold this phase on the Steeplechase Infield (the Cosequin Cove area, for those familiar with the Kentucky 5* course), which is on a bit of a slope and makes for an interesting challenge with a young green OTTB. To be honest, I thought I had my work cut out for me. A few of the jumps were a little intimidating for where he’s at in his training, particularly the gigantic upbank that was set going up hill with a log in front of it that was fence 3 of the XC portion. The course really covered all the bases of eventing, although they were kind enough to have us jump a faux ditch in the BN instead of the real one (granted, ditches are generally one of Bingo’s least-spooky things).

On Wednesday morning I was only about 4th or 5th to go, so it was still chilly when I got on Bingo to head down for dressage. He was feeling LIT. Like… he jigged halfway there. I have never felt him jig before in the entire time I’ve had him. So when we got to the warmup ring, I immediately went to work at trying to get him to relax. I bent him left and right, did some transitions, and encouraged him to try to loosen up his back a bit. It took the entirety of my warmup, but he finally took a deep breath and started to let go of some of the tension.

And bless him, he went in the ring and tried really hard to be a good dude. There was still a little bit of tension, and a few moments of wiggliness, but for the most part he was obedient and stayed with me. It was a fairly accurate and correct effort, and I was really happy with that. Mostly because I thought he showed a lot of maturity to come out of the barn feeling a bit like his tail was on fire, and was able to wrangle it, focus on the job he had to do, and deliver on what was asked of him. What more could you want from a horse at this stage of his training, at a huge venue like this, in such a big atmosphere? Gold star from me, and a 69+% from the judge.

We had our jumping phases early in the afternoon, and again were in the first handful of horses to go. I had found Bingo’s breeder a few months ago and invited him to come out to see him at RRP, and he showed up with his wife and kids. I’d also reached out a while back to Spendthrift Farm, who stands Bingo’s sire Bolt d’Oro, to ask them if they had any Bolt d’Oro swag, but their Marketing person is so nice, not only did she offer a goodie bag, she also offered to come out to RRP to bring it to me personally, AND she brought her big fancy camera with her. So we had quite the little entourage with us, and a personal photographer, as we headed out for the jumping phase. Having that kind of support and buy in from the racing industry is so so so important for events like this and for OTTBs in general.

Watching some of the horses go ahead of us, there was already a fair bit of trouble. One horse failed to make it past the SJ portion, getting caught out at the 2 stride. A couple others had issues at the bank. To be honest I really wasn’t sure what to expect from Bingy. He can be looky and careful, and he’s still really green, having done one Starter and two BN, and has never been in a situation remotely like this. I figured I’d just try to ride positively but also give him time to sort things out if he needed to. All I really wanted was for him to make it around and finish happily, I didn’t really care if we incurred issues along the way.

In addition to the jumping phase of Eventing being run in the YEH type format, they also gave us the YEH perk of allowing us to present our horses to the water for 30 seconds before we started our round. I’ve always loved this about the YEH classes, and I think it’s a great idea to let the RRP horses do it too. We have to remember, these horses are BABIES, and very inexperienced, and the goal above all else should be that they leave this experience more confident than they were when they arrived. It’s a competition, yes, but allowing them all a little bit of time to get comfortable with something scary before you ask them to start is just a good training practice, and will help make them better in the long run.

They told us we could let our horses school the water as soon as the competitor before us had gone through it, so that’s exactly what I did. I walked Bingy up towards it, and he was definitely looky about it. At first he wanted to stay a good 10 feet away, but after a little bit of walking back and forth parallel to it, he went “oh its just water” and walked right in. I made a small circle in the water, walked back out, walked in one more time, and then went across to the infield to wait for our cue to start.

Coming down the slope to the first jump, he was not at all focused on the task at hand. He was looking at the people, looking at the XC jumps, looking at the water, etc. So we got to the first vertical not exactly the straightest, and he jumped it fine, but it certainly wasn’t his best possible effort. Luckily as soon as we jumped that he went “OH, we’re JUMPING!!!!”. I sent him forward and he perked his ears up, and it was like game on. He jumped the next oxer beautifully…

then came around and absolutely beasted through the two stride. What a good brave boy. After that we just had one more show jump, which he also flew right over, before we headed out up the hill for our first XC jump.

