Horse Show Tracker App: New & Improved for 2016 Congress

The must-have app for Congress attendees!

Amanda Hurd and “Whale of a Whiz” at 2014 Congress. Photo by Maria Hurd.

Whether you’re a serious showman, a Quarter horse enthusiast or any horseman looking for something to do in the month of October, there’s no denying that the All American Quarter Horse Congress is the place to be. With over 6,500 horses for over 21,000 entries, the month-long show draws thousands of spectators to Columbus, Ohio to see the best of the best compete for prizes and honors.

For Congress veterans and first-time attendees alike, the show experience can be totally overwhelming (and we’re not even going to get into the shopping and trade show aspect). Fortunately, FunnWare Development has an app for that: if you’re either attending Congress or tracking the action from home, you need Horse Show Tracker.

The free app displays a wealth of information: the complete Congress show schedule, individual class draws and splits, live updated scores and orders of go and of course the final results of each class. The app also alerts Congress attendees about special offers and includes a business directory, as well as a night riding schedule for schooling, stall assignments, patterns and maps of the barns and grounds.

Horse Show Tracker, or HST, is truly a one-of-a-kind Congress tool: Kathy Trask of FunnWare explained to HN how the app fits into the FunnWare family of horse show tools. “Our mainstream product, Horse Show for Windows, is used at thousands of shows by hundreds of show managers and secretaries all across the world. The All American Quarter Horse Congress uses a similar but modified program to run their show which we continue to tweak and support.

“In 2015, HST was added to the package that they use and it connects directly to their database so there is no additional work that show management needs to do in order to feed the information to the app.”

New for the 2016 Congress, which officially kicks off on Thursday, October 6, HST now includes more robust cloud server support for faster response time, improved error messaging for poor Internet connections, a Vender icon for an improved shopping experience, support for adjusting text sizes and minor bug fixes.

FunnWare Development’s tagline is “software solutions for all aspects of the horse show industry,” and it’s truly serving the breed show world well. Horse Show for Windows is a very popular software for many of the breed and performance associations, including not only the AQHA but the National Reining Horse Association, the Appaloosa Horse Club, the American Paint Horse Association and the National Snaffle Bit Association, among many others. The company’s other main software, Member Ease, helps keep track of association memberships and points, and is designed to work with Horse Show for Windows.

Trask hinted that more updates were on the way: “We are continuing to work on having both HST and our judging tablets — an app the judges use to report their results, versus using radios to report to them or waiting for the card to get to the announcer’s booth to input manually — available to our Horse Show for Windows users. No release date just yet but that project is moving forward.

“We have also spent much time this past year working with the Stock Horse of Texas association that runs AQHA versatility shows along with their own versatility classes. For AQHA, six events are offered in Open, Amateur, and Youth (Trail, Reining, Ranch Riding, Working Cow, Cutting, and Conformation) and each entry gets credits for each of those events against all the others that compete for the Versatility All Around. For SHOT, four events are offered in Open, Non Pro, Junior Horse, Limited Non Pro, Intermediate, Novice Rider, and Youth (Trail, Western Pleasure, Reining, and Working Cow) and again, each entry gets points towards that all around.

“SHOT is working closely with AQHA and other stock horse associations across the country to further the stock horse showing. Our software has been modified to handle these types of shows and we expect to release it to other groups for the 2017 show season. Stock horse showing is growing by leaps and bounds and we want to help be a part of that!”

To learn more about Horse Show Tracker and the rest of the family of horse show software, check out FunnWare Development online and “like” Horse Show Tracker on Facebook. The app is currently available for iPhone and iPad as well as Android.