A Day in the Life as a Taco Groom
Hey all! So often you hear from Alanna on what it takes for her to show, how her training is at home, and the amazing team that supports her through it all. But what about Taco’s side of life during these horse shows? I’m Taco’s show groom and wanted to give you all a look into an average day at a CPEDI and what it’s like to be a part of the Alanna Flax-Clark Para-Dressage team.
6:30am - Wake up: depending on the venue and the show day will establish what time I truly get up and leave for the day. When we show at the Global Dressage Festival in Wellington I will stay with Sara and have access to my own transportation to the show grounds. But when we attend the Tryon CPEDIs or Caledon CPEDIs we all share one vehicle so we all typically go in together in the morning.
6:45am - Human coffee run: this is one of the most important stops of the day for me. Without my coffee I won’t function, so it is imperative that I block time out to find access for coffee. When we show at Global there’s a Dunkin Donuts across the street that I stop at while in Caledon I spent the first night finding the closest Tim Horton’s and timing out my commute from the Airbnb to Tim Horton’s to the show ground.
7:00am - Taco Feeding and quick groom: When I get to the show grounds the first thing I do is feed Taco and any other horses that might be in my care for the show and then give him a quick groom to make sure nothing happened overnight and he still has all four shoes. Taco can get weird about eating all of his breakfast grain at the start of horse shows so I have to add a little sweet feed and leave him alone so he doesn’t get distracted.
7:15 - 7:30am - Lunge/Hand walk: Depending on the day of the show I usually am allowed to hand walk from 6:30am - 7:30am or have lunging available from 7am - 9 am. We try to get a lunge spot around 7:15 or 7:30am so most mornings we end up lunging. Because Alanna is a Grade 2 and competes at the walk/trot and Taco gets tired as the show goes on we do very little canter work with him. So the early lunges give him a moment to stretch his back and get more settled at the showgrounds. Taco loves his lunges! He goes straight to work and is always a gentleman. He and I both like watching the show grounds wake up as more competitors arrive and start warming up and hand walking their horses.
If it’s a hand walk morning I’ll grab two carrots and bring Taco down to the competitors ring and walk around it for about 15 - 20 minutes. Most handwalks involve taking breaks to munch on carrots, coffee clutch with whichever FEI stewards are watching the ring, getting pets, and I’ll tell him his morning plan.
7:45am - Morning chores and confirm schedule for the day: After our hand walk or lunging session I’ll quickly get his stall mucked, water buckets cleaned, and give him some fresh hay before reviewing the schedule we made the previous day. Because we don’t know Alanna’s ride times until the draw we typically create a rough idea of a plan and then confirm everything once we have the ride times.
After morning chores I’ll give Taco some type of a bath. He gets one really good bath right before coming to the show and then I’ll typically give him two more shampoo/conditioner baths throughout the show. He’s really good about staying clean, so I can get away with a really good grooming session and only washing his whites some days.
8/8:30am - Alanna and Sara show up. If it’s a morning I didn’t have to bathe Taco then I’m typically giving him a good curry grooming session or cleaning tack by the time they come over. I’ll also set up our ring side bucket during this time.