Thursday, October 21, 2010

7th Heaven.

I'm not a stranger to verband inspections.

I've been to about eight to ten in the past five years, mostly the ISR, AWR and GOV inspections. Each time I go as spectator, I pick something up about conformation, movement and presentation.

While Sinari is registered with AWR as a sport pony, and as Welsh D I wasn't completely happy with the quality of what the book was showing. So, when an opportunity presented itself to show in front of a different book, I took it.

The Hanover book is one of three German pony books (the other two are Weser- Ems and RPSI) that inspect and represent the sport pony population. Of the three, Weser- Ems and RPSI have American offices, the Hanover people... well, they have email and one inspection in the states per year. In Illinois. And when I breed, to have the foals inspected, I need to ship to Germany. Ouch.

The German books are notoriously tough, and it's been a while since I presented anything. So I was a little more than nervous. So the day before I spit polished the mare, worked on standing her up.

The inspector looked her up and down, watched her move (thankfully Sterling was handling I'm not fit to run anymore). She looked amazing for just being pulled back into work. Minus the walk, everything was above board, earning an overall score of 7.3333, .2 shy of being considered in to the premium book. Because I was tired and a bit stressed, I forgot to ask about mare performance testing, and whether or not they would allow me to go forward and do it at the GOV site next September or I would have to earn my scores.

Overall I'm pretty impressed.

Next big project is clipping.

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