Downeast Medal Finals

July 2022

Presented by Dover Saddlery

September 15-18, 2022

Visit our website for more information about Downeast. We welcome all feedback and suggestions: please email Ginger at ginger@downeastmedalfinals.com

Message from the President

What a great spring and early summer; it is hard to believe that it is July first! There have been a lot of shows, and lots more to come. Thank you to all of the many shows hosting our classes. Congratulations to those of you already qualified, and to those of you who aren’t, keep working on getting those points, we have an awesome show planned for you!

Please consider supporting our wonderful color program by placing an ad. Professionals and business owners advertise your businesses, parents and friends congratulate your riders. All information can be found on the ad tab on the website. We would like to get the ads in early as it is a busy summer for all.

Adults and Juniors please note the new rule to help you fill classes: If either the Adult or Junior classes fail to fill, at show management’s discretion, classes may be combined, with each rider jumping the respective height of their division, over the same course, with the judge pinning on the same card. The complete rule can be found on the homepage of our website.

New for this year: If a junior has won the Junior Medal Final before they age out of the junior division they may ride in the Junior Medal Final again. If this rider wins the finals twice they then need to wait to compete as an adult.

New for this year: We will only be accepting mailed in entries. The closing date will be August 30th, so as long as they are postmarked by the 30th you are fine. Please allow 1 week for processing. All information must be on the entry blanks. All classes, warm ups, and rider/trainer information. If it isn’t, the entries will not be accepted. A check must accompany all stall reservations as well as your entries, sorry no exceptions. We will have the prize list up on the website in August, keep your eyes peeled. It will be announced on Facebook.

New for this year: Please be sure to pay for your hay/shavings/mats when you order them from the vendor McCarthy Enterprises (207-474-8952). Be sure to order early so they will be at your stalls when you arrive. There will be no payment opportunities on the show grounds as there were in the past.

New for this year: Three $1,000 educational scholarships along with all of the other scholarships. Check the website for details and deadlines!

Horsemanship riders: Start studying! Read the educational articles in all the newsletters and make sure that you have some good general horse knowledge. The awards in the class include a monetary credit on your entry blank as well as some other great things!

Team Challenge: All junior riders can enter. We will then do a random draw for 6 team members (4 riders and 2 alternates) on 6 teams. There will be one representative from each division on each team. Captains will be the senior riders on each team. Everyone must show up at the team meeting or forfeit their chance to participate.

We are excited to have all of our popular classes back again this year. The Derbies, Hunter Futurity, Team Challenge, Pro/Am and Horsemanship. Our sponsors have once again outdone themselves with the awards. Please be sure to support them and tell them that you are part of the DMF family.

Have a great July, enjoy those rides!!

-Ginger

How Horses Keep Cool

BY EQUUS | MAY 27, 2022

You'll be better able to keep your horse comfortable in hot weather if you keep in mind how his body regulates its temperature and keeps from overheating.

You know just from standing close beside your horse that he, like every living animal, generates heat. But have you ever considered where that energy comes from? Just going about the daily business of staying alive, the cells of the body convert the sugar glucose into energy. But the cells do not use their fuel very efficiently–only a portion is turned into useful energy; the rest becomes waste heat.

A horse at rest generally maintains a body temperature between 99 and 101 degrees Fahrenheit (F). But when his muscles are called into action, be it for a cross-country run or a stroll to the water trough, the cells begin to metabolize glucose at higher rates, which in turn, increases the amount of excess heat produced.

“The harder a horse works, the hotter he gets,” says David Marlin, PhD, of Hartpury College in Gloucester, England, an equine exercise physiologist who helped prepare standards of care for horses competing in the 2008 Olympic equestrian games in Hong Kong. “It’s the intensity of the exercise that matters, not simply the running speed. The way we normally define how hard a horse is working is by heart rate.” Running at high speeds or over long distances, of course, significantly increases a horse’s heart rate, but so does slower work in soft footing, for example, or carrying heavier weights, or working too hard when the horses is generally unfit.

