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Friends Last year, driving home from Dressage at Lexington 2007, I heard a country song on the radio. The song by Lawrence Tracy goes on about ‘finding out who your friends are.’ It talks about ‘driving your car off the road, stuck in a ditch in the middle of nowhere.... Somebody’s gonna drop everything and jump into their car…..The truth don’t lie, you find out who your friends are.’ I had to laugh because I know my friends would be thrilled if all I ever asked of them was to drag my car out of a ditch in the middle of nowhere. If you know someone that manages a dressage show, the requests and demands on the friendship are a little more involved. For starters Dressage at Lexington is three days long plus a set-up day. So if I ask you to volunteer to scribe, score, ring steward, run or hand out ribbons--the request is normally for three days of duty and possibly set-up and take-down. Many hands make light work. Over the years most of my friends have spent countless hours checking entries, preparing score boards, putting labels on tests, cleaning dressage rings, organizing ribbons and prizes, preparing the program, designing a website...etc.  All this before the show even gets going. Sure, you get free pizza for lunch and a t-shirt on show day, but we all know that just doesn’t cover it. Many of the volunteers for Lexington have come again and again for years. Mothers whose daughters have long since grown up and moved away continue to call and ask what their assignment will be this time. Just last night, one of the boys that has helped since he was shorter than I am called to say that he will be there for all days of Lexington before shipping off to basic training on the Monday after the show. Now that’s dedication. Many of the volunteers are also sponsors. This means they not only give freely of their time, but in addition they open the check book and offer prize money for a class they particularly enjoy. So you can see a call in the middle of the night for assistance with car trouble would be nothing to my friends. These folks are my friends and family but they are also great friends of the sport of dressage. ‘The truth don’t lie, you find out who your friends are….”