Letter To The Editor - Melissa Walker
Monday, March 8, 2004
Dear Editor:
I'm not one to write letters to magazines or call my regional directors with my problems, but this seems to be a wider problem than just my own so I have decided to try this atmosphere.
I have just arrived home from attending our AMHA Convention in Boston. While the Convention itself was wonderful, the overall atmosphere was not one of great joy. There has been a great deal of trouble in our breed of late and I think this has brought on a great deal of apathy with it. That became sadly apparent when the ballots were counted for our recent elections. There were several changes in personnel and this came as a big surprise to almost everyone.
There didn't seem to be a lot of interest in who was running and it took very low numbers to elect some of our new people. Some people lost seats by only two votes. When I heard outrage expressed later in the evening, I asked “did you vote?” The answer was almost always a NO. After attending a UPHA meeting with my husband, I heard several trainers upset that the new board was not interested in the “show horse” and how this was going to effect the industry.
Later that night, I had dinner with a farrier and his wife who are members of AMHA and make a living off the Morgan horse who admitted they had not voted. This went on the whole weekend, same comments over and over, with no solutions offered by anyone. But it seemed to me the solution was right at hand. All “we as an industry” needed to do was vote.
Just that simple....get up and vote for the candidate that would help our industry grow and prosper....just vote. Not train a horse, teach an amateur his or her leads, not try to build a new barn, not even rocket science. Just vote, that simple! Why didn't we? The election results are going to effect us so dramatically, what were we thinking? It seems to me we weren't.
The other team was though. They gathered votes from people far and wide, even if they didn't own a Morgan horse. They even went so far as to have members drop their membership in an attempt to swing the numbers needed to elect board members. They made up stories and spread gossip. We all just sat around and assumed that everyone would take care of things for us, like they always do.
Well, it's wake up time boys and girls. Time to wake up and smell the take over. We make our living showing and training the beautiful and wonderful Morgan horse. If we want to keep enjoying that privilege, we had better start working a little harder at it than we are doing now. I for one am on a few more committees than last year, maybe you can sponsor an extra class at a show this year. But for heavens sake, let's make sure we vote in the next upcoming election and each one that follows.
Submitted by,
Melissa Walker
Auburn, California
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