This message is from: "Teressa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> I loved the post from Gail that ended with a pitch for a show in her neck of the woods. I'll throw in the Northwest Washington Fairgrounds in Lynden - a half hour drive from my ranchette. However, I know that isn't practical for the critical mass of entrants needed to make a show pay for itself. I believe the target for Moses Lake was 70 and I think over 80 fjords were entered. This new show venue hosted by the same regional club as hosts Libby only adds to the fjord presence in the Pac Northwest. No one that I spoke with at ML had anything bad to say about Libby - (though there were a very few who were much more sensitive to the asbestos issue than I due in most cases to a family member who died from asbestos related disease, and anyone would be insensitive to pooh pooh that very real concern )- and many people as well who were going to do both shows - including the ML show chairman, club president, club treasurer and many more.
As fjord numbers and owners grow in North America, more shows should start to happen. I believe that the increased numbers of owners in Western Washington helped to drive the creation of a show at Moses Lake. We saw a number of people who had not ever been to a fjord show before - and as a 57 year old fjord owner who was hauling three horses by myself - I can't tell you how much happier I was to cut my haul time from 10 hours to 5 hours. In fact, after I hauled three to Libby last year and had both my coach and a horsey friend with me to take turns driving, we all decided it was just too far. I don't go to the breed shows to enhance my breeding stock output, or to show and sell young stock. I go to have fun and meet up with other fjordie lovers and get encouraged by what I see good horsepeople doing with their fjords. And then know it could be possible for me. So my decision had nothing to do with "anti" anything, my decision was to be "for" something. I was thrilled that the Club voted to give Moses Lake venue a try because that would, in future, be my only opportunity to attend a breed show. As for the bylaws and voting rules, bylaws of an organization are there to promote orderly discourse and, as needed, change and growth, and so on. The PNFPG bylaws have been unchanged for many years - hence the somewhat anachronistic requirement that voting is only done by those in attendance at the meetings - this requirement has long been in place and was not the result of a palace coup! Incidentally, an amendment package updating the bylaws is before the membership now which would, among others, allow voting without being in attendance - in the electronic age, we need to allow remote participation - especially given the far flung locales of the club membership. There have been other mischaracterizations of how a show in Moses Lake evolved, how voting was done, what the motivations were (for fjord breeders, two shows are a much better showcase than just one - so the comment about a more sophisticated show or about rich breeders just didn't make any sense to me), about a deliberate attempt to draw participants away from Libby, and so on. The timing for the show this year was based on finding open dates at the Grant County Fairgrounds on somewhat short notice. The selection of an annual date is, I believe, a moving target still. The post just before Moses Lake drawing attention to an outbreak of West Nile in horses in Grant County (Moses Lake is in Grant County) was rather suspicious in its timing but didn't draw the sort of vilification in replies from the so called Moses Lake proponents as did the other post noting a documentary aired about Libby on PBS. Both rather innocuous posts with suspicious timing except both were related to things that occurred on the day of the post! Neither with an agenda. We need to quit seeing bears in the woods! I would love to go to Blue Earth with my ponies someday but it is just too far for me - maybe when I retire. But we've heard stories about the bad weather there, the heat, the wind and so on. As with ANY horse show or horse fun thing, there are good things and bad things. But the real test of the show is in the number of attendees and the ever increasing quality of the horses and skill of their owners. That's what makes a show a success. As for the Fred Pack issue - that has nothing to do with the show locations and should not be wound into this discussion. I don't know the details or even the basics and I'd just as soon stay that way. Teressa in Ferndale, WA (really a great location for a show!). The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
