Jan again talked a bit about globalization of sporthorse breeding, with very similar goals by all involved. He discussed how both goals and evaluation methods might have to converge a bit more for this to happen. With this in mind, it was fun to watch the rest of the USDF Sporthorse breeding seminar. In judging and commenting on the horses, Jan invited Ekkehard Brysch and Dieter Felgendreher, both of the ISR and experienced sporhorse judges to join him in judging and commenting on the horses. Scott Hassler also added his comments, since all the horses shown were either bred or imported by Hilltop Farm, and Scott's comments provided an interesting background from a breeder's perspective.
Young horses go through so many stages before the adult product emerges.
It was an interesting experience, and the opinions on the horses shown, all of them horses that any of us would love to own, were quite close, showed remarkably little divergence. It actually makes one think that a global breeding program might be attainable. Horses were being graded or evaluated in the type scoring system used by the ISR, but after I asked a couple of times for a horse to be graded on the Swedish scale, Jan started to do that for most horses. While I couldn't stay to watch the showing of stallions on Sunday, I did get to see Riverman presented at one point. It was amazing to see the bond between Riverman and his Swedish student handler, the stallion stepped out even more extravagantly as his handler leaped along with him.