Show bill goofs can be nightmares

Equestrian event show bills are a key promotional tool for horse shows. They're not just for counting down till our own classes take place on the show grounds during actual events.

Yeah, we knew that.

Here’s what many people do not know about horse show bills.

These documents generally contain several essential points, and they need to be correct. Participants, attendees, and promoters rely on show bills for basic facts about upcoming horse shows.

Equestrians, riding instructors, horse trainers, tack sellers, traveling vendors and others pore over show bills to determine which events they choose to attend.

As an equestrian columnist, I frequently collect show bills as references (and often publishable images) for event roundup articles in our region.

Here’s what makes me tear out my hair, when it comes to show bills. I’d bet others agree.

Today I published one of my weekly event roundup pieces, including tons of show bills and event flyers for horse shows, training clinics, trail rides, and other horse happenings in our region.

Before completing my article, I spent an inordinate amount of time, patching holes in various horse show bills.

(My publisher doesn’t pay me enough to do that, but I have occasionally tried to help a few equestrian colleagues fill in the gaps. Still, because space is limited, the most unreadable or incomplete show bills are unlikely to make it into such articles at all.)

1. One show bill indicated the event would be held on Saturday, the 8^th. Unfortunately, June 8^th falls on a Sunday this month.
2. Two show bills did not list the locations at which the horse shows would be held.
3. Three show bills included no street addresses for their event venues.
4. Four show bills misspelled key words, such as “beginning,” “jackpot,” “sponsored,” and “Wednesday.”
5. Five show bills omitted any contact telephone or email information.

Perhaps worst of all, far too many horse show bills contained so many lines of tiny type that they were nearly non-reproducible and almost undecipherable when published online.

This need not be so.

In fact, I recently wrote a book (published a few months ago) to help equestrian event hosts, managers, and publicists to draw participants to their horse happenings.

Having spent decades working in public relations and advertising with and for several major corporations (Abbott Laboratories, Bristol Myers, Caterpillar, ITW, Johnson Controls, etc.) and agencies, first as a PR executive and later as a freelancer/consultant, I couldn't stop focusing on ways professional business principles might help to increase visibility of events in the horse industry.

With this in mind, I broke down several of the most applicable areas, targeting them specifically for equestrian applications.

This book, titled 25 Top Tips for Promoting Your Equestrian Event: Get the Herd Out, covers many of these principles and even contains a chapter on creating show bills. That section includes a show bill checklist, making the process as simple and straightforward as possible.

25 Top Tips for Promoting Your Equestrian Event: Get the Herd Out is available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books a Million, and plenty of other booksellers.

Hope that helps.

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Just bought rodeo tickets. Where do I send the bill?

The meter is running, and I’m growing less interested by the minute.

A popular equestrian expo has graciously offered me a media pass again this year, which saves me about $30 for three-day admission. Let’s not talk about the travel, lodging, and other expenses.

Today, at the urging of a bunch of equestrian friends, I jumped on the computer to order tickets to the evening rodeo at this event. (The rodeo tickets are not included in the media pass.)

(Never mind that I’ve written HUNDREDS of articles about this expo in the past few years. I've even published stories about the rodeo.)

Although I’m not a huge rodeo fan (and that’s another story altogether), I do enjoy the horses and the specialty acts that are often part of the show.

(Never mind that I’ve seen the very same rodeo about a dozen times for the price of a county fair admission, ranging from $7 to $10.)

This particular rodeo will probably include a tribute to its late founder, Bob Barnes, whom I met several times and personally enjoyed as a fellow horse lover. It’s also likely to feature a few bonus equestrian performances.

The rodeo tickets are priced at $20. (Nosebleed seats are a bit less. Kleenex, of course, is extra.)

Here’s the kicker.

The event organizers, who used to sell the rodeo tickets through their own website, now offer them only through Ticketron.

Heads-up, rodeo fans. It’s a 15-step process, and it takes about 30 minutes.

1. I went to the Ticketron site and found the seats I wanted.
2. So I tried to order the tickets.
3. The website redirected me to an account creation page.
4. I created an account, complete with a log-in, my email address, and a password.
5. Then I tried again to order the tickets.
6. Ticketron put me in a whirling / waiting pattern, which lasted 12 minutes, while sporting a message that said something like this: “Do not leave or refresh the page, or you will have to start all over.”
7. After 12 minutes, Ticketron bumped me off the site.
8. So I tried again.
9. Finally, the rodeo ticket ordering screen popped up.
10. I entered my credit card information.
11. Then Ticketron sent me to a credit card verification site.
12. At last, I saw the blessed “order received” message.
13. I clicked to open a pop-up ticket image.
14. Whoa! I actually printed my ticket.
15. I filed my rodeo ticket in a safe place, so I won’t have to do it all again.

The $20 ticket actually cost $26.30 – after a $4.35 service fee and a $1.95 order processing fee. What!?!

Giddy-up. Let’s go.

Honestly, I am not exactly giddy about this whole process.

Although I am excited to gather with my friends in a few weeks and enjoy a night out at a horse-themed event, I’m madder than a bull in a rodeo chute at what it took to get there.

All told, I spent half an hour, just trying to order tickets to attend the rodeo at an event I am already covering. Wish I could apply my billable rate for the ordering ordeal.

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Rodeo Bull Riding by Beat0092 – MorgueFile

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Y is for Yearning for Youth

Y is for Yearning for Youth.

Yesterday, we were all younger. And young riders do tend to bounce right back, even if they tumble from their horses. The rest of us simply crumble.

The late celebrity cowboy and songster Roy Rogers has been widely credited with this pithy saying: “When you’re young and you fall off a horse, you may break something. When you’re older, you splatter.”

Oh, yes.

We who are a bit past our youth are not yellow. We’re just not quite ready to go all the way yonder, when our horses refuse to yield.

The Mane Point is participating again in the April A to Z blogging challenge, posting daily with alphabetical entries.

For this year's A-Z event, a month of posts will offer Turfy’s A-Z Rules of Horsemanship, with all due apologies to the original Murphy of Murphy’s Law,  which basically said, "If anything can go wrong, it probably will."

Horse lovers may have heard some of these uncannily true, yet often ironic, statements in various forms in the past. Or not.

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Turfy’s A-Z Rules of Horsemanship

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