Week 6 Blog #3

In the article “Horse Show Skills and Solutions,” written by Cindy Hale, the issue that is addressed is how at horse shows the people who ride bays and chestnuts have a hard time being noticed by the judge. Then the article points out some tips on how to be noticed in the show ring and not blend in with the other horses and riders. It is very true that people with bays and chestnuts tend to blend in a lot in the show rings. Eventhough the judge should be able to consider everyone in the ring, it is hard to judge a class of all plain colored horses. The author also believes that it is very difficult to stand out and get ones true placing from the judge when one is riding a bay or chestnut horse. The author suggests to make the horse more noticable by making its white markings extremely bright. Although this is a good tip, if ones horse and minimal white, making the white markings brighter won’t do much for the horse that has a lot of chrome. The author also believes that the rider can stand out better with a brighter undershirt under the normal huntcoat. This gives a nice accent to ones show clothing, but one has to be careful that they don’t go too overboard to the point that it mkes the judge mad and they biasly mark you down. A third suggestion is to ad a little bit of bling or something extra to ones tack. One can do this by getting a custom browband with beads and jewels on it, this will definitely catch the judges eye. Most judges won’t mark a person down for this either as long as it’s a normal browband with nothing hanging off of it. A question about this topic that Iwould like to explore is if the judges try to pay even more attention to the bays and chestnuts in order to tell them apart? Would this make the judges pay less attention to the colored horses and then give them a disadvantage?
Article used: http://www.horsechannel.com/horse-exclusives/plain-brown-horse.aspx