Training
WhatToAndNotToDo
Well why we train is easy, we want our horses to gain more points. The more points your horse has the better it is therefore you need to train and the more the better. You can train any horse that is between 3 and 20 years of age and you can train any dog which is between 3 and 15 years of age. Once a horse reaches 21 or a dog 16 they are considered 'retired' so can't be trained. Visit the 'horses & Dogs' section for more information on retirement.

A very important thing is not to have too many horses in training at any one time. How many you can handle will depend on you individually on how fast your computer is and how much time you can spend online. There are several ways of training in terms of building up a routine you need to decide what works best for you. Some people will train each horse in a certain number of classes everyday. Some people will train the horse in approx 800 classes then leave it until its health (see below) regains to approx 90-100% a few days later. What I advise is to start only train one or two horses/dogs and try and work out a routine that suits you. You can then think about increasing your numbers but i would advise to NEVER have more than 10 horses in training at any time. I often see players with up to 40 horses in training and basically they don't get trained very often so rarely reach a 'decent' point total. If you concentrate on only a couple of horses you should find it VERY easy to train that elusive and what many people feel impossible to have '100ker'.

Before you start training your horse must have been to see the vet and farrier.

If you don't have that much money (under $100k) only enter free classes there are more than enough about. (though you still have to pay $10 HL tax even if the class itself is free)

Try and always enter shows that are running the next day. You can search for shows running the next day so no excuse here! This means that all your points you earn on the horse will be added on the next day instead of having to wait for them to trickle in over as long as two weeks.

Every class you enter you are charged $10 tax by HL for the priviledge. Although this may seem expensive it is far far far cheaper to train up a horse yourself rather than to buy one already trained.

Entries close at Midnight HL time the day the show is to run so you cannot continue to enter up until it eventually runs! this has stopped people making and entering their own shows at the last minute.

NOTE the placings for shows are not decided by the show creator they are chosen at random by the HL computer. They start running at 3am HL time (10am in the UK) and can continue for up to several hours. The shows run one by one in the order they appear on the show list search
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SelectingShows
There are beginner, average and expert classes. (almost all classes are beginner classes but its still good to know!) In a beginner class all horses have equal chance of winning. in average classes the more points the owner and horse have it will slightly affect in their favour their chance. In expert classes the amount of points will greatly effect the chance of winning. Now this does not mean that the highest pointed horse/rider combo will always win it just means that they have a better chance.

To check whether a class is a beginner, average etc click the shows tab on the navigation bar then search the shows according to date (eg tomorrows!) then open up the show then the class details, and it will say the following

The bottom part of the table says in basic language whether beginner, average or advanced!

When you look for shows its advisable to look for emptier shows. If there are already more than 50 entrants I would look for another show. Where you can I would advise not the enter club shows as although they offer double points they are the majority of the time very overcrowded so your horse will receive minimum placings and therefore minimum points.
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Points
Many people sometimes can't get their heads round the whole points system. Basically whenever a horse is trained it gains points. The person who owns the horse at the time of a show it is entered in runs also gains the same amount of points.

So what points does your horse gain if it gets placed! If your horse wins a 'normal' class then it will receive 32points, 2nd gets 31pts, 3rd 30pts and so on to 30th place who gets 3 points. If your horse wins a club show class which awards double points then its 64points for 1st, 62 for 2nd and so on down to 6pts for 30th.

For every class a horse enters it will gain 2points (4pts if club show) PROVIDED that health is above 25% when the class runs. if the health isn't above this level then the horse WILL NOT run in the class and therefore not lose more health but also will receive no further points for those classes.
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TheHealthBar
200-300 classes a night seems to be the ideal amount to enter. 200 will see a drop of 20% of health. Below 50% a horse seems not to win any placings and below 25% now a horse will not run in a class at all as mentioned above.

Health regains slightly oddly in that it will regain 30% of the health lacking each day so a horse with say 60% health has 40% missing. So 30% of that 40% will be 12% so that day the horse will go from 60% to 74%. the next day as it only has 26% missing it will gain 7.8% so up to 81.8% and so on. (this is best worked out using a calculator) NOTE your horse will not regain health if it is not fed therefore make sure you feed your horse. If you are a basic player you need to choose somewhere to board your horse. Choose a stable where the fee is reasonable (about $100) and the owner logs on regulary.

