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Thank you, I appreciate the information. But why negative scores, and what do they mean? I've found I have others too. Possibly it means what they won is lest than the cost to enter maybe? But with only 1 other horse to compete with, I can't see how that would happen.

Thank you, Ammit. Is year 2 random also?

At age 2, your horses will start training. The amount of points that they gain per training session (which is once weekly) will vary depending on that particular horse's showing ability. Inconsistency will cause a variance to be present in the horse's showing scores as well.

So, let's say for example that you happen to have a perfectly consistent yearling with a starting score of 0. That foal will score a 0 in all shows that they enter as a yearling, because they are not training to boost their score and have no inconsistency to push their score either higher or lower. Now, when that foal turns 2 and starts training, their score will start increasing - the amount that they increase depends on that particular horse's showing ability, but for the sake of simple math, let's just say that the horse's score increases by 10 per training session. Here's a sample of what that horse's record would look like in terms of show score:

Yearling year:
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
2 year old year:
10 (first show, week 1)
10 (second show, week 1)
20 (first show, week 2 and so on...)
20
30
30
40
40

As the horse reaches the peak of their training ability, the score increase from each training session will start to decrease until the horse levels off and receives no more score increase from training.

If your horse has any degree of inconsistency in their show scores, the exact score gain per week can be a little more complex, as your scores for a horse in training may look something more like this: 42 (week 1), 45 (week 1), 54 (week 2), 58 (week 2), 68 (week 3) etc... but the basic principles are the same, that your horse receives a set increase in score per training session, however when your horse shows they may score some points lower or higher than their "base" score due to an inconsistent performance.

As for predicting which horses will be good showers, the ones that will really earn you the most money are those that level off in a good position - scoring towards the top of National or World classes, generally. There isn't really a way to predict which horses will level off in this sweet spot, which is why a lot of big barns have a ton of show horses. As inconsistency can make it more challenging for a leveled-off horse to consistently score in the top of their class, you will notice that some people choose not to keep inconsistent horses in favor of the more predictable scorers who, once leveled off, you will know are either good or bad earners nearly every time.