The Usual Discussion and a Little Varian Philosophy

Watching all these classes at the US Arabian National Horse Show brings to mind the usual things I think about whenever I watch horses work at horse shows. The comments on this post seem to be right in there along those lines.

It seems to be the usual nationals discussions that can be found on threads on most forums. There are the country horses that are really english pleasure horses to some, the hunter horses that are now made up of country english horses that wouldn't make it in that division, and we mustn't forget the western horses that are looking more and more like quarter horses in the way they move. Of course, there is the discussion about qualifications as well.

As long as I have been in this business there has been commentary about what is and isn't right about the show and the horses. It seems to me it comes down to that "human nature" thing. We're all different and we all have different ideas about what is right. The show committee has their idea of how it should be and right now they're the ones in charge so their ideas pretty much rule.

Whenever you put a group of people and horses this large together the entire continuum on the spectrum of horse training, breeding and such tend to be represented there. Some will be good. Some will be bad and a whole lot more will be in the middle. I don't think that part is ever going to change.

From what I can tell, all I can really do is watch to see what the judges like to see what their preferences are. For me, I'm trying to see whether the judges like the same things I'm looking for in my horses or not. If not, then I just won't show to those judges in the future. If it looks like they do, then maybe it's worth spending my money to see if I was right about their opinion.

The hard part about trying to figure this out watching on the live feed is the judges can see most of the ring while the feed only shows a narrow view of the ring. There's a lot of stuff going on in that ring out of sight of those of us on the other end of these computers so it really is hard to see why the judges are doing what they're doing. What it looks like they're doing and what they might really be doing can and are sometimes two totally different things.

Personally, I know several of the judges this year. To be honest, I probably really messed up not taking a hunter horse to show this year. I think that panel is suited to my style of riding and horse even though you probably couldn't tell that by what's making the cuts so far. I think I could have held my own out there given the chance but we'll never know because I'm sitting home here watching on my computer instead of riding at nationals.

Thinking about the discussion about what is and isn't right about the show and how horses are being shown reminds me of something I heard from Sheila Varian several years ago. Her comment was in regards to breeding standards but it certainly fits here. "Breed what you like," she said. "Don't be swayed by the opinions or pressure from others. If you do stay true to what you like, you'll get where you want to be in the long run."

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