Reaglebeagle,
You look familiar. Whre is that horse show in the indoor picture? I sure miss mudknots. They really showed off a horse’s hind end. And, for a horse with a less than stellar tail, I think that they looked better than a fake tail.
Yesterday at KHP, I saw many absolutely gorgeous, jaw dropping, 12 moving, knee snapping, back cracking, to die for horses with tails that were obviously bought at the custom tail store. They were just too think and swung funny and the bottoms were unnatural. In a fake tail, less is more. But too many people think that more is more.
But, I digress. I miss the old mud knots. Pure and simple. And I also like your horse and your eq. A lovely picture.
mbdobbs: I cannot recall ever seeing a shadbelly in grand prix jumping! And certainly not a top hat in the grand prix ring. I believe you are mistaken – even if you are thinking back through the decades. The image of a jumper rider going around in a shadbelly and top hat just plain makes me smile.
Shadbellies are indigenous to the hunt field, which is why they appear in the hunter ring. In the old days it was appropriate to show in a hunt coat and derby for regular classes and a shadbelly and top hat in appointments or corinthian classes (or later, in what they called “formal attire” classes). In the Madison Square Garden picture, I am riding in a formal attire class. I can tell because, not only am I wearing a shadbelly and top hat, but I have all the “extras” like the boot straps (that had to be worn through the second and third buttons on the breeches legs – a real trick in the days of velcro. I sat in my NYC hotel room and cut all those little buttons off my show shirts that were half way down the openings in the sleeves and sewed them onto each leg of my canary breeches below the knee seam so I would have buttons to put the boot strap between.)
The difference between a formal attire class and a corinthian class is that in the former the rider had to dress in the old, traditional way, but the horse was not required to wear flat tack and sewn in bridle, no saddle pad or stirrup pad, etc.
"Oh yeah, I'll bet you're fat and can't ride!" --- Erin, Chief Cathearder. [img]http://chronicleforums.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]
