What's Next..........The Decision.........

By then it was time for me to begin working the C-Fair Charity Horse Show. Managing that horse show gave me a little income to take care of my feed bills for a bit. That would take some pressure off even if it didn't generate enough funds to get me to nationals.

There's a lot to tell about that horse show and I will do that telling in its own series. But for now, I'm just mentioning the show because of it's relationship to getting this whole nationals thing figured out. This horse show provided a distraction from my worries so I didn't just dig myself a hole and give up on making it to Tulsa this year.

When I got everything wrapped up from the show, things didn't seem quite so overwhelming on the home front. I had money in the bank to pay for feed so I'd just kept on in the planning stages like I WAS making the trip. I guess you could say I was in some form of "denial." If I just kept getting ready to go.........I'd actually get there.

By this time Angie had decided that she was not going to make the trip to nationals. That meant Richard would not be going unless he got a load of horses to haul. This provided its own set of issues, I'd figured from the start I'd be traveling with them. If they didn't go, I needed to find someone else to travel with. Tulsa is a long trip to be taking on my own with a load of horses.

Actually, I am such a home body leaving home at all is a really big deal. I'd never leave the farm if it wasn't for horse activities. I've travelled more in the years I've had horses than the entire rest of my life. But taking a trip over halfway across the country by myself just does not sound appealing to me. Now I found myself wondering what in the heck was I thinking............ All these years I'd been dreaming about showing at the US Nationals and I never once thought about "that trip."

Now that I was faced with it, the whole thing seemed daunting. My last trip to nationals I had travelled with my recently fired trainer. It wasn't the most comfortable trip but there was security in having someone I knew in front of me leading the way. Now I was faced with traveling to a city I have never been and doing it alone.

I've had a number of people ask me why Dave doesn't make the trip with me. But with a herd the size of mine that's just not an option. Someone has to stay home and take care of Lindsay, the dogs and the horses. It's just not that easy to get someone to step into that role with a herd the size of mine so I don't think there's much chance that Dave will be my co-pilot.

I did have a couple of different friends who thought they could get the time off to travel with me. Neither of those worked out. Even if I did have someone to travel in my truck with me, I still would feel safer if I had another rig to travel with.

The closing date for entries was getting closer and closer. Dave and I had some time to think and to talk and we decided I should just go for it. I still had the money for the entries, we'd figure the rest out...........

When I began working on the entry forms, I realized that the fees weren't adding up to nearly as much as I had thought. It was somewhere around $1700 for both Rhet and Legs to show and that included one extra stall for a tack room. So I penciled in Gypcy to see what her fees would run, they turned out to be the cheapest of the bunch at just a little over $450.

That meant I could show all three horses for around $2200. Since I had only $2000 set aside, I called Dave (who was out job hunting) to see if we could scrape up the additional money. Then I finished off Gypcy's entries for real.

My entries for the US Nationals were in the mail before the deadline of Aug 18. The following week my checks cleared my bank so I knew they'd been processed. Since then I have received my official conformation. My entries were complete (which I know from my show management experience is NOT always the case) so all three horses are entered in the national championships. It's on to Tulsa in October!





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