Very much your last point. My local hobby friends and I kept going to this one show with often questionable judging, etc., because we all were going to be there. So it became a kind of a horsey, girls’ weekend not, overly close to any of us. 😆

I live in the relative middle of no where when it comes to the model horse hobby (Montana). I have to drive many hours to get to any show: the closest show I’ve done was just two hours away and the farthest was ten to eleven hours away (when I lived in way eastern Montana and the show was way western Montana). As it is, the majority of shows I’ve done are a five to seven hour drive.

SO, all of that to say, that I greatly prefer if a show is only around $50, as I will have at least two or three tanks of gas, plus two nights in a hotel, and multiple meals out. However, many of the shows have started moving up to $60-75. I get it, halls aren’t cheap. However, hotels DEFINITELY are no longer cheap, so even if there are shows in my “general vicinity” (ha, ha) I might not be able to swing all of them. Which also makes me sad, as I WANT to support any show in this area, in hopes that people will keep hosting them!

This is my most vintage, a Cigar painted by Judy Renee Pope in 1998. He was a NAN top ten TB for his previous owner. I also lusted after him back in the early days of the internet and hobby geocities pages. 😆 I still haul him off to live shows occasionally, just because I love him so much, even if he’s not super competitive these days. He’s also displayed next to my Elizabeth Bouras dapple grey Kelso. I still can’t believe that I have a horse from two of my early idols. 🥰

Also, pardon the really crappy quality picture. But this is MY very first custom, from about 2000, using the Breyer painting kit. I have stripped almost every other early custom, but this girl will stick around to show me how far I’ve come.

1. Should we require color next to breed and gender at all? And if so, how specific should that color be? (IE: “chestnut” or “flaxen chestnut sabino rabicano”?)
2. Does it matter to you if a shower chooses a different label for a model’s color than the manufacturer or original artist did?
3. Does it matter to you if the color matches the label that the registry would apply/require? (Chestnut vs sorrel, grulla vs grey dun or grå)

I do not mind listing a color, as certain colors can look similar (some sooty chestnuts and silver bays, for instance), so therefore you’re stating what you feel your horse’s color is and potentially justifying a breed designation. Along that line, I also don’t think it matters if you label a horse’s color differently than the manufacturer or even artist had. OF paint jobs do not always look like the color intended/prototype. Also reference pictures get mislabeled so people make incorrect assumptions of colors when they paint them - or science figures out what actually causes a neat color. And there’s definitely going to be a lot more of that as science studies horse colors, if not in actual color, then in patterns. “Hey, turns out that this flashy white marking is actually <fill in the blank new white pattern> instead of just ‘high whites’.”

I think that if we’re going to be labeling colors, we should use the most accurate terminology possible (I say this as I call lighter chestnut stock horses as sorrels, sorry, can’t take the stock horse girl out of me, lol). Therefore, a dun on black should be referred to as either black dun or grulla, rather than grå or grey dun, or some other less-commonly used terminology. And we definitely shouldn’t penalize someone for using the Norwegian grå (grey) instead of the American/English translation of grey dun when referring to a Norwegian Fjord. In this particular show series, I did get penalized for listing Fjords as “bay dun” and “grulla” instead of “brunblakk” [broken brown] and “grå” earlier, and then most recently people got penalized for not using the American terms of “brown dun” and “grey dun.” I guess I don’t mind a judge pointing out that a color is listed as X instead of Y in a certain breed, but I don’t feel that is disqualification-worthy. At most, maybe a reason to decide between two equal horses. Also, if we’re going to go this route, if I list my model horse as “frame overo” or “splash white” instead of the catch-all of “overo” that is usually used by registries to designate not-tobiano, should my model be disqualified in a show?

There’s generally a lot of reasons to not place a model horse, even in very large an competitive shows - angles, lighting, glare, background, overall photo quality. We shouldn’t have to use things like the color terminology or even the “common” (or not-so-common) model name of an entry to disqualify half the horses - just don’t place them if you don’t like them!