This message is from: "Anneli Sundkvist" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cheryl wrote: >>I know it would be criminal to cut a cat's whiskers or a dog's?? and I >>wonder if that is the reason behind the rule in the Handbook? Does anyone >>know if it's this or just "tradition" in the fjord world.>> My theory is that the background is the Scandinavian show tradition, or should I say the lack of show tradition. As you know I'm Swedish, and not fully updated on Norwegian conditions I belive that we have similar traditions concerning evaluation-studbook-register stuff (Norway and Sweden was one country until 1905). The thing is we didn't use to have shows they way they had in i.e. England (of course it did happen, but...). We had evaluations (premiering is the Swedish word). The farmers brought their horses to have them evaluated and the horse was awarded a prize if it was found to be of good quality. The rank of the horses in the ring was actually of less importance, the quality was no. 1. If all horses in the ring was found to be of good quality they were all awarded a prize. The idea was to make the farmers breed good horses (that could be purchased by the army and cavalery). When I was a kid back in the 70's it was still common to take the horses from the pasture on the day of the evaluatin, groom and braid (clip the fjordmanes) them and go to the evaluation - without training or anything. Some people brought their horses WITHOUT having them groomed or braided:o) The evaluations were not supposed to be a competition. A dirty horse would be ranked as number one if the judges found it to be the best horse in the ring. Today, things are a bit different and the horses brought to the evaluations are better prepared. We do have shows now, but I still think it's common to do as little as possilble concerning clipping and trimming. I'd say that it's very uncommon to body clip horses for shows - for evaluations it's not even allowed. (I wouldn't clip my horses muzzle hairs - or my cat's whiskers, but I do clip the face and therefore the whiskers of my English Cocker Spaniel...hm...) Regards Anneli --------------------------------------- Anneli Sundkvist Department of Archaeology & Ancient History Uppsala University St. Eriks Torg 5 S-753 10 Uppsala Sweden
