I painted 6 new custom horses for this show and they all placed, which is good. Several of them brought home a NAN card which is a bonus. The classes weren't overly huge but large enough which is good because sometimes those classes can be kinda small.
Artist resin on the other hand was a hot mess. I had a lot of models place, in fact I only had a handful that didn't get something. The issue was that the judge seemed to be biased against micros. I get that not everyone likes them and that they can be harder to see, but I couldn't help but notice how in every class anything that was larger than a micro was placed above them. It's extremely frustrating for me when the vast majority of what I show is micros and the judge won't even consider them. I did get NAN cards, but I only got them in classes where I owned all the models or there was only 1 other horse in the class. It was really hard being beat my horses that I normally beat. I know that it is one persons opinion but this one is a little harder to take. I know that many of those micros are better than she placed them. There were 2 things that were extremely hard to take. The first was with my jumping mule. He's a nice model, paint job is really nice and he's a solid sculpt. He's done really well at show before but he got 3rd of 3 yesterday. I went to pick him up and the judge commented on how well done his paint job was. That is was really well done and he was a really nice model, but you placed him 3rd? The other model on the table was decent but not something I would have pinned the blue on. The other issue was with the Stock Foal class. There were 4 traditional scale foals on the table plus my micro foal. They were standing at the other end of the table and my guy was in the opposite corner on the other end of the table. She looked at, judged and pinned the 4 foals at the other end of the table but never once went and looked at my foal. I can see missing him because he is small, it has happened before. But when I went to the table and asked if he was judged and pinned, she responded with an oh and went and grabbed me a 5th place ribbon. Now I know for a fact that she didn't look at him while judging so to just hand me a 5th place ribbon without doing anything is a big wrong in my book. By this point I was so anger with the whole thing that I showed my last foal and ignored her. Going forward I know not to show models under her anymore and I won't be posting her name because I'm not petty that way. Lesson learned I guess, not everyone is excited and progressive about micros.
Thankfully I had performance to keep me in a good mood. I brought Bad Liar and Osiris again. At Memorial Classic Live 2 Osiris did the full English Division for the first time. I put him in every class I could including pleasure (it didn't go well) but he still came home with some solid placings and a couple cards for his effort. So I did a little homework and decided to put him in all the classes again. This time I was greatly rewarded, Osiris ended up English Performance Champion and Overall Performance Reserve Champion behind a BEAUTIFUL paint horse. I am so proud of how this show went in performance. I was having some serious struggles with my western classes but the judge was patient and said that I could have the time I needed, especially since there were 2 other entries that weren't ready.
Bad Liar had a stellar showing as well, couldn't be prouder of that little horse. His first show ever was doing the performance at Sleigh Rally, where he was the big rock star of the weekend. Then at MCL 2 he put in a solid showing with a few cards but I couldn't help but be a little disappointed in how it went. I have always wanted to turn extra NAN cards in for Merit awards, I have several horses that are really close but never enough for a good award. Bad Liar pulled enough cards from Sleigh Rally that he was almost half way to a Performance Versatility Award.To achieve this award they need 18 performance cards with a minimum of 4 in Other performance, 4 in English and 4 in Western. He earned 11 performance cards just at Sleigh Rally alone! So with the class list at MCL 2 I was hopeful that he would get the last 7 that he needed. In the end he only brought home 4, which is still a solid showing. It was so disappointing being only 3 cards away from such an awesome award. So going into this show the pressure was insane to get the last 3 cards. He had to get one more Other performance card to hit the minimums and 2 in anything else to finish the award. He ended up walking away with a total of 6 NAN cards, including 2 in other performance. So not only did he get enough cards to complete his PVA but he got just enough cards to qualify him for Performance at NAN next year!! I can't believe he did all that in 3 shows.
I'm also kinda proud of myself, it was A LOT of hard work to get this award. I can't tell you how many hours went into working on that horse and the props. Then even more hours of research for set ups and class ideas. There are some things that I am going to clean and fix up before going to NAN with him, but I can safely say that it is in the plans to go next year. I doubt I'll get anything but its always been a dream of mine to go to NAN and compete in performance.
I have a rough slideshow of the performance classes below. I didn't edit any of them but I did add the class information in the description of each one. My next show is about 6 weeks away and is an all halter show, so it will be nice to have a chill show with only 1 ring running per division.
Until next time!