Jumping through hoops

The season for riding and driving is winding down for most of us. We’ve had an amazing early autumn, with the best stretch of outdoor riding (and strangely, haying) weather since early June.

It’s been another doozy of a year for those organizing and participating in horse shows and clinics. The provincial reports in this issue give a good summary of how folks adapted and continued to make things happen safely throughout the second year of the pandemic. Nationally and internationally, the approach was similar, but on a grander scale.

Alison King spoke with Olympic groom Katie Hess, in “Grooming for Gold,” about her experience in Tokyo with dressage team rider (and Nova Scotian) Brittany Fraser-Beaulieu. The fact that an Olympic Games actually happened in 2021, albeit a year late, is a bit of a miracle. The fact that the stringent COVID-19 protocols necessary to facilitate it all barely got a mention illustrates just how adaptable and flexible humans really are.

In my other job as an agricultural fair and fairgrounds facility manager, we went from hustling to reopen for horse shows on the first of May (after having been shut down for a year) to lockdown on the day the facility was ready to roll. Roughly nine weeks later, the first horse stepped onto the indoor arena footing. From there we had gathering limit restrictions, followed by expansion into zones of 150 persons, with each zone requiring its own access doors, bathrooms, and food service. The exciting announcement that we would be moving to Phase Five, the final phase in Nova Scotia’s reopening plan, on Sept. 15 (two days prior to the start of the 256th “modified” Hants County Exhibition), was then reconsidered and withdrawn on Sept. 14. BUT, because the exhibition pre-sold tickets (for our Phase Four zones) we were given the option to operate with proof of vaccinations and avoid the extra staffing and complications of coping with Phase Four zones. We had two days to share that news – which in some cases went over like a lead balloon. My broad shoulders and ever-thickening skin came in handy.

Someday another manager may find a heavy, dusty binder full of reams of paper operating plans and will wonder what in the heck went on in 2021. Without a doubt, the pandemic has been responsible for the death of a lot of trees.

So, as we get ever closer to a full two years of COVID-19 hoop jumping, I have made an observation. Yes – there is a small, vocal minority who are angry, and feel ripped off and controlled by public health restrictions and requirements. That’s for certain. But the rest of us tend to be happy and grateful for what we can do. All the nit-picking and worrying about tiny details have, for the most part, disappeared. What may have triggered mass outrage a couple of years ago, more often than not, now results in a shrug. Maybe camaraderie, a willingness to work together, and the desire to just have some fun is the new normal? Or perhaps we are all too tired to sweat the small stuff?

Either way that’s a pandemic win. Have a good, safe winter.