Hi Bluewerse! There are two ways to enter shows. First you can go to the horse's page and click the trophy icon. A list of Halter Shows ( if the horse is registered in a breed registry.) and a list of discipline shows will show. To enter all you have to do is click the box beside the show(s) you want to enter and then scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the green enter button. The other way is to hover over the Town section on the drop down menu and click Shows Arena or Halter arena. You then can filter shows by discipline for discipline shows and star rating, gender, and age for halter shows. Some things to keep in mind when showing is that Halter shows use 20% of energy per show and discipline shows use 10% of energy per show.

Regarding your other question it is honestly a personal division as to what the game is about. For some it is all about breeding, for some showing, for some it is about constantly trying to improve their lines. or breed great show horses. It honestly depends on what you are interested in and what you want to focus on.

I hope some of this helped you and feel free to reach out via PM if you have any other questions! 

Hi and welcome! I started just a few months ago, so here are some things I wish I knew (or better understood) starting out, in no particular order:

• Horse points are experience points that go toward the horse level. The entire purpose of a horse's level, aside from bragging rights and potential Hall of Fame entry, is to produce foals with a high training boost (TB)
  • A foal with a high training boost will earn more performance stats each session (the one you can do 5 x per week, best to just do in one go IMO), leading to higher discipline tiers and better lines
  • TB = parent levels combined, divided by two. It is best to aim for a minimum TB of 10, which you can get from two 50 horses, which everyone recommends, but a level 30 and a level 70 produce the same results
  • If your foal has 6 Excellent stats, it gets a bonus +2 TB
• Halter points are not the same as halter title points. Halter title points go toward a halter title, which can earn the horse a secret breeding boosts starting at gold rank.
• Halter is the best form of exp for most starter horses, even if they perform poorly. The exception is 1⭐ horses, who would stand to earn more exp through careers. Personally, I halter my “decent” one stars until they reach amateur level (477 xp per career session, 20% energy per same as Halter), unless they are not great at halters in which case I career them right away. Others have different methods.
• Halters have a maximum to how much exp/money you can earn, so high PS horses are best to switch to discipline. I don't have my own high PS horses yet, but I think it is around regional tier 2 (not regional tier 1) that it is best to switch to discipline.
• Non-recognized crossbred foals, unless registered to an active campaign that matches their breed percentages, cannot be haltered. Same for grade foals. They can be trained weekly still, but must wait until 2 years to show.
• Always complete foal training. Foal training is to unlock personality and TB; regular training is to unlock PS for disciplines (and breeding inheritance)
• Careers are great and always earn you a profit. Each career session will also slightly increase the skills associated with the career, allowing your horse to level up in that career and earn more exp (static) and money (dynamic, depends on horse personality, not a huge difference in the long run). Careers will max out at the skill cap, though, so foundations and wilds can only earn so much in a career over their lifetime.
• If you're super broke, you can earn $100 bits in the games room per won game. You cannot lose money, and the Higher or Lower game has no limit.
• Bank interest collects on the Saturday to Sunday rollover, so best to stash your cash.
• You can train your horses from Town - Community Training (unless you have your own center), which is faster than training your horses using stable filters which I definitely totally knew before two days ago.
• Town - Breed Registries to register your purebred horses and see their stars. Town - Clubs to register your game-official, unofficial, and campaign crosses. Right now, game official is mixed in with regular crossbred clubs in the list, so if you have, say, a Friesdale, make sure you look for that specific breed's club. Once in the club you can register your horses there. A random crossbreed (ie. no official name or campaign entry), even registered to a club to show stars, cannot halter.
• Yellow stars = pure, purple = game recognized cross, blue (so blue it burns your eyes) = campaign, grey = random crossbreed
• White polos and other quest items can sometimes just be found in the general store. After you complete the tutorial, quests can be found randomly in Hoofbeat Plains.
• You can explore Hoofbeat Plains to find items (flowers right now!) such as dyes and flowers, and even have a chance at catching a wild horse. Best to check other help threads for more on wilds.
• The scrap yard can get you tack and sometimes rare items, but to a low rate.
• Dark Horse Mine has a chance at getting you a gem or a few ingots at click. If you need money, Market Trades often have ISO gem posts that you can trade any 5 gems for $5000 bits, courtesy of OakenFields and their alts. I used this a lot starting out.
• Best experience is Halter (or discipline for high stat horse), career (more exp with more ranks), then explore at the lowest.
• The wiki is outdated, but still has helpful info. Don't worry about the broken images; an entirely new wiki is in the works
  • Skill cap is determined by the parents skill caps added together divided by 2, rounded up to the nearest 10. Ie. 40 + 40 skill caps together are 80, divided by 2 to get back to 40, and then rounded up to 50. Adding this in because the wiki has an error for that formula.
• Skills are used in careers and halters (to a very low extent). Skills are earned by halters (random 3 per show) and careers (the 3 the career uses) up until they max at the skill cap.
• Performance Stats (PS) are used in disciplines and career (to a very low extent). These are earned by training.
• Horse points (exp) are earned by halters, careers, disciplines, and exploring
• If you register a horse in 5 shows but suddenly it loads only 1 or 2, chances are you were the last entrance in the others and they ran rather than a glitch. Check your horse's history tab.
• You can freeze either your entire account or one tab of horses, which you edit in Estate - Manage. Freezing just puts all horse timers on hold, most importantly aging.
• You cannot level up past level 5 yet.
• I find it easier to care for your horses under Horses - Manage - Care when just starting out, as opposed to individual horse pages, but its up to you. Get employees to allow you to have a select all function on care; I recommend starting with grooming and then get the other two. Employees are $50k bits each, and don't do anything automatically--they just give you the select all option.
• You can demolish old small stables and replace them with bigger ones once you buy more land. You only get some of your money back, but it is the best use of acres when starting out.
• Estate - Manage to buy food and water for horses daily if your horses are boarded at home and eating/drinking from storage.
• Join the Discord; we've got a help channel there, and even if you aren't chatty, you can often find answers by searching old posts.
• Each breed has an ideal Breed Standard (BS). That is one single number. Stars and “BV” are calculated on how far from this magic number the horse's conformation stats are. Forgive my laziness, just pasting some info below on that, and the wiki [here]:

Oh my gosh, sorry, I didn't realize how much I typed there!! 

O.o goodness Starberry, that is an impressive helping guide.

Haha thanks, TheDustyAngel. It ended up being a bit of a word salad even with the bullet format. 

I feel like I'm still new enough that my initial struggles are still fresh in mind, so I could offer that newcomer perspective. 

Hi,

wow Starberry, that was amazing! It was clear and comprehensible to me, thank you so much :) Thank you Rani as well! I figured out that my horses were out of energy due to exploring, so that's why I couldn't enter anything. Phew :)

I might join the discord, just need to leave a few old servers first :) Thank you guys again!

Oh yes I forgot I mention that Explore uses 2% of horse energy per space you move in the plains and if you are exploring the mines or scrap yard it uses 5% of player energy per move. If you are in Hoofbeat Plains and you pick something up it costs 5% player energy. Breeding a horse costs 40% of energy and training uses 10% for five trains. Career uses 20% of horse energy as well. Hope this helps!