He jumped the first XC jump great, then we had to come back down the hill toward near where jump 1 of the show jumps had been, and again I felt him sort of lose his focus. He hesitated slightly off the ground at that one, then we had to gallop across the SJ field and up to that gigantic bank. He again hesitated a bit off the ground at that one (which I didn’t blame him for really) but once he was up it I gave him a big pat, told him he was brilliant, and really sent him back out in front of my leg. That seemed to do the trick, because he ate the rest of it for breakfast. No more questions, no more second thoughts, he just flew around the rest and got more and more confident as he went. Well ok, he did step on the faux ditch. He was like wtf is this thing supposed to be? Not impressed.

After the water we had one more jump, then we were supposed to land and show an open gallop from there to the finish flags. As soon as I asked Bingy to go he really dug in and took off up the hill. It took me a second to stop him, but he seemed delighted with himself.

I figured no matter what the judges thought or how it scored, I was absolutely tickled with how good he was. He started out unsure, but when I told him he could do it he trusted me, and he tried to do what I asked, and he got better and better as he went. What more could you want?

As I was trotting back down the hill I went past one of the judges, Dorothy Crowell, and she asked me how long he’d been off the track because he looked great. She said she couldn’t score me as well as she wanted to because of some of the hesitation at a couple of them, but that he was spectacular in every regard and was a very exciting horse for the future. I really appreciated that, because it’s one thing to feel the potential yourself but another thing to have someone that experienced say it as well.

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After his round we went over and chatted with his breeder a bit before heading back to the barns. I have to say, it’s so nice to see racing connections that clearly care so much about their horses. They were very happy to see him, and to know that he’s doing well in a new career. I also got to learn more about Bingo’s early life and his dam/siblings, which is really fun too.

I had no actual idea what to expect from the scoring whatsoever. I saw one very good round while I was standing there, but as with anything subjective, so much of it is going to come down to preference. Yet by the end of day 1 of the Eventing, which was about half of the division, Bingo and I were sitting solidly in 4th place. One of the judges (Dorothy) loved him, and the other one, not so much. But come to find out after talking to many fellow competitors, the other judge seemed to not really love any of us. Her scores were across the board quite a bit lower. As long as it’s consistent, it works out just fine in the end, since the scores are averaged.

I will say, it was really nice to read the comments on the score sheet from Dorothy. She seemed to really go out of her way to be very positive and encouraging to all of us, and a couple of her comments were really quite helpful to me and will stick in my head for a long time. At a show like this, I feel like that’s exactly how the judging and comments should be.

To be honest, some of the scores and comments on the other score sheet were directly contradicting, so I sent both of the score sheets and video of the round to my trainer to get her thoughts. She agreed with Dorothy, and since she knows me and the horse best, we’re gonna let it stand at that.

Thursday was, for us, Dressage day. For the RRP Makeover the Dressage division format includes performing USDF Training Level Test 2, followed immediately by a demo/freestyle ride of your own design. You get up to 5 minutes and are required to: halt and salute at the beginning, show trot both ways, show canter both ways, and include a halt with immobility (this can include your first halt, or you can halt elsewhere). Other than that, they let you show whatever you want. Many people just come in and do Test 2 again, but others change it up to try to show off their horse’s strengths, especially if they have some confirmed movements that are of higher difficultly than Test 2 calls for. If you can do those well, you can earn a higher score. But if you do them badly, it can have a negative impact on your score. You have to be smart about which ones you choose to show, if any.

Truth be told, I didn’t learn Test 2 until that morning. I didn’t want to have multiple tests in my head, so I figured I’d look at it after the Eventing test (which I also didn’t learn until the day before… sorry I’m like this). It’s pretty straightforward and was mostly a matter of remembering which things happen at which letters, especially since it’s in a long court so everything feels like it takes 100 years. I had no real plan for what I was going to do for my freestyle portion, I figured I’d go in the ring and see what horse I had, and then make it up from there (I can feel every single Type A person cringing so hard at me through the screen right now).

By the time I got on for my rides, it was a balmy 80 degrees without a cloud in the sky. Much better weather for a relaxed Bingy, and that’s exactly what he was. He marched down to our warmup ring feeling great, immediately went nicely into my outside rein, and had very little tension. There was another horse in warmup that was really struggling to stay composed, so I only stayed in there long enough to do some walk, trot, and canter both ways plus a couple leg yields. Then I decided it really wasn’t going to get any better than that, so I went up to the in gate to wait my turn. Bingo, to his immense credit, was super chill about all of that, and stood quietly and happily at the in-gate, watching the other horses go.

