By Ashten Logue
Recently, USEF emailed their members regarding increases in membership fees. In my middle-class hunter/jumper training facility in Northeast Ohio, I predict I will be met one of two ways by clients tomorrow. The clients with a bigger show budget will not think twice about the increase, and those pinching pennies will complain that this $20 increase will keep them out of the show ring next year. Once again, I will feel unrealistic guilt as a trainer from an industry that expects us to make other people’s hobbies affordable.
“Noting that the membership fee structure has not changed in more than eight years,” the email clearly states. I have raised my rates multiple times in eight years. No one goes without a raise for eight years, even if it is just a cost-of-living pay increase. Let’s not talk about the increase in hay and grain in the last decade, which again, I completely stand behind. Because we all know, fuel is not cheap!
USEF is well within their rights to raise fees. On the flip side of the USEF coin, your members hate feeling nickel-and-dimed to death. We all wish you and USHJA would kiss and make up post-divorce and combine all your fees. Going to the show office on Sunday should not always be a surprise after additional USEF, USHJA, Drug Fees, etc.
I am far from wealthy, but I fully understand the truth that the cost of everything has risen substantially in recent years, and we need to adjust. I also understand what it is like to pay all the overhead that comes with running a business and still wanting to give back where I can.
Is there another option USEF? Why do we pay a membership fee to later be charged more fees? What if we thought outside the box a little?
One thought I had was, why not pay a larger annual membership fee and have no fees at the show? Let’s run through an example of how this could work.
The current fee is $80 annually, and say a USEF member goes to 10 shows a year, where they pay an additional $20 in fees at each show. That’s $28 per show. At every show, your members feel they are being double-billed for something that should be covered already in their membership to USEF.
What if, instead, USEF charges $200 annually with no fees at the office at the end of each show? So 10 shows become $20/show, 20 shows become $10 each, and you can probably charge more annually without any complaints. You could probably charge $300 annually, and its possible more people will horse show.
And there’s another fee we don’t understand—the drug fee. Nothing annoys me more than seeing a sold-out horse show but never once seeing a drug tester. I know we cannot test them all, but if we are paying for it, why not test the Champion and Reserve of each division? While there are surely dozens of excuses as to why this is not feasible, there is always a show vet at rated shows.
Inevitably, there is a steward staring at their phone more than the actual competition. I am sure someone much more creative than me can come up with a way to do better. I am positive there are ways to drug test more horses, because at the end of the day, the welfare of the horse is supposed to be our number one concern.
I am one of the few that is against the unrealistic expectations that we can make horse showing affordable to all. Let’s be honest, they don’t call racing The Sport of King’s for nothing. The hunter/jumper industry, especially, is a luxury sport. That will never change.
I don’t believe we should make it cheaper for those fighting to stay in it year after year, but we do need to make members feel appreciated and heard, with an expectation of transparency when it comes to fees. And we would love to see our fees going to fund fresh eyes from educated stewards and more of those people with the messenger bags and specimen cups that we sometimes rarely see at shows.
I am well aware that I do not understand the ins and outs of what it takes to run an organization as big as USEF. But I have also watched our local show organizations dwindle in numbers and die out when they refuse to embrace change and make their members feel appreciated.
Sometimes, the old ways need to be updated, and good enough is not always good enough.
Ashten Logue has been running ALL Equestrian, a small hunter/jumper facility in Northeast Ohio, since 2011. She lives on-site with her husband, Greg, and two teenage sons, Mason and Chance. Her training philosophy is “Make Goals, Not Excuses.”
