Westfalen Inspection

I meant to post this a while ago, but I still haven't received pictures so I thought I'd just post it anyways:

Miss Maisie is officially registered! The inspection went well, even though I was nervous the night before about getting baby braided and clean and trailered to the inspection.

I moved Jetta and Maisie up to where I live for the week. They currently live an hour and a half south of me at my parents' house but the house I live at has a barn and pasture and it was closer to the inspection. There was enough room with kicking one of the horses outside so that my girls could come hang out for the week. It was awesome getting to have them in my backyard!

Of course, I cleaned up both Jetta and Maisie the night before, planning to braid in the morning. I curried Maisie almost every day trying to get her to completely shed out, but it didn't work so she was nice and moth-eaten looking for the inspection. I get out to the barn at 6am and Jetta is FILTHY. She apparently peed in the middle of her stall and laid in it. So first things first, she gets a bath. Then I discover that SOMEONE who's name starts with an M and ends with an -AISIE chewed off Jetta's tail!! I almost cried. It has taken me many, many years to get that tail to grow to an acceptable length and fullness and it's all gone now :'(

The offending little nugget with her handiwork

Finally get mom cleaned up and gave Maisie a quick curry and start braiding. Only to realize that the black rubber bands that live in my trailer are actually at the barn where Trask lives. And I don't have time to drive the 20 minutes to get there and back. So I rummaged around in KP's stuff, but she only uses thread, not rubber bands. I finally found some neon-colored rubber bands that she used for her niece's pony so Maisie looked like a pumpkin all braided up in orange and lime green. I was so embarrassed showing up to the inspection like that, but at least she was braided? Maisie was very good for being braided, which I was quite surprised by.

Embarrassing pumpkin braids

Loading was not an issue which is so nice! While Maisie can be a little hellion when she wants to be, she handles some scary things with ease.

I am glad I got Jetta approved last year because I knew where the facility was, I had met a lot of the people beforehand and I knