>>> I could not agree more! By the way, are you a member of the USIHC? Perhaps you could start working on them to put your suggestions into practice.
Not any more - I let my membership lapse. I'd love to see a simpler but more to the point set of standards go into effect, ones that wouldn't be so expensive as to deter people to pursue. The current standard is so built around training, and moving the horses all over the country, with Icelander handlers "strongly recommended". There was a story of someone who had their horse evaluated who actually paid for about a year or so of training for the horse - that was published in one of the magazines. Then there was transportation, rider fees, etc. So, how many people are willing to give up their horses for 3-12 months -even if they have that kind of money - just to get them "evaluated?" Not me - I don't trust many trainers enough to send them my beloved horses to mess with. And if I were designing a simpler standard, I'd have a segment of it judged by a panel outside the breed. There are certain qualities of conformation that relate to ALL horses, so why not get objective people from outside the breed to give input? Maybe something like a team of three - a vet, a farrier, a trainer...? Something like that. Then maybe another segment judged by a person (team?) familiar with gaited horses and gaits. This just makes sense to me. A lot of us have good horsemen resources in our local regions with good eyes for horses. Why do we continue to have such an expensive system to participate in? By using local resources, we could get some good, outside-the-box opinions, as well as saving a lot of transportation costs. Does anyone think there's a realistic chance the USIHC would ever entertain an alternate evaluation system? Karen Thomas [EMAIL PROTECTED]
