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[Ripley]

Hey guys,

Due to the school year starting, I have noticed a slight activity drop. I know we are going to have some issues, but don't want members to feel as if they have to start getting rid of horses in order to stay active.

Starting in Y16 we are requiring only first of the year workouts and workouts for specific HOTY races. Please click here to see which races require workouts.


Obviously, this is already an improvement on prior seasons, but if we need more give let me know here.


Do we want to lose the rapid pace we had during the summer in favor of a slower racing season during the school season?

Instead of two race weeks in one RL week, do we want to do one race week per RL week?

Or do we want to go faster during weeks where there is no required workout and slow during weeks that do?

[S u N f r O s T ~]

It's most difficult to keep up with the pace during the latter part of the season because that's when all the big championship races that require workouts appear to be clustered. During three year old classics it's a bit difficult as well because it's required almost every week to have a workout, but otherwise the early part of the season is perhaps the easiest part of the season to get through.

I think we should go slightly slower than two weeks per one RL week, but if we end up with two weeks in one RL week that's good too. The main concern is just having enough time to update pages in between weeks.

Also, for series, I've realized that it is wearying to have to write a workout for each leg. I understand and support the importance of that, but sometimes I really wish we could have a universal one-workout-for-whole-series rule. Maybe instead of workouts written for the second and third leg, if a horse participates in all three, there can be a tiny written update like a workout report?

[Cruisey]

I do agree with Frosty on the one workout for the series. Even though I wasn't in school when the major 3yo series were going on, I still found it hard to find enough muse for my workouts for the required legs. I don't mind the rapid pace as long as they are undercards. If there are a lot of HOTy races requiring workouts, I think going slower will help with getting workouts done relatively on time. Around Breeders Cup time I think it would be good to go slower that way stables with a large amount of workouts can be done and not be overwhelmed when the time comes (does that make sense?)

[Cavallo]

I would be okay with doing one workout for series and slowing down is okay, since we made up a lot of time in the earlier months..

[LK]

I like the idea of slowing down the races for big series such as the three years olds and the Breeder's Cup, but I would also like to speed it up during the down times. I feel like I may not be the only one super excited to get yearlings running and the weanlings running here soon as well. A year for a year is just too long :P I do like Frosty's idea of having one (long) workout required for each series, as well as smaller workouts and/or possibly articles for the other legs?? I think this may take a lot of the time required out of the HOTY races while still keeping it interesting enough for everyone else and easier for the judges to decide.

[creativecause]

My issue or what looks to be on upcoming issue, is time. I rarely have any of it due to the massive amounts of homework loaded on me on top of work, and I can't just stop doing homework or cut back my hours at work because I may (nothing is final yet, and I've got 1 of 2 parents on my side) end up keeping Donut... which means I get to pay for the majority of him. There's a long story behind this so I'll try to abridge it to the best of my abilities. Basically I was supposed to send him back at the end of August, but he was still rather skinny for my liking and we decided to start trying to fatten him up some. The lady I got him from was perfectly okay with us keeping him through September and fattening him up. Well he's still rather skinny and to make matters worse the place I got him from... well its bad. She ran out of hay about a month ago so she basically put all her horses out to pasture. The pasture is grazed down to nothing, thank god she got some hay recently. This woman owns way to many horses and has about 100 out there and really only needs 50 to run her horse camps. She doesn't put a whole lot of effort into it and I had heard some bad things about what was going on out there and went out there last weekend to see for myself. Every horse but about five out there has their ribs showing, a solid twenty have obvious signs of having worms, two of them have ulcer type things in their eyes, and one went blind from it the other's eye is swollen shut and is obviously not being well taken care of. She's feeding them crappy, moldy hay. Their water troughs are all bone dry and the nearest one is all the way up at the barn and it's small and hardly any of them go up to drink form it. Five had halters on their faces that were too tight (my friends and I removed all of them) and some horses had fur rubbed off due to this. A foal out there had a halter on way to tight, which is downright irresponsible to leave a halter that tight on a foal knowing full well they are still growing. On top of that this foal has cuts and wounds that are infected. Some of her horses feet look awful, she has a horse out there that is lame on all four feet because all four of her hooves are cracked. One horse out there has ring bone and she's doing nothing about it. Everything is sort of a mess and I don't have the heart to send Donut back to that, especially knowing that hes not an aggressive horse so he doesn't fight for his food and he eats too slow so he doesn't get much. Currently he's in a pen by himself because of this, and I know she wouldn't put him in a pen by himself even if I told her to. She wouldn't because she doesn't care. To give you an idea of how he looks right now compared to how he looked when I got him:
This is from day one:

it's a bit difficult to really tell how skinny he was here but you get the general idea. He had no top line, nearly every rib was visible and you could cleary see the vertebra on his butt, and his hips were very prominent.

this was taken earlier today:

He's put on quite a bit of weight since but he still stands to gain about 125-100 pounds, his top line isn't totally filled out quite yet.

So far we plan to keep him through the winter though I haven't asked the lady if its okay yet (keep your fingers crossed). 
I'm going to try to stay active but with my upcoming roster and doing yearly workouts for every horse. I can't make any promises, I may have to reduce my stable and it sucks but I can't do much about it. If I can't find time to do workouts it hurts my horses. And I know some of them are meant for more than being unraced because I can't get workouts done. 
(sorry the pictures are huge :P )

[Kenren]

I just want to throw out there that though the annual workouts will take a chunk of time, we generally have a couple of weeks between years to work with. Also not being able to get works done after that doesn't mean they won't be able to race, just that they won't be able to run in the workouts requiring races. And there are tons of HOTYs in that category. That said, I'm not really picky I guess. I don't mind things going slowly, but I don't want things to drag, if you know what I mean? Like, can we can give more time for workout weeks, but still specify a deadline where things will run regardless of which works are done? We've done that in the past, and if we give ample time it should motivate people to push through and get the work out.

[Ripley]

Things We've Changed/Modified

1. We should go to one workout per series. I'll make the changes to the workout schedule as soon as possible. Out of fairness for those that have already done workouts for the Youth Challenge/Turf Challenge, workouts should still be mandatory for the last legs of the juvenile series this season.


2. We will have a fluidly changing format for time. Fast when there are major down times and slow during the 3yo classics and at the end of the year. So expect quickness in the early spring season, middle summer and early fall. Things will slow down late spring, early/late summer, late fall and winter. Plus when life gets hectic for everyone. We tend to sync up those hectic times lol

Things We Need To Adjust Still

1. Deadline for workouts the week of race? How much time should be given?




creativecause: Like Kenren said, we usually have a lot of time for workouts between years. Once you finish those, you would have no workouts to do for the entire year unless you entered the races on the list I posted first. It should truly be easy from a lack of workout standpoint to keep up and wouldn't require you to sell horses off. If you still felt that way, maybe return horses you were leasing or retire some before you sell? You've built up too strong a roster to just give to someone else.

[Isabelle]

I generally don't have the time constraints that everyone has, so I can't really weigh in on this much. Also since I won't really be racing next season, I feel I also shouldn't really speak about it. I will say however, that my running of the races will probably bump up. So you can probably count on me to run more than I do now, so that might free up a bit of time for some to do a workout instead of running races, for instance.