Blog

2024 March News

by Chelsea Wesson

Hi everyone!

I hope this email finds you all well. We are busy behind the scenes for our active spring! If you’re on social media at all, you’ve likely seen club posts on all three of our upcoming events, but I wanted to run through all of them for the group.

March 23 – A Day with Horses at the Illinois State Fairgrounds – FREE ADMISSION

This centers around microchipping for horses. If you’d like to haul in your horse and have it microchipped, it is $45. We do have stalls available at $50 each if you need to spend more time. The stalls are only available from Friday evening until 10pm on Saturday. If you’d like to reserve a stall, please let me know as we only have access to one barn. Plenty of stalls are available at this time.

A saddle fitting demo will run in the Livestock Center from 10 am until roughly 4 pm. We have all club members participating, which is great. 

At the same time, a tack sale will also be running around the arena. It is FREE to set up to sell tack. Just give me a heads up that you plan to bring items. They just need to be horse related, but I might give on that if you really want to come sell something else. A braiding clinic will run around 2pm, and other demos will be held throughout the day. 

We’ll also have a little set up for Meet An Arabian Horse, so be sure to pass details of the event on to everyone you know! I’ve attached the event flyer in both a PDF format and an image. If you’re feeling motivated, print a few and drop them off at your local farm stores, tack stores, barns, whatever. We’d appreciate it!

April 20-21 – Springfield Lite Arabian Show + Centerline Dressage IceBreaker Schooling Show

The prize list is out and entries are open! 

Click to access 2024springfieldavsusef.pdf

May 23-26 – Region XI Sport Horse Championships & Pre Show

The prize list will be out soon. A preview of the schedule is available on our Facebook page. We always need help at this show. If you’re willing & able to step up and volunteer even an afternoon of your time in some way, we’d really appreciate it. 

As always, if you are planning on any events of would like to share any news with us, please do! You can always hit “Reply All” on this email to reach everyone, otherwise you can email me directly at chelseawesson@yahoo.com with anything!

Thank you to all of you for the support of these ideas! Here’s to a great spring for ARAB, Inc.! 

2024 January News

by Chelsea Wesson

Hi friends!

Thank you to everyone that came to our Annual Banquet last weekend! The meal was delicious, and thankfully the weather held pretty well for us! Once again, thank you to John Simpson & Marilyn Weber for their time and efforts on organizing all of it!

January is a fairly light month for the club, so I wanted to bring up the current hot button issue with the Arabian horse community. If you’ve been on social media, you may have seen the posts, or perhaps you’ve received an email about this.

In November, a group met in Ocala, FL to discuss the future of AHA. The easiest way to understand this is for you to read the article posted online last week. 

Forward To The Future

I also suggest reading the comments on Mary Trowbridge’s post about this as a little more information and thought processes are stated. It is a public post so should be visible to everyone. 

https://www.facebook.com/mary.trowbridge.338

It seems likely that this group will be submitting a resolution to the AHA Convention this year. If so, that resolution will require a 2/3 majority vote of delegates. ARAB, Inc. should have two delegates present, so this will absolutely be something we will need guidance on later in the year.

I would really appreciate hearing/seeing any thoughts on this. I would like this to be a Club Discussion, so please hit reply all if you would like to share your thoughts. I personally need more specifics from this group. If anyone has specific questions they would like answered, definitely share them with me. I can pass them on to the group to see if we can get more answers.

As always, I also encourage all members to reach out to our Regional Director, Tony Reid, with any thoughts or concerns you may have about this and all other topics. Ryan Chambers was present at the meeting in Ocala, so they should have a good perspective on this. 

Also, we will need a second delegate for convention this year. Convention will be in Reno, NV. If anyone is interested, please let me know. I plan to hold the vote for that earlier this year as I believe this could be a very important convention for all of us.

2023 December News

by Chelsea Wesson

Happy Holidays, everyone! I hope this finds all of you well this month!

First off, our annual banquet & High Point Award presentations will be here before you know it!

January 14th, 2024 – Noon – Cooper’s Hawk – Springfield, IL

If you plan to attend, please RSVP to John Simpson at jsnrhorse@prodigy.net by January 9th! 

We have set the date for a new club venture! On March 23rd, we will be holding a microchipping clinic at the Illinois State Fairgrounds. We will have the use of the Livestock Center and one of the barns in the 25 series. Stay tuned for more details (including activities beyond that!), but mark the date on your calendar now so you don’t forget! All horses showing at USEF events will need to be microchipped starting on December 1, 2024.

If you’re interested in helping at all with this clinic, please let me know. We’d like to make this an educational and useful day. A couple ideas are in the works, and I will keep everyone informed once we get closer.