We went in for our first test, and honestly I’m not sure I could have asked for much more. There were definitely some things that could have been better, of course, but he did everything I asked, when I asked. The only two things that really brought us down were the free walk and the stretchy trot circle – he’s really just now starting to want to stretch down, and it takes longer than one circle or one short diagonal to get him to do it. So those two things were a bit non-existent. He was also maybe a little bit flatter/quieter than ideal, in the heat. Otherwise it was a pretty accurate test, the geometry was good, he was very obedient, and he stayed nicely connected from leg to hand the whole time. What more do you want from a horse that was still racing a year ago?

I was super happy with him, and after I halted, the judge (Jodi Ely) said he was the most “finished” looking horse she’d seen so far over the two days of competition, his basics were excellent, and said “whatever you’re doing in your training, keep doing it”. I was incredibly flattered, and once again we have an instance of the judges at RRP being just so nice and so encouraging. It was a recurring theme throughout the weekend, and it means a lot. You guys know what it’s like training young horses… sometimes it can start to feel like a slog, and all you see are all the things that need to be better. To have someone recognize the effort and tell you you’re on the right track… sometimes that’s all you really need to put the wind back in your sails.

After that we had just a couple minutes to hang out and rest before we went to the ring next door for our freestyle portion. Now that I’d ridden through Test 2, I decided to start out the same way, but add in two of the higher level movements that he’s most confirmed in – the leg yield and the lengthening. I didn’t want to show anything I didn’t know for sure he could do really well, and those are his best two. So we added in a leg yield off the quarter line both ways, and a trot lengthening across the diagonal both ways.

I didn’t think he was quite as relaxed and fluid in that ring, particularly on the far side where there were some golf carts sitting under a tree. He came just a teeny bit out of my outside rein on that side… not sure if was noticeable to watch, but I could feel it. Regardless, he was really really good and stayed with me, and I felt like he did everything just about as well as he could have for where he’s at in his training.

Once again I really didn’t care how we scored or what place we ended up in, because Bingo had been an absolute star. The rest didn’t even matter. I had seen some very nice horses with very good rides and knew it was going to end up being a competitive division this year. That said, I did think he had a better shot of making the top 10 in the dressage than he did in the eventing.

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The way it works at the RRP Makeover is that the top 10 from each division come back to compete again on Saturday in the Championships, where everybody starts on a clean slate and you’re vying for the big prize money. I truly didn’t think we were going to end up top 10 for either, although maybe had a glimmer of hope for the dressage if he was good.

It took a while for all the scores to get finalized that night, but you could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw that we had hung on to finish 8th overall in the Eventing with 2nd place amateur, and 4th overall in the dressage with 1st place amateur (we got a 70% and a 71%). We were going to the Championships for both! Like… what??? I could have gone home a happy girl without a single placing to my name, but to end up top 10 in both of our disciplines and at the top of the amateur rankings was just absolutely unreal. What a horse Bingy is!

Of course, this also meant that while I had originally planned on going home Thursday night, we were now going to be staying through Saturday. Friday was an off day from competition – the people that hadn’t made the top 10 were welcome to stay and participate in clinics with the various discipline judges, if they wanted to. The people that did make the top 10 had a full day of other activities. We started off at 9am with a rider meeting, where they explained the formats of each discipline Championship, the schedules, different rules, etc. Then at 12:30 we had formal jogs in front of the vets and ground jury so that all of the horses could be cleared as fit to compete for the Championships. Since we made it for two disciplines we only had to jog once but I got to go with my earlier discipline group, which was nice. Less hanging around.

It was very cute to get to participate in Bingo’s very first formal jog and get to hear “Passed” before he even finished his return lap up the jog strip. And he only did a scooty spook at one flower pot, which honestly seems like a win considering how hard he was eyeballing them the entire time.

Since we got to jog fairly early, we had a couple hours to kill while we waited for the rings to open for arena familiarization, so Bingy got to spend a little time outside in a round pen.

For arena familiarization, we had to get into both the Stonelea ring and the Claiborne ring, neither of which we’d shown in as of yet. The preliminary Dressage competition had been down in another ring closer to the Rolex arena, but for the Championship it would be up in the main area next to vendor row, the concessions, etc. The Eventing Championship was a different format from the preliminary competition. Where the prelims were very much a YEH-style format, the Championship was basically an arena eventing round, with no dressage test, just a mix of show jumps and xc jumps in the bigger ring next to the one Dressage was going to be in.

All week long Bingo had not really been a fan of walking past those rings. They were really busy, really loud, and he thought the vibes were real bad. So I knew that getting into both of them during our arena familiarization hour was going to be super important.

