The New Journey Begins........A Turning Point.....

Part One

Show season was fast approaching and something needed to be done about Storm's registration papers if the horse was to make it into the ring. Keep in mind here I wasn't really getting to see the horse schooled. The only knowledge I had of whether the horse was ready or not to show was based on what I was told.

To show in the amateur owner division for Arabian and half Arabian horses, the horse must be registered in the name of the person showing. Those rules do not allow for contract sales or leases to count as proof of ownership. If the name isn't on the papers, then the horse isn't owned by that person unless they are a close relative as defined by the rules. With my name on those papers WF couldn't show in the classes she prefers.

This particular amateur, WF, is always chasing Sweepstakes dollars with her horse AND she wins them, I might add. The place to get them was the amateur owner classes. The only way WF would be able to show Storm in those classes was if I let them have the horse in her name.

Sometime after the first of the year BG began asking how "we" were going to get this horse shown with the papers as they were even though there was no way the horse was anywhere near paid off. He said WF wanted to know how we were going to get this accomplished. I knew that WF only shows in the amateur division and pretty much exclusively in Sweepstakes classes which are strictly "owner" classes. The real question unstated question was when was I going to transfer ownership of the horse to them.

I told BG I know there are lots of people out there showing horses under contracts in that division. The legal owners are getting the registration papers signed by the buyers. Then the owner sends them into the registry telling the registry to send the papers back to the legal owner (the seller). Once the horse is paid off then and only then the paperwork is handed over to the buyer. I told BG if that's what we had to do to get the horse shown, then that's what we would do.

Despite my uneasiness with this plan, I really needed to have the horse in the ring in 2009. None of the Legs babies has made it into the ring under saddle working to his potential. As I've said before and will probably say again, that's one of the things that has gotten in the way of me selling horses to the show ring crowd. The stallion's get must be proven in the show ring and I needed to do what it took to get that done.

I knew that Storm was just the horse to get their attention and Legs wasn't getting any younger. I had been told the young Arabian stallion was definitely ready to be shown as a hunter for the season but I knew it wouldn't get done unless we did this "paper trade" transfer.

The closer we got to the beginning of show season, the more I heard about how ready Storm was to be shown. I was told the plan was to take the horse to Daffodil as his first show and I was reminded things needed to be fixed in time for entry deadlines.

With that in mind once we got to that place in time this would have to be done if we were going to make the closing date for entries for the Daffodil Spring Show, I took Storm's registration papers over to the facility to obtain a signature from WF so I could send them in to the Registry. Because WF was not available at that time and probably wouldn't be whenever I was there, I handed the papers over to BG so he could obtain that signature and then return to the papers to me once they had been signed.

I made one big mistake when I did that. Like I had done for all other transfers I'd been involved with, when I took those papers out of my file, the first thing I did was signed the paperwork. I didn't think about what I was doing until it had been done. Only after my signature was already on the appropriate line did I think I probably shouldn't have done that until I got those papers back. Once it was done I didn't know how to undo it so I just left it as it was thinking I could trust these people.

As I handed the papers over and saw the look on the man's face I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I wanted to grab the registration papers back and run but they were already out of reach as BG whisked them off and into the house. Immobilized by fear of what might happen, I just stood there and hoped I hadn't made one of the biggest mistakes of my life.

To be continued....................

Subtle Changes

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