On a similar line of thought, please remember that for all USEF shows going forward, your horse must have a USEF ID number. Basics on that can be found at https://www.usef.org/compete/resources-forms/horse-services

We are still busy at work planning our shows for 2024. The Springfield AVS will be first up on April 20-21 in Springfield, IL. It will be a similar format including the CenterLine Dressage IceBreaker Schooling Show, but the structure has been slightly adjusted to accommodate more rides over the weekend. The prize list will likely be released in January.

The Region XI Sport Horse Championship & Pre-Show will be held May 23-26, and plans are going well for it, too. Please note for both of our shows this year that we highly recommend getting your entries in to guarantee your ride times. This schedule has also been adjusted for 2024. The pre-show will remain the same, but the Regional portion will be different. One day will be devoted to sport horse in hand and under saddle, and the other two will be focused on dressage and western dressage. We hope this new schedule makes the facility work a little better for everyone!

I’ll also give a reminder for a few shows not hosted by our club but supported by us. The Region 11 Championship (non sport horse) will be held May 30 through June 2, the Midwest Charity show is scheduled for June 11 through 15th, and the Centerline Dressage Classic I & II is set for June 22 & 23. All will be held at the Illinois State Fairgrounds, and we encourage everyone to consider these shows! 

Thank you to everyone who helped make 2023 another great year for ARAB, Inc. I chat with members of other clubs and Regions quite often, and I am so appreciative of the group we have here! I hope to keep things moving forward in 2024!

As always, if there is anything you’d like me to share with the club or to share to a wider audience on our Facebook page, please let me know!

Chelsea

2023 November News

by Chelsea Wesson

Happy November, everyone!

Our Annual Meeting is THIS SATURDAY, November 11th! If you plan to attend I need to know TODAY (Thursday the 9th

). Right now, we currently only have 8 people attending, but I’d like to get a lot more for a club this size. PLEASE consider attending! It will be a great meal at Nancy’s Pizza, and the meeting itself should be fairly short. 

The Agenda for the meeting is attached. If you would like something added, please let me know today or tomorrow.

Results for the 2023 ARAB, Inc. High Point Program are due to Marilyn by November 15th. You can email them to Marilyn at mareweber1980@yahoo.com 

More Info ➡ https://arabinc.org/high-point

The ARAB, Inc. Scholarship is online and open for applications! The deadline is November 30th.

More Info ➡ https://arabinc.files.wordpress.com/2023/09/2023scholarshipapp_v1.pdf

Our Annual Banquet will be held on January 14th at Noon at Cooper’s Hawk in Springfield, IL. If you came last year, you’ll know you’re in for another amazing meal! Be sure to add it to you calendar now, and we’ll be asking for RSVPs as we get closer.

Hope to see more of you on Saturday,

Chelsea

2023 October News

by Chelsea Wesson

Happy October, everyone!

We have a few things to remind everyone of this month.

November 1st is the deadline for enrollments in the 2023 ARAB, Inc. High Point Program

! Results are then due to Marilyn by November 15th. 

More Info ➡ https://arabinc.org/high-point/

The ARAB, Inc. Scholarship is online and open for applications! The deadline is November 30th.

More Info ➡ https://arabinc.files.wordpress.com/2023/09/2023scholarshipapp_v1.pdf

The ARAB, Inc. Annual Meeting will be held on either November 11th or 12th. It will be held somewhere in Litchfield, IL, but I haven’t confirmed the location yet (thus the possibility of either date for now). As soon as it’s set, I’ll let everyone know the finer details. For now, please add the club meeting to your schedule for that weekend.

Our Annual Banquet will be held on January 14th at Noon at Cooper’s Hawk in Springfield, IL. If you came last year, you’ll know you’re in for another amazing meal! Be sure to add it to you calendar now, and we’ll be asking for RSVPs as we get closer.

The 2023 AHA Convention Resolutions are all available online. Please review them at your convenience. If you have any comments for any of them, please let me know or come to our meeting next month to discuss.

Read Now ➡ https://www.arabianhorses.org/membership/convention/resolutions/

In a shameless plug for the other horse organization I help run, the Arabian Hunter Pleasure Association is raffling off a brand new John Deere Gator

 during the 2023 US Nationals! You do not need to be present to win, and it includes money towards transportation. Tickets are $100 each or 6 for $500, and we’re only selling a maximum of 300 tickets. 

Learn More ➡ https://www.arabianhunterpleasure.com/product/john-deere-gator/1?cs=true&cst=custom

Thanks so much, everyone! I’ll be in touch once the meeting details are all set.

Chelsea