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September 2004

Greetings!

This time of year is always a little bittersweet for us. We are anxious for the coming fall, cooler temperatures, changing leaves, the Championship show and the "start" of the new show season or from the horse's perspective cooler temperatures, less flies, apples from the apple trees, fuzzy coats and maybe some time off. But, we are also sad to see the show season winding down and summer coming to an end. Before we get too sappy about it, there are still two more shows coming up as well as a number of clinics and chapter activities to plan for. We will be doing a lot of planning and revising in the upcoming months and are looking forward to getting some input from our members! Please read on for more information. This will be an important meeting!!

Attention All Members….Your club needs your input!!!

The next chapter meeting September 13th will be an extremely important one. Decisions made at this meeting will affect you! Please plan to attend. Your input is invaluable. Issues we plan to cover include the 2005 show season, the future of Dressage in the Sierra - the show, the possibility of adding another 3-star show to next year's schedule in place of Dressage in the Sierra, next years board of directors, the annual awards ceremony date and location, a chapter Christmas party and more. We need everyone's input so please, please try to attend!

Junior Championships

A huge congratulations to our junior members who qualified for and showed at Junior Championships this year!! A special congratulations to Troy Christensen who placed 9th at Second Level, Ciara Viola who was Reserve Champion at Training Level for 12 years of age and under and Jacki Dunt who placed 8th in the same division. Jacki was also part of a team at Training Level that took third place. Congratulations to all! Fantastic work! Please let us know if we missed anyone and we will pay tribute to you as well!

Dressage in the Sierra

Thank you's
Wendy, our hero! The first and foremost thing is an enormous thank you to Wendy Hays who was our local manager for the show this year. Wendy did an outstanding job. It was her first time managing a show and very impressive that she did such a wonderful job with a show of this magnitude. If you see her, please tell her thank you! THANK YOU Wendy!!!

Dressage in the Sierra Volunteers
Early morning on the Friday before the show, Steve and I met Alice Parker and Wendy at the storage facility to pick up the arena. After a couple rearrangements in the trucks we were finally loaded and made our way to RLEC for set up. We were just astonished to see all of the club members at the show grounds prepared to help with set up-and that was only the first day! - what a wonderful and welcome site!

Wendy reported that she had all the requested volunteer positions covered and that everyone reported happily to their "posts" throughout the show.

What a fantastic group of members we have! Thank you so much to everyone who took time out of your days to help out with the show. The following is a partial list of volunteers we were able to collect from our own observation and from Wendy. We apologize for anyone we've missed!

Carolyn Graebener	Amy Fulstone	Susan Ward
Erica Ward	Margot Ward	Seana Adamson
Beth Coffey-Curle	Ellen Bjorkman	Alice Parker
Ann Magee	Kathi Haworth	Julie Brown
Theresa Westover	Chrystal Main	Kerin Rowe
Madeline Zook	Zoe Martin	Sharon Grechan
John Stone	Ann Stone	John Stout
Libby Lovig	Annie Sweet	Linda Niday
Helen Wallace	Ray Mair	Jennifer Mair
Ellen Hodos	Jennifer Smith	Maria Hickey
Jon Hays	Martina Thiel	Charlotte Jorst
Jennifer Swinney

The show itself
Dressage in Sierra was a little bit different this year. Due to a decreased number of entries (very possibly because Junior Championships were on the same dates) we only had one show arena at this year's show. In previous years, there have been two arenas with riders showing in the indoor. We had booked 2 judges but since we only had one arena, riders were actually being judged and scored by 2 judges! Although scores tended to be a little lower, it was a great opportunity for riders to be judged in this way! We would love to hear how members felt about the experience. Please send us an email, if you have any thoughts you would like to share!

The show schedule was full with riders showing from early morning into the evening. Wendy reported that the show went very well and stayed on schedule both days. She also told us that the volunteers were great and everyone showed up for their respective jobs. The Saturday night reception was a lot of fun with lots of good food and some great upper level rides and freestyles. The weather even cooperated over the weekend with the exception of a short thunderstorm that lasted for about half an hour Sunday afternoon.

Results
We finally received the results of Dressage in the Sierra and they are posted on the site. We apologize for the delay but Connie was very busy after the show and it took a bit of doing for her to be able to get the results to us.

Just one more thing…
We probably should have put this on the web site prior to the show but since hindsight is twenty-twenty, we'll do it now and hope we remember again for next year. For all of our local shows we are trying to get the ride times from the show manager for posting to the web site prior to the show. With the exception of Dressage in the Sierra, we have been able to do this and hope to continue to do it as it seems easier for both the show managers and riders. We did have a couple members wonder why we didn't post ride times for Dressage in the Sierra on the web site. We would have liked to but… although this is a local show, Connie Davenport graciously manages the show. She is in California and in charge of several other shows that occur at the same time of year. She sets up our ride times and results and has her own system for getting ride times out for Dressage in the Sierra. We do plan to have ride times on the site for the September show and if we can connect with the Reno chapter for the Pumpkin Roll we will try to get times on the site for that show as well. We apologize for any confusion on this matter. Please feel free to email us if you have any questions. Ride times for the September show will be posted by September 16th.

September show

Lou and Mary Anne Christensen have graciously offered to manage the September show. This will be their third time managing this year!!! Thank you Lou and Mary Anne for volunteering to do our last show!

The premiums for the September show have been mailed out. If you have not received it or need copies we have them posted on the site under Show info. The show is Sunday September 19th at Clover Leaf Equestrian Center. Closing date is September 11, 2004. Show manager is Lou Christensen at 775-972-5408.

Pleasant Valley Fire

The "Andrew Fire" last week was a huge scare to many of us who live in the Pleasant Valley/Washoe Valley area. What started out looking like a puff of smoke, quickly turned into a huge fire with mandatory evacuations in many horsey neighborhoods. We know of quite a few members who had the awful experience of having to evacuate their horses, pets and homes. It's very heartwarming to hear how many people opened up their homes and hearts to help other people, and their pets. We hope everyone (including horses and pets) made it through the fire safely!

2005 Show Schedule

Jennifer Smith was kind enough to send us an email alerting us to the fact that the first 2005 show in April had been scheduled on the same dates as the World Cup in Las Vegas. Because there are quite a few people who would like to attend the World Cup, the date for the April show was changed. This show has been rescheduled to April 30th and May 1st at Franktown instead. Thank you Jennifer for letting us know!

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