A dressage judge/clinician who I ride with was judging at the Grand Nationals. She really enjoyed it, especially the western dressage. She hasn’t seen my new Morgan yet and was asking what color he is (I was taking a lesson with her this past Friday on my Welsh Cob). My Morgan gelding is bay with 4 on the floor (socks), a star and snip. She said, “gawd, I have a funny story to tell about the Morgan Grand Nationals. While there I was judging a dressage seat class and usually as each rider enters you make notes about the little chestnut horse, the dark brown horse, the bay with 3 socks, etc in order to keep track of who’s who and what you’re seeing (not just the rider number)…well 4 cute little girls came in all on the ‘same’ bay Morgan…ugh. Talk about challenging in terms of keeping them apart…do they make anything other than a bay Morgan LOL?” Of course she knows that they come in all colors but I guess it was more than just the predominant color in some classes. I explained to her that I lucked out in getting my bay guy because he was supposed to have been grey (grey sire) and wasn’t…LOL…thank you to the powers-that-be ; )
do they make anything other than a bay Morgan LOL?
we had a field full of Bays…the lighter one is a TB
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Bays are a carryover from the military remount service use as Bays are naturally camouflaged, the Bays will blend into the shadows. We are on small acreage but at times we really had to hunt to find the horses who would be standing in a shadow.
As for IDing one… we had one (Foxie) won a championship at a show that had been selected by the State to be drug checked by the State vets…horse exits the show ring she is escorted to her stall for a drug test. Attending vet asks for her papers, we give him her registration papers, he looks at the papers then at the horse and says we have the wrong papers for That Horse here as This Horse is old enough to match your papers. (Foxie was 19 at the time, Vet says Horse in front him could not be older than ten). Well Mr Vet How did we switch horses since your crew escorted her back and has been with her? He was adamant that there was no way the horse in the stall was the horse on the papers.
We finally had to get the show manager who knew the horse to positively identify Foxie as Foxie.
Talk about challenging in terms of keeping them apart.
which reminds me of the evening I was checking Coggins paperwork as horses arrived at high school equine event… trailer had two Bays …I was handed the paperwork which “appeared” correct but was easy to see it was wrong. I asked the drive if I could have the correct papers for the horses in the trailer.
Driver said those are the correct papers, you know all Bays look alike.
Yes, I understand many Bays are nearly indistinguishable… but these papers show your horses to be mares, one in the trailer is a gelding.
clanter-so good to hear from you. socrates is a handsome young man, congratulations to your daughter. so exciting!
Thank you. Socks is a special horse, he has the same air of confidence that I saw in our Foxie horse that encouraged me to buy her as unproven long yearling.
He likes my daughter and he knows he needs to please her… I am the softy who has an apple
