The members of our State of Jefferson Chapter have had the rare opportunity to be in touch with each other more this year than in previous years. Thanks to the merger discussions from last fall, and the resulting surveys, many of you stepped up and voiced your opinions. There were ideas about awards programs, social meetings, general meetings, and educational ideas. The one thing that most members seemed to agree on was the desire to continue to host a licensed show in Southern Oregon. The interesting thing is that the Siskiyou Chapter membership seemed to have similar opinions about what a dressage club can do for them.

Our club has a long history starting as the Cathedral Hills Combined Training Club 35 years ago and evolving into the State of Jefferson chapter of the ODS. There has also been a long history of hosting a licensed dressage show here in Southern Oregon. That history seems to have been suspended for the time being. Last year, we recognized a sizeable loss running the licensed show and could not take the risk of having another loss such as that one. In the licensed show’s date at the Expo Fairgrounds, the ODS had their League Championships show. Unfortunately the attendance was very low at the League Championships this year and that show had to cancel one of the judges and one of the arenas for the whole weekend.

It was confirmation that we did make the right decision to not host a licensed show this year. However, we had the proposal on our agenda to run a licensed show in 2011. There was extended discussion at the board meeting in May 2010 about having a licensed show in the near future at all. On one hand we had the need for local riders to have a licensed show to ride in, and on the other hand, we could not continue to make decisions that would risk losing large amounts of money. The board realized that a licensed show helps our local dressage economy in that the trainers have a local show to take clients and breeders have a place to showcase their stock. There is also the long standing reputation of our area in hosting a good competition to provide qualifying opportunities. Many of us have spent countless hours working at our shows, sponsoring classes and competing in them and the thought of discontinuing them was a sad realization. The vote was to not plan a licensed show for next year. There was talk of doing a smaller scale one day qualifier at a different location in the future, but that would depend on the rebound of the economy and the demand for a licensed show in this area.

On the bright side, our club has been making good use of our year:

Improvements to our webpage have been made by the generous donations of time and materials from our members and efforts of our volunteer webmaster Joni Hankin.

The board has been working together to keep the email list for our members as up to date as possible.

The club adopted a helmet rule for club sponsored riding events to help provide a safe riding environment for our members.

We have gotten together for DVD nites, our Christmas party, and a Pilate’s meeting.

We also have our regular club sponsored clinics with Jutta Schott that is free to audit. A July Bar-B-Que will be held during the Jutta Schott clinic to which all chapter members are invited.

As for horse shows, we have added a second League show to our calendar.

We are adding an awards program to recognize our members for accomplishments and hard work.

The biggest event this year will be our Rider Biomechanics Seminar with Sandy Howard. The popularity of this highly anticipated clinic is reflected in the waiting list for riders that developed very quickly. This will be the best educational event to hit the Southern Oregon dressage community in at least 15 years.

So in spite having to suspend the long standing tradition of hosting a licensed show, we are having a great year. It is a change in focus from having a huge amount of effort put into a licensed show to hosting activities that benefit our local dressage club members and help provide educational opportunities that are affordable and interesting. You could also say that we are more engaged in activities that foster a sense of community. It is encouraging to see guests and new members that have come to club functions to get a look at what we do. We have also made connections with more senior members that have not been heard from for a while.

So feel free to contribute, write a story for the web page, voice your opinion, come to a meeting or send an email! All these things make our club much richer than money in a bank account. Our calendar will reflect upcoming activities, so check it out.

See you soon!

Peggy Siders – President SJODS