For every 100 classes you enter your horse will lose 10% health so that is 0.1% for every one class.

Continually taking your horse to the vet will not result in the health going up significantly. The first visit may increase its health by a few percent but every subsequent visit will not increase health and infact may cause it to drop if at random it is given a disease! (note the first visit to the vet could result in a disease as well so best strategy is only take horse to vet when it needs to eg when overdue!)

Personally I advise training your horse in enough classes each day so that it drops to 50% health once the shows have run so if the horse has 80% health you would run it in 300 classes if 67.3% i would enter it in 173 classes. If you do this the health will update to 65% meaning that you can enter 150 for the next day and so on and so on!

Health updates each day once all the shows for that day have run.

PLEASE NOTE If you breed a mare she will lose a certain %age normally 10-20% so please take this into account when training in advance.
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Tickets
Premi players can sell tickets of which they can buy 30 per month to sell on. prices vary widely. They can be used on any horse (including those under 3 and over 21- see below). They will add 50 points on to the horse as well as supposebly an increased chance of placing in a show compared to a same pointed horse purely show trained! These tickets have now increased in value now that they are worth 50 points rather than 5 and so prices have increased according some as expensive as 2-4mil PER ticket but very few players will actually pay this much!

Horses under 3 and over 21 can still gain points as they can be ticket trained. Search around there are trainers who will ticket train for $5000 a ticket whereas there are others who will charge $2+mil per ticket!! Remember just because you apply for a ticket doesn't mean you will get one!

There are also Dog tickets these are the same as horse tickets in that they also award 50 points. Every premi player can buy one horse set AND one dog set per month! The average top price for dog tickets is currently $500k-1mil.
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HowToActuallyTrain
Well firstly you need to decide which horse to train first. Go to the horse's page then you will see in the table that includes the name, breed, brand, birthdate etc you will also see below the horse's points it says 'ENTER THIS HORSE IN A SHOW' with a little picture of a horse to the left of it. If that is not there it may say 'HORSE CANNOT BE ENTERED IN A SHOW' this will be followed by the reason(s) of why it cannot be entered in a show could be one or several of the following VET, FARRIER, TOO YOUNG, TOO OLD and HEALTH. You can easily resolve vet and farrier by taking the horse to see the vet and farrier as required (see bottom of the horses page). If the horse is too young this means it is under 3 years old. You cannot enter a horse in shows till it is 3 years of age. If too old the horse will be 21+ as soon as a horse is 21 it can no longer be entered in shows. The last is health. Health increases every day as long as the horse is fed and has been visited by the vet and farrier you can enter shows as long is health is above 25%, personally I do not train unless the horse has 50% health other people have other training methods though. See the Health section of this guide for more information on how the health bar works.

Now if the above described 'ENTER THIS HORSE IN A SHOW' link is present then click it! The page will now load in 3 sections though intitally you will only see one on the left. You want to then search for a show. there are several searches you can use. Personally as I say above always choose shows that run the next day so you will need to type in tomorrow's date in the 'run date' box. You can then either choose to search for a show with a specific word in its title eg free, jumping, show etc. Also I personally would leave the scheduled date box showing 'all'. now press 'FIND'!

A list of shows will now appear on the right hand section of the screen. Now to discover if you have shockwave or even just whether or not you can use it! If you don't have it already and are on a home computer then download it (it will do this automatically) if on a work or school computer i would seriously advise not to download it as dowloading software is often not allowed without prior permission.

Click on the show you wish to enter. now if you have chosen 'shockwave training' (thats the automatic choice) then a new smaller window will appear in there the show will load. You can then enter the horse in the classes by pressing the green button 'Enter this class' once you have entered that class the next class will load in its place. You do not have to close that window each time you select a new show instead the new show will load in the same window.

IF you DONT have shockwave then you now CAN'T train! yes we all believe its unfair but its HL rules and we can't do much about it!
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