Y'all.
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I went to watch a local barrel race a few weeks ago. And I watched some of the folks do what felt like thirty thousand time onlies, lope around the filed for freaking hours, then have their kid run the horse in the youth, then they would run it in the open, their kid would also run it in the open, and they'd then let other people run the horse.
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It just made me shake my head and cringe.
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Every horse has so many runs in them. Can we get the maximum amount of runs by caring for them properly? Absolutely. Can we decrease the number of runs the horse has by not caring for them? Also yes.
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Once your horse is seasoned and ready to go, why are they running all those time onlies? In my opinion, TOs or exhibitions are for people who are seasoning young horses or training horses. Occasionally, pulling your open horse through one if they've gotten off track and you need a test run without paying an entry fee.
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If you're wanting to enter in multiple classes then roll your time. Save your horse. Especially if you have goals bigger than your local jackpot. It's a calculated risk every time we run our horses, so weigh that wear and tear on the horse, the potential for injury against the reward.
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And seriously, just think about the horse. This running them multiple times at a single race with multiple jockeys and never letting them have a minute to settle down is what causes blown up barrel horses. It causes horses that hate their job. It causes the next person who gets that horse to have to spend years calming their mind down.
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Perhaps this is more of an issue at local lower level shows, but I just feel like running a horse into the ground, no matter what level you're at, is poor horsemanship. It's one of the reasons that our sport gets so much flack, and I'll be completely honest every time I see people doing this I lose respect for them.
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