AAAAGGGGHHHHHHHGHGHGHGGHHG

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THE ONE SHOW WHERE CALLUM BEHAVES LIKE A GEM WE HAVE A JUDGE THAT DOESN'T KNOW A HORSE FROM A PONY !!!!!!!!!

OMG, I am STILL really angry about it, even though it happened last sunday...
Callum behaved sooo well, and he was as good as gold while we plaited him and spruced him up for his class. The over-head tannoy thing wasn't working, so we didn't hear the call out for our class... so consequently we missed it (only just!) >___<
But I thought, NEVER MIND, there's another class that we can go for. So I walk him in to the collecting ring and the judge says, "What class are you entering? Are you entering the Veteran?" So I'm like,
Callum's not a veteran! He's only 12 years old! The problem was, he was the hariest horse there because he is kept outside 24/7... and I refuse to put a rug on until he's clipped... and it's too early to clip yet. So I was a bit miffed before the class even started. As we walked around, you could already tell that she had decided what the final line up was before we had even done two laps around the ring.
At the end, we got a 4th (out of 4). And she said, you are at the end because he is quite a bit hairier than the other horses. Well duhhhh....
And then to top it all off, she said 'try again next month...' >___<
I had already told her that I was doing a few ridden classes in the afternoon.

What really irritated me though, was that we had entered the 'Sporthorse' class, for horses 14'3 and over. So why was a 13 hand pony placed above me? All that work, all those hours I spent slaving away in the shop to pay for this show, all the time we had spent plaiting and grooming (plus Callum's late-night bath in the rain to get the grease out of his tail)....... it was all for nothing.

So in the end... we left. Not happy about it at all.

There's another one on the day before my birthday... don't know whether I should give that a go or not.