Switching from Showing to Riding School?

Has anyone switched from showing to riding school on a regular basis? 

I spend a lot of time hand showing my horses and it really just bums me out when I see show results and over half of them didn't end up with a stat gain. It almost makes it feel like it just isn't worth it anymore. So I have been considering doing riding schools daily instead. I have considered using hay cubes with 2nd and beyond generations and doing riding school and then just converting before breeding. 

Does anyone else use this method? 

I'm also interested is anybody's doing it on a regular basis. Let us know :)
I stick to showing every day with good results (profits between 10-20k EVD/day). Horses with low nss are entered regularly, those with very high nss wait till the last moment with entering shows, so I school them most of the time.

Im doing riding school daily with all of my horses unless they are 1-2 points away from leveling up. If they are at the top of their class, I put them in shows, if they are anything further than 1-2 points away, they are in riding school. It just seems more beneficial to me personally. :)

Last edited on 2019-11-22 at 13:39:23 by Jumperkins

Showing at the top of grade level is a very common practice. What I'm saying is that my horses will be placing 1-3 and still go away with 0 stats, because it is not guaranteed(even with 5 entries) that stats will be awarded. 

So, that is my reason for considering switching. 

I'm thinking about doing an alternating routine.. show/school/show/school.. because i have waaaayyy too many horses to keep track of what level they're at .. just easier to try alternating..dunno.. Im gonna see how that works out

I school my horses every day instead of showing. I will put a few select horses in a show 1-2 per week but mostly schooling 

After experimenting with some horses here, on my second spare I came to the conclusion that so long as horses have good discipline stats Showing can outweigh the half and half method on a foundation slightly or by far (my showing foundations on this account routinely make 900-1000 stats by first breeding at 19). This is because of those High stat nights if a horse does really well. For example Road to Pleasure got 13 stats last night from placing in every show, the equivalent of about 4 days of schooling (if you're lucky and average 3 stats per schooling). He still has about 50 stats to go on his trip to International level so could potentially gain more stats over the next 4-5 days. 
On the flip side Vivian, placed in every show last night and got no stats(she's also behind because I didn't notice for 2 months that she had the wrong treat assigned). But she had no chance at all because only 2 or 3 horses were entered in her grade levels for Driving. There's a smaller number of showers in Driving, Endurance and sometimes Racing as they are the less popular disciplines. So depending on where your horses are at it might benefit slightly to Alternate your methods. 
I'll always advocate for showing though. I autoshow every night I'm on because I feel like Riding school is an excellent option, but only for those horses that really can't make it in showing, or retired kiddos for extra cash.

The biggest problem are those highest level shows with only few participants, which award you no stats. I feel your pain Olympea. Some re-thinking has to be done and the problem pointed out to Abbey about those shows because it's such a crying shame that the best horses on the game are loosing out due to lack of active players.

That's a very good point Lenka! I have so many Int 2 level western horses.. First problem not enough shows, second, not enough competition.. so more often than not.. will school those before the foundations.. etc.. Shame.. like you said, highest statted horses missing out.. 

Especially that if we school our horses to stop them from missing out on those precious stats then we only add to the problem. I have 2 or 3 international level horses and I show them every day but this conversation got me thinking if I really want to continue to do that....

And there is the real problem, people dropping back out of shows again because there's not enough people in shows which exacerbates the issue. I show every night and am lucky enough to have enough of my own in most disciplines to fill a show with 5 horses even if it's only my own, but when others don't enter their higher level horses sometimes mine lose out on potential stats. I still show anyway to fill shows as much as possible in case there's others like me who want to try for the stats.
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy really. Everyone tells people to riding school because show stats aren't guaranteed and you never lose money, so more people stop showing and just riding school because it's easier therefore there's less horses in the shows. 

That's why it would be good if mods managed to get Abbey's attention and ask her to try to find time to re-programme that part of the game.

I think I'm going to continue to show all my internationals because I'm a sucker for ribbons for my horses :):):)

It would also be nice if points accumulated by horses during showing, were of some use or brought some advantages. Horses get those points even when they don't receive any stats, but they are more or less useless (wanted to write "pointless", ha, ha, ha, I'm so funny, I almost fell of my dinosaur! )

Last edited on 2019-11-23 at 11:09:32 by ℒ🍓Lenka