PAS Hercules
Well-Known Member
Wow, you are doing a great job showing your (normal sized) horse! You will do just great showing miniatures. Your experience showing will really help you get a big jump start. You will just need to adjust to showing a smaller horse, and have him more square on the back feet. You can work and practice to get your minis head up and then hook well at the top and show off his throatlatch. Its a bit of an adjustment showing the smaller ones but just practice showing setting up your horse and like another person commented, you could post some photos here and see where he looks the best, some horses cant get quite the height on setting up with their necks then others. If a horse has a ewe neck for instance, you would keep the head and neck a bit lower and keep it stretched out nicely too to make it cleaner. I believe your horse will have not problem there though. Just watch his stance and you want to keep his topline nice and level too. That part is pretty much the same whether youre showing a larger or smaller horse!
As far as choosing a show halter for you minis, its hard to go wrong with a victor halter or one that is styled like it. Looking at your horse, his head is not too long, just about right in length, so I would go for a halter that has a noseband that is not flared in the middle. There are several of the patent, gold, or silver nosebands that would look good on him and perhaps the copper colored one may look fine. Its hard to go wrong with a halter that is predominately maroon with either gold or silver piping, and black rims. We use these a lot and they just have a classy look to them. I usually use the black and gold color combination on my conchos if needed on these.
If we have a horse that tends to be just a little long from the eye down to the nose, we will choose a flared patent noseband on the halter. This will help to shorten the head. A shorter head from the eyes to the nose will look better in a noseband that is even in width across noseband.
If a horse has a nice eye on him, we will use conchos to draw the judges eyes up further to the horses eye and show it off. I like a concho that is pleasing to the eye, not too gaudy, just a nice size and it should be a good match for the metal parts and chain you are using, gold or gold and black on a halter with gold metal parts and chain, silver for the other, etc. If a horse has a smaller eye, we do what we can to make it appear larger, but do not use a concho on a horse like this. In this case we would want a halter that has a patent or gold, silver noseband and some beading down further towards the bottom of the sides of the horses face to draw the attention down lower and not to the eye. Your horse has a gorgeous blue eye with the nice black liner around it, with him being razored there and a bit of shine, heck look really nice.
I also prefer to use a leather, (never biothane), lead that has a buckle for the show chain. Get the same gold or silver to match your show halter on you buckle of your lead. It just makes a nicer look for you without the snap and alleviates the chance that you might hit that snap. For those of you that have a snap lead already, you can use a short bit of electrical tape wound tight and neatly around that snap too, makes it look nice.
On your show chains, make sure you have the right length. If your chain is too long, it can make it easy for the horse to get the chain in his mouth, or lip it. The tack dealers also sell show chain keepers which are handy but you still need the right length of chain. You may not need the chain keeper depending on how you have your show chain rigged on your halter, as there are different ways for different horses. We like the fine Rolex chains sold sold at DD or Schneiders tack. A fine chain really adds a nice finish to your horse!!! I hate to see a beautiful halter and then a big clunky chain, it just doesnt make a pretty finished look to your horses head!
Good luck and Im sure you will do great out there!
Luckily I have a bunch of nice leather show leads that I use for the Arabs, will have to get a finer show chain tho
hehe, yep we use the electric tape trick on our chains too !!!Thanks for the explanation on the head length & nosebands, good tips too !
When you say Razoring, do you mean shaving around the eyes & muzzle ??? ( I use a 40 blade on my stallion around the eyes and a 30 for the face clip )
