Showmanship

I maintain that showmanship is actually a sort of equestrian hazing ritual that we all must endure. Some survive and go on to ride, others are broken by it.

This is one of the most tragically boring classes to ever be invented (right up there with color classes, but at least those don’t take so ungodly long). In theory, it should teach the young rider how to handle her horse and be disciplined. Ha. Right. Instead, all it taught me was that ex-race horses prefer to walk circles rather than stand still and that my younger sister was more interested in what she could see in our mare Silky’s ear than what the judge was doing. Needless to say, once I got old enough to protest I managed to escape the horror of it all.