A horse may safely experience a temporary climb in body temperature to as high as 103 degrees F. But to prevent his body temperature from spiking to dangerous levels, any extra heat must be dissipated. That process begins with the blood, which heats up as it travels through the working muscles, then carries that extra heat out to the skin.

“Blood is equivalent to the cooling fluid in a car,” says Marlin. “Cooler blood is flowing to the muscles, picking up heat, taking it to the skin and getting rid of it, then circulating through the muscles again. This is similar to cooling fluid coming from the car radiator, going to the engine, picking up heat and going back to the radiator to get rid of some of the heat before going round again.”

If the outside air is not too humid and the temperature is cooler than the horse’s body temperature, the excess heat will simply radiate into the outside air; a smaller amount will also be dissipated as the horse breathes, as he exhales heat and draws cooler air into his lungs. “About 85 percent of the heat loss will be through the skin surface all over the body, and about 15 percent through the respiratory tract,” Marlin says.

Continue reading on the Equus Magazine website.

Copious Solutions - DMF Sponsor

Thank you to Copious Solutions for sponsoring Downeast Medal Finals!

Wow! We had such a great time last year. It was our first Downeast Medal Finals show as a sponsor. It was such a tremendous experience to see so many young riders competing. You could see how much training and dedication these young equestrians put in. It was a great show even with the uninvited thunderstorm on Saturday.

All of us here at Copious are very excited to be sponsoring the 2”6” Copious Solutions and Mason “Noah” Dixon $2500 Hunter Derby and the Copious Solutions Horsemanship Challenge again this year. Truly an honor! We are looking forward to another great show and look forward to seeing everyone again in September.

Copious Solutions specializes in business software solutions for small and medium size organizations. We employ consultants with years of industry experience specializing in financial, sales, supplier, materials and manufacturing management. We are proud to partner with long-standing customer Absorbine to bring you the Horsemanship Challenge. An Absorbine gift basket, as well as a financial award, will be given to the winners of each age group in this class. Copious Solutions has been supporting Absorbine and their business software for many years. We are so happy to have such a great client donating awesome gifts for the show. Look for us at the show. We will be the people in the Copious, Absorbine, Downeast Medal Finals 2022 shirts!

We really enjoy sponsoring this show and working in the equine health market space. We want to keep doing what we do, so we can continue to help young aspiring equestrians. Stop and talk to us at the show. If you own or work for a small or medium business, stop and see us. We have years of business software experience we love to share. You might be surprised to learn what modern software can do for your company!

cwise@copiouserp.com

www.copiouserp.com

508-232-7954

Rider Spotlight - Sage Pound

At the 2021 Downeast Medal Finals, Sage Pound won the Downeast Medal Finals Pro-Am and was on the winning Team Challenge team! Let's learn about Sage!

"My name is Sage Pound and this past show season was my last junior year and my first Downeast Medal Finals. I grew up playing soccer and running track, but didn’t start riding until about two years ago when we went into lockdown for the pandemic. My mother Meghan Oathout is the trainer at SeaHorse Stables, located in Belfast Maine. I started going into work with her and doing my zooms for school at the barn and riding everyday. I immediately fell in love with the sport and began spending all my time at the barn. I currently lease a horse named Harvey who I learned to ride on and then showed with for the past two years. My first show season I competed in long stirrup and then this past year moved up to the modified juniors. I showed about every other weekend and qualified for both Downeast Medal Finals and New Hampshire Medal Finals. I was also NHHJA high point equitation rider of the year for the modified juniors. Along with riding, I also help with the therapeutic riding program at SeaHorse.

Although I enjoyed all the shows I did last season, Downeast Medal Finals was by far my favorite. It had such a fun community feel while still having great competition. My mom and I entered the pro-am class together on Harvey, and won. I was so excited to share this with my mom because of our mutual love for horses and all that goes with them. It was great to be able to share this experience with her.

I have been working at SeaHorse Stables and saving up money to attend Husson University in the fall, where I will be focusing on a psychology major. I plan on using this major to help me become a therapeutic riding instructor in the future. This summer I will be showing Harvey as an amateur and hope to qualify for DMF again!"