Mini Ball Halter Extravaganza & Tejas Performance Show Report!

Yesterday was the Mini Ball All Halter Extravaganza and Tejas Performance Show(s) hosted by Kim Wandrey and Daralyn Wallace, resepectively. 

Kimmie had asked me to judge way back in January or February, and I quickly and happily accepted!  I don't have a whole heck of a lot of experience judging, but I have a lot of knowledge to share, and there are a few things that OF showers especially seem to not know or conveniently forget when they're assigning breeds to their models.  I'd really like to help people learn more about breeds and which molds make good examples of which breeds, and which molds you might have to get a bit creative with when coming up with a good breed assignment.  So i jumped at the chance to judge OF breyer breed.  Little did i know what i was getting myself in to!

Actually, the show was really fun and great.  Lori Bachelor was my collectibility judge, and we turned and burned through those halter classes -- we were done by 4:30 PM!  Some of the classes were huge (OF Arab Mares and Part Arab mares in particular -- EVERYONE brought out their Weather Girls!!!), and some were tiny (Only FIVE Appaloosa stallions?!) but most were in between, with some lovely lovely models.  I saw several very very creative breed assignments, which made me really happy.  BUT, i also had some people label their horses with things like "warmblood" and "european warmblood."  I gently pointed out to them that a warmblood is a TYPE of horse, and that there are probably 50 warmblood breeds native to germany alone, with many more in Europe and North America.  I remember saying to one of my cohorts "if I have to do the research, so do they!" jokingly.  It was a really really fun thing to do though, and I'm definitely looking forward to judging more in the future!

My overall breed reserve champion of the day was the Grey Salinero from the Elegance Dressage Set, and my overall grand of show was a really really nice Del Mar.  It was SO hard to choose my overalls!!! There were TONS of nice horses on the table.  But it was definitely great fun looking at all the pretties and deciding which were the best of their breed(s) that day.

My own showstring was the smallest i've ever brought to any show except my very first, which was Red River Live in October 2006.  I brought 15 to that show i think, and i only brought 22 to this one.  It was very very weird to be able to see the top of my table!  But it was kindof nice as well -- i might have to bring fewer horses sometimes so I can have a little break! 

it was extremely weird to not be running around trying to keep up with what was going on in the performance rings and all the halter rings!  But i only had one performance horse with me, Atari, who won his last NAN card for his Superior Event Horse Plaque and is also qualified to go to this year's NAN.  This way I don't have to chase that last card anymore.  He was lovely as always =)

My OF VLR Stone Weanling, Totally Over Dun BWS, won her class in collectibility, and then went on to be reserve division champ as well!  She's so cute!  So that's two shows and three NAN cards and a Division reserve for her.  I'm definitely taking her to NAN... She's too adorable not to!

My two Jeanette Garey CMs, Almost Always (Idocus in black sabino) and Spangoletta (flash in palomino sabino) got NAN cards, and Almost Always ended up winning his division as well.  Jeanette was there, and she was tickled that he's done so well for me -- we both agreed that black horses don't get enough love, and we both love them! 

Flirtation won her breed class again (as usual *wink), but the thing that absolutely made my day was that Rambeaux (I showed pix of him in my last post) was second to her and ALSO third in workmanship!!  He beat paintjobs by Lauren (flirty included!) and several other "actual" artists, so i was just seriously seriously tickled.  A horse I painted myself is going to NAN!  Not in workmanship, but in breed, and really.. I painted him MYSELF!  *Dance*

So that's it... I'll edit this post and add pix of the guys with their winnings when i get a chance, probably later this week :)