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About

Micah Thompson, 41, nine years in the castle barn on Dufferin. Here's how I ended up writing a planning guide.

How I got there

I grew up on a hobby farm outside Guelph, Ontario — three horses, one of them a retired barrel-racing quarter horse that taught my younger sister how to canter. I did pony club through high school, then went to Olds College in Alberta for a two-year equine science diploma. Came back to Ontario, worked at a small Standardbred farm near Milton, and in 2015 answered a posting for a stable hand at the Toronto castle. I thought it'd be six months of weird fun. It was nine years.

What I did in the barn

Everything the horses needed. Mucking, feed, hoof picks, farrier appointments, pre-show grooming, ice boots for sore joints after the summer stretches. The last three years I was running the colt schooling programme — bringing in the three- and four-year-olds and teaching them to tolerate the sound and lights of the arena before anyone put a lance in a knight's hand.

I had one Andalusian stallion — Caballero — I worked with for seven of the nine years. He retired a month before I did. He is boarded now at a farm near Kleinburg. If you ever see a very dark bay gelding at the castle with a slight scar on his left shoulder, that's one of his sons, Hugo, and I love him too.

Why I left

Both knees. The castle floor is packed clay over concrete and after nine years of twelve-hour days on it my cartilage said no. I took a desk job at a feed-and-tack distributor in Mississauga. I miss the horses every day. I don't miss December.

Why this site exists

I kept getting the same questions from friends, from family, from coworkers whose kids wanted to go for a birthday: Which show time? Where to park? Is it loud? Can my picky-eater nephew eat there? I wrote the answers down one weekend. Then I thought maybe other people have the same questions, so I put it on the internet.

I keep it independent on purpose. I don't take ad money, I don't earn a commission on tickets, and I link to the operator's homepage rather than any ticket-reseller because that's the only safe place to put your card. If I ever change that, I'll say so on this page.

If you need to reach me, the Contact page has a P.O. box and an email address.