Chips are a really good concept but in practice they aren’t infallible. I hear this all the time in regard to dogs. There are multiple chip companies so if you don’t have the right scanner you can’t find or read the chip. And the information can be out of date or wrong.
The snoop in me is really curious too, as to this well-known person. I feel like at the rated level (at least on the east coast) every even has a photographer. It would be as simple as sharing photo links which are public to oust someone.
1 Like
I have two plain bays by the same stallion that even horse people get confused on which is which.
From afar.
Up close the parts clearly don’t match, and the gelding has the thickest mane and tail I have ever seen on a TB 
So in my general area of eventing, the professional photographers rarely take LL Dressage photos. I think you have to pre-book them.
They say that the LL dressage photos do not sell. It’s not worth the time to be out there photographing every entry.
I agree, I don’t think it would make sense as a consistent way to win, especially as you move up the levels.
I can see how competing a similar looking horse under the wrong name might help build a competition record to sell the less successful one.
4 Likes
At one point in the last six months, at the facility where my lease horse is boarded, there were three dark bay TB mares - all around 16 hands tall, similar body types, no socks on any of them, and a small white star shape on each forehead. Good luck!
3 Likes
not quite the same thing, but I have 3 grey Tabbies at the moment. I have a thing for grey tabbies, but they are all very different. Easily different.
2 Likes
I had a friend a long time ago who wanted to event but hated dressage. We used to joke that I would go in and ride her dressage test and she could do the jumping phases. Mind you we NEVER did that. But I think we probably could have gotten away with it.
5 Likes
I actually feel like THAT would be easier to get away with than a horse switch. If you’re not a famous person or not showing in your usual geographic area, who is really looking at faces and going “is that Suzy Q. Nobody” or “Mary B. Random” in the ring right now.
6 Likes
I also enjoy a good gray tabby. Now we need photos
2 Likes
I have a thread on the newest on Menagerie, but let me look…
Bug doing his favorite thing…
Puddin’ cat from hell.
Tater, the frightened newbie
I had to lift the first two from FB because I have a new computer and phone and they didn’t pick up photos. So I had to go to FB to get them. The third one of Tater I did get with new phone.
10 Likes
You may be right. Helmets don’t show faces well at a distance, particularly people not known to the viewer.
If I meet someone for the first time while they are wearing their helmet, I will not recognize them later. Especially if they are on their horse, meaning their is more distance between us. 
I admit sometimes I have to peek at the cat flap (sorrel color vs barely grey) or the tail to tell mine apart if they are at a distance. Up close they have different facial features and eye colors. I have three tabbies. 
1 Like
Oh I cannot recognize people in and out of riding clothes no matter HOW well I know them. A friend had a magazine interview her about her day job and they used this nice headshot and my first reaction was “this article is about ‘friend.’ Why is there a photo of someone other than ‘friend’ accompanying it?”
It was a photo of my friend 
11 Likes
Beauties!
So which one do you put in for dressage, which one show jumps, and which one does cross country?! 
9 Likes
I had never thought about that, but if any Bugaboo could probably do it all. 
He is VERY athletic, and the other two would be hopeless. The third one is new and has been hiding for the better part of a month. I have named him Tater but the way he slinks around the house I am thinking of calling him Slinky. Puddin’ is just disagreeable and hates everyone. she would rear and fall over backwards in dressage and that would be the end of it!
1 Like
I remember reading a story (maybe here?) about how someone saw a dad videoing his daughter at a show, and there was a smirking teen standing close by rolling her eyes at the dad’s positive comments… the person watching was getting fed up with the “snarky teen” and was about to say something when the teen said “Dad, that’s not me!! That’s some other girl on a bay horse!!”. 
16 Likes
Several years ago my gelding was shipped across country and I didn’t see him for over a week. When I finally got to the farm where he was delivered, I ran to the palomino in the paddock and gave the horse a big hug and kiss. Then my dad pointed out the palomino was a mare 
. My beloved gelding was in the barn. I hadn’t looked super closely because I was used to him always being the only palomino around, and the mare’s markings were similar.
3 Likes
I think it was 2010 or 2011, there was an absolutely epic thread on COTH, finding a horse that was inadvertently switched with another horse during transit, so the two delivery addresses both got the wrong horse. But didn’t know it because the almost-plain brown WB’s with small star were so similar in appearance. (Although it was gradually discovered later that there were some significant identifying differences.)
Anyone remember the Good Guiness thread? The two brown warmbloods, one a GP jumper, and one – not? 
It was the first time I saw a crowd-find in action online. COTHers dug in and FOUND the actual location of both horses using online resources. In about 12 hours, if I remember correctly.
The switch was discovered when the former-trainer/rider of the GP horse went to visit his former partner horse at his new location, months after delivery. And got into a bit of an uncomfortable dispute with the barn staff and current-trainer as to if this was, in fact, the horse he had come to see. The current-trainer was able to verify that this was the horse delivered to them, while the former-trainer was freaking over where was the GP horse that he had actually sent them, because this horse was not it.
If there is a repository for epic threads, it is one of the most epic. For the most part, it’s COTH at it’s best.
20 Likes
Carl Hester purchased a group of young Dutch horses of similar age, height and breeding. By mistake, he sent the one he had selected for himself to a client. By the time the swap was discovered, the client was very happy with her new horse so CH kept Nip Tuck. He says Nip Tuck has a long back, his hind leg were naturally always out, he didn’t really have a walk because he was so tight, he really didn’t have a canter because he was so tense and he was always trying to run off - and his trot had to be developed. "Everything that goes into a Grand Prix has helped make him a better horse…I just love the generosity of the horse " Together they went to the Rio Olympics and the Europeans. Hope for us all…
23 Likes