I started in the ring the Eventing would be in, since that’s the one he’d taken most exception to during the week. The course had already been set, and we were allowed to go in and flat and let our horses see the jumps, but we weren’t allowed to jump anything. I walked him up to a few of the more wildly decorated XC fences (everything at this show was REALLY decorated, hope you like ferns and mums and mulch and pumpkins) and let him get a good look, then did a little bit of quick flatwork around the rail until I felt him take a deep breath, exiting before the ring got too busy (he is still pretty easily undone by a lot of horse traffic, so lingering isn’t always in our best interest).

Then I walked next door to the other ring where the Dressage was, let him walk around the outside of the ring for a while, then walked a lap each way around the rail, trotted a lap each way around the rail, and came out. He didn’t love all the vendor tents being right next to that ring, but he was trying to be good about it. I figured it would be what it would be… I was just delighted to be in the Championships at all.

Saturday morning dawned relatively disgusting. It was MUCH colder, dreary, and the leftover rain from the hurricane was making it’s way into Kentucky.

I was first to go in the Dressage Championship, and then near the bottom of the order of the Eventing, so that I would have a little bit of time between the two. I got on him 30 minutes ahead of my dressage ride time, which is more than I usually give, but I had a feeling that with the weather I might need more time.

I was absolutely correct. He was considerably more LIT on Saturday morning than he’d been pretty much any other day, and very very tense. It took me every bit of that 30 minutes just to get some of the tension out of his back, and get him truly connected from my inside leg to my outside rein. The canter departs were not good, and even the leg yield, normally his favorite, was sketchy. I had to just kind of chuckle to myself… this is horses. He’s young, he’s green, he’s now on day 5 of a horse show standing mostly in a stall, and the weather has done a complete 180. Can you really blame him?

By the end of our 30 minutes it was definitely improved, but nowhere near the horse I’d had on Thursday. No worries – I just wanted to go in the ring and give him another positive experience, no matter the result. What more did he really have left to prove at this point?

But bless his little Bingy heart, he went in there and he tried so hard to do his job. Was it more tense and less fluid than it had been the other days? Yes. But again there were no real bobbles, nothing even remotely tragic or disobedient, and it really was a decent enough test. For this round we were once again allowed 5 minutes to do whatever we wanted, as long as we showed the compulsory movements, and once again I really had no firm plan going in. I figured if he was really nervous we’d just take it all the way back to something simple and easy, but if he felt ok then we’d add in some harder stuff. He felt more and more settled as he went, so I did throw in our leg yields and lengthenings again, and a 15m circle. I showed less canter and less walk, because I felt like those were areas where his tension ramped up a bit more.

So, no, it wasn’t as lovely as it had been on Thursday, but nonetheless, I was really happy with him. The fact that he started out our warmup so incredibly on edge and was able to overcome that, stay with me, and go in the ring to still deliver an obedient performance… THAT is what makes him so exciting to me for the future. He has the right mental capacity for this sport, and the rest will come with time.

Even though I felt like it wasn’t our best work, we still finished 5th overall in the Championship, and retained our 1st place amateur position. Honestly, never in my wildest dreams did I even dare to imagine any of that, so I’m ecstatic to take that title home. Bingy however was less excited with the awards presentation, where we learned that ribbons on his head are a firm NO, but he was really thrilled with the victory gallop portion.

Unfortunately I had literally no time to bask in any feeling of success, because by the time we were done with the awards presentation and victory gallop for the Dressage, the Eventing was already starting.

At the riders meeting we had to declare whether or not we were riding Novice or BN, and if I’d known that the XC jumps were the same for both, I probably would have opted for Novice size show jumps instead of BN. He just isn’t as impressed by BN height show jumps anymore. Alas, I didn’t know that the XC was the same, so I chose the BN. But the good news is, the Novice went first, so that gave us a little more time to get to the ring. Which we needed, because by the time I went back to the barn and switched my tack, then walked back up to the rings, I was only a few horses out. I also hadn’t really learned the course yet and hadn’t had time to walk it, so… uh… that’s fine… no worrriiieeessss…

I thought the course design for this was really smart. You had a vertical to start, then an oxer to vertical line, and then jumps 4a and 4b were hay bales with a rail over it, so almost gave a bit of a XC/SJ hybrid feeling to start easing you into the XC portion. Then we had a little log to the faux ditch, a slightly bigger log, then around to a definitely much bigger and much more decorated/scary looking log, to a very decorated maxed rolltop, then one more show jump to check their carefulness before we were to gallop half a lap around the ring. A fun time in all regards, and it was fair while still also having enough challenge.

