Reply #28

but then the meaning became clear.

The 1%ers you see riding in competition (really, passengers in competition) have very little to do with caring for or preparing the horse for competition.

It's the behind the scenes, underpaid lackeys who muck out, feed, water, groom, tend to illnesses and injuries and actually train the horse that make the competition.

The dressage queens are as involved in dressage as, say, the beauty queen who reads the 6pm world news involved in journalism.

I don't doubt Romney's, or Shatner's, love for riding. But I question how much of it is ego. She loves what it does for her. Would Romney still love her horse if he got fed up and left her eating dirt one day? Or if she had to ride in anything less than perfect weather on something less than a perfect, and perfectly groomed, arena?

How many winters would her love last if she was lugging hot water from her kitchen to a barn at 5am in 15 below, or through hip-high snow during a blizzard, and then mucked out and had to drag the muck bucket out to the manure pile buried under a snow drift?