The horsing around at this D.C. show is serious business

See that horse? The one being led by a jodhpured and helmeted rider down the sidewalk of Sixth Street NW, catty-corner from the Engine Company 2 firehouse? Follow it as it clip-clops past the Greene Turtle Sports Bar & Grille, down a yawning ramp and into the bowels of the Verizon Center. There, you will encounter a wiry man in casual clothes, a walkie-talkie in hand.

"This is the most complicated logistical operation in our business," the man, Robert Ridland, will tell you.

That would be the horse show business. Robert and his co-manager, David Distler, have been putting on horse shows all over the country for years. But for sheer logistical legerdemain, none compares to the Washington International Horse Show. It's like throwing a week-long ballroom-dancing competition for 300 four-legged guests in a rented gymnasium in a busy downtown.

Or maybe it's more like a beach volleyball competition, because the first thing that happens after the last ice from the Capitals' rink has melted is that 66 dump truck loads of fine limestone sand come in.

"It's a lot of sand," Robert says. But as they say in the show jumping world: The three most important things in an equestrian event are footing, footing and footing. Footing is what non-horse people might call "the ground." It's what the horses put their feet on.

"My dad and me, we're big in footing," says Bobby Murphy, a fifth-generation horseman who's come from Kentucky to obsess about the sand: how deep it is, how wet it is, how firm it is. It needs to be "fluffy" for the hunter class -- horses judged on the grace they display over modest jumps -- and compact for the jumpers: horses that fly over ever-higher obstacles.

A dapper man strides out of the ring, a large measuring tape in one hand. It's Richard Jeffery, a professional jump designer from England. Somebody has to decide exactly where to put the jumps and what they'll look like.

"We're trying to find a fair result without making it tricky, without making it dangerous," Richard explains. Golfers can recognize a Jack Nicklaus- or Pete Dye-designed golf course. Is it the same for show rings?

"I think it's fair to say each of us have our own style," Richard says.

Of course, every designer must start with the same piece of geometry: A standard horse has a 12-foot stride. Thus designers tend to work in distances of 24, 36, 48 and 60 feet, adding or subtracting a few feet here and there to test a competitor's skill.

What's a Richard Jeffery course like? "Not so brutal," he says. He started out as an architect and designed houses before switching to horse jumps. "I try to make it cohesive. Other people will just put some jumps together."

Outside Verizon, traffic's been blocked off and tents and stalls erected on F Street. Wood shavings cushion the concrete underhoof. Hoses are strung along fences so the horses can be watered; electrical lines are set up to power hair clippers. The horses are equal parts athlete and fashion model, as if you'd mixed Usain Bolt with Cindy Crawford. This is some expensive horse flesh, each easily worth six figures -- and some worth seven.

Grooms sit on hay bales in the sun, chatting to one another in Spanish or polishing tall, black riding boots. In the quiet of the tents, a few braiders are hard at work, tying on tail extensions or taming unruly manes. Stacia Heslar from California has been a professional braider for 11 years. Standing on a stool next to a horse called On Top, she crochets in black yarn, turning the horse's main from dreadlocks to cornrows to little nubs she calls "peanuts."

A warm, yeasty, not-unpleasant smell is everywhere. It's the smell of horses. The main note is manure. That's what the blue dumpsters are for. "You don't just put it in the city's garbage system," Robert says. A contractor is hired to cart it all away.

Please resist the urge to note that it's just more $#*& coming out of Washington.