They would charge you $1200 regardless if the JC/USEA name had “dancer” in it or not. If the USEA name is ANYTHING other than the JC name, and you tell the FEI this, they will try to charge you. The only option is to play dumb and “don’t know” the JC name. I was told this specifically by the USEF passport office back in 2016. I was absolutely free to use my horse’s USEF name, but I could not admit that he had a different JC registered name. Essentially he was “grade” but listed as TB, and I did include his sire and dam, so it was printed in the passport. But his JC name was not allowed to be associated with him unless I wanted to pay $1200.
Lesson learned: when filling out your passport paperwork, leave the space blank for “breed registered name” or “previous name.” FWIW, you only need a National passport ($50) for competitions at the 1* and 2* level, you only need a purple (FEI) passport ($250) for 3* and above. But National passports must abide by FEI rules, so don’t submit the JC name their either.
And I hate to say it, but this will not be the only sour taste you will get from the FEI. The whole organization is rotten cheese and useless regulations, many of them created for the sole purpose of righteousness and/or as a result of horrific abuse from another sport (SJ, endurance, etc). For the “privilege” of competing at the upper levels of our sport, we subject ourselves to ridiculous rules, jump through miles of flaming hoops, and pay out the @ss to do so.
For instance… at an event which offers international FEI levels and national levels together, the FEI horses must be stabled separately from the national horses. So if you have a CCI2* horse and a Prelim horse trial horse, they will be housed in separate barns, meaning you have to schlep your tack across the property (perhaps on a tight timetable!) and go back and forth caring for each of them. This is done BiO SeCuRiTy, as the FEI forces its competing horses to be temped twice daily (recorded in their mandatory downloaded App), and vaccinated for Flu (because influenza is all that matters). The FEI believes the precious CCI horses may be contaminated by the sickly, unvaccinated, careless national competing horses, not proven to be healthy up to the FEI standards. Biosecurity is good and important, right?! But how does this really matter when your CCI2* horse has been turned out with, and trailered to the show, with other national horse trial horses? He has been exposed to “the unvaccinated masses” on the whole trailer ride, in MUCH closer quarters (snotting and sneezing on each other sharing a haynet, drinking from a shared bucket) than unassociated horses would be in event stabling. Does keeping your 2* horse apart from your Prelim horse for 4 days really matter in terms of disease prevention?
I’m all for quarantining true International horses (from another country, or even from another state). But separating CCI horses from CNC horses (particularly those who may be FEI registered, passported, and properly vaccinated, competing at CCI level, just not this weekend) when those horses are from the same home, and arrive on the same trailer, and will return home on the same trailer, is a bit sanctimonious.