I had so little time to warm Bingo up that I jumped a crossrail, one of the hunter warmup jumps (it was the most decorated thing in warmup, with tons of flower boxes), and one SJ vertical before I had to go down to the ring and watch the person before me go. I was standing there asking people what number of strides the lines were, and just trying to make sure I knew where I was going.

When we went in he was definitely feeling a little bit wide-eyed, and truth be told I’d lost a bit of sleep the night before about that rolltop with all the ferns in front of it. Sometimes Bingo can be a little skeptical of things when they’re out of their usual context, and I honestly had no clue what he was going to think about XC jumps being in the ring, especially with how decorated and spooky they were. Sometimes his more careful side wins out over his brave side, especially with something new and different that he’s never seen before.

We picked up the canter and turned to the vertical at fence 1, and I felt him immediately focus past it towards all the hubbub down the hill towards the Rolex arena. He popped over the jump just fine, but tapped the rail with his toe and had it down. Bummer. BUT, to his credit, we came around to the line from 2 to 3 and he went “oh damn, my bad, I wasn’t really paying attention” and got right down to business for the whole rest of the round, cantering around easily and bravely and not touching anything else.

Again, I really really appreciated that from him. Mistakes are going to happen, but it’s how they react to them that tells you what they’re really about, and for him to make a mistake at the first one and then immediately lock in and focus rather than just keep making mistakes or falling apart – I loved that. It shows that he learns and he thinks, and those are incredibly important qualities.

While the knockdown at fence 1 pushed us down the order to finish 9th overall, 2nd place amateur, I really could not have been more pleased with him.

I mean honestly, what a horse. Superstar doesn’t even begin to cover it.

I knew that the RRP Makeover was going to be a really big ask. I very nearly did not enter at all, waiting until literally the very last day of late entries. I couldn’t decide what to enter, and stressed a lot about whether or not he was ready enough for this to be fair to him. He’d never been to an away show or an overnight show. He’s only shown at familiar venues. He’s never had to travel 12 hours each way, stand in a stall for 5 days, and be expected to perform like this day after day. He’s never seen atmosphere at a horse show as big and crazy as this one. I had no idea if he would lose his mind or not.

So for him to not only be just an all around very good and mature boy, but to also finish top 10 in both of our disciplines… wow, guys. Just wow. I still can’t think about it without tearing up a little bit. He tried his heart out for me.

We ended up walking away from the 2026 RRP Makeover with lots of ribbons, a good chunk of prize money, and so many new friends. This experience was just incredible, I can’t even fully put it into words. There’s a reason it’s known as the Happiest Horse Show On Earth. From the riders to the horses to the sportsmanship, I was just absolutely floored all week by what I was seeing. Getting to watch all of the different disciplines was so inspiring, and I have never in my whole life had such a good, wholesome, positive experience at a horse show. What RRP is doing here is incredibly special, and if you’re at all interested in Thoroughbreds, I implore you to put this event on your bucket list. If you can’t swing it as a competitor, they’re always in need of volunteers, and I promise you, you could learn a ton from scribing.

This was the horse show experience I didn’t know I needed. Over the past couple years I admit that my enthusiasm for the sport and horse shows in general has started to wane. I don’t always like the things I see happening or the direction things are headed, and it can sometimes make me question why I’m choosing to be a part of this. But ironically enough, spending a week at a show full of young green Thoroughbreds that are just trying their best, and the people that are just so happy to be there and so proud of their horses’ efforts – it’s like a breath of fresh air. I have never in my life seen so many happy tears at a horse show, or felt so thoroughly supported by everyone. We all truly just wanted to see each other succeed, and that’s what it should be about, at the end of the day. From the judges to the competitors to the volunteers and staff… it was really beautiful and what horse sports should always feel like. For those reasons (and this truly spectacular horse who tried so hard for me), this week will stick with me as one of the best weeks of my entire riding career.

I don’t know when I’ll have the chance to return to the RRP Makeover. They do offer Graduate classes for horses that have been entered in RRP before, so maybe we can make our return in one of those someday. For now though, Bingo is not for sale and I’m at capacity for horses, so there will be no new OTTB joining the ranks again any time soon to make the journey for the Retiring Racehorse division.

We made it home to Ocala safe and sound on Sunday night, and Bingo is enjoying a couple days off and then we’ll probably just hack for the rest of this week. He was pretty tired yesterday, and I’d say he’s more than earned a break. ❤