This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> It has been interesting to hear others' comments about Icelandics. I've only seen them at SkandiFest (Turlock, Calif. in late September), which includes a show for Nordic breeds of horses, and I wasn't particularly impressed. The first year, they only did their own to"lt classes, and almost had to be coerced into participating in the Grand Entry parade. Another year, they tried to show in the standard "pleasure" classes, but it was pretty clear that, despite the claim of Icelandics being "5-gaited", their horses didn't have a lot of experience at the trot---most of them kept breaking gait to to"lt. Only a couple of them tried the Trail class, and it was fairly obvious they hadn't done much of that, either. When the show management scheduled a bunch of halter classes for them, we found out that Icelandics "don't do halter". None of them drove (reasonable, I guess; Iceland is noticably short on roads). One of the gaming classes was a "barrel race", with a teenager hidden in one of the barrels, to wiggle it as the horses approached; the Icelandics all ran out to avoid that barrel; the Fjords uniformly looked hard at it and went where they were told to go.
In terms of classes, the Fjords did just about everything. Fjord shows are always hard to plan, because it seems that no matter which 2 classes you put back-to-back, somebody is going to have a horse in both of them, so has to do a tack- or clothes-change! As to the origins of Icelandics---the info I've seen indicates that horses were taken to Iceland from all of the areas occupied by Nordic peoples. This included "native" ponies from the British Isles---which were Nordic "colonies" from about 900 to 1400 AD! That explains why Fjords come only in dun, but Icelandics come in all colors---they're a mixture of many breeds. Marsha Jo Hannah Murphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 30 mi SSE of San Francisco, Calif. -------
