A New Membership?

I was thumbing through my most recent issue of Dressage Letters, the monthly membership publication of the California Dressage Society, when an article about the United States Equestrian Federation (USEF) caught my attention. If you don't show, USEF is the organization that provides us with our adult amateur status. Either I am totally out of the loop, or this will come as a surprise to you as well: we are no longer members of the USEF.

Apparently, the USEF has once again rebranded itself as a new organization, United States Equestrian. They even have a new logo.

I was a slightly worried that my $55 membership fee had been spent in vain, so I did some quick digging. First, the website is still to be found at USEF.org, and second, my membership card, which I hadn't even looked at before shoving it in my show binder, had tried to warn me of the impending change if I had only bothered to look at it.

Notice the new logo. The US is large and in red while Equestrian lies just beneath as in the above logo. It, too, is in a bold font while the now defunct Federation is pencil thin and in danger of not being noticed at all. It would seem that the name change had been thought about for some time. Next year, all they need to do is simply drop the Federation, and the transition will be seamless.

This is not the first time that USEquestrian (I simply can't use USE) has changed its name/or and logo. This has been going on for some time. 

I am sure the name change was accompanied by tons of political squabbling, but since I don't show internationally and have no plans to be ranked nationally, the change doesn't really mean anything to me. As long as my $55 wasn't wasted, I'll just sit back and wait for the next card to show up sans Federation.

Was I the last one to notice that I am now a member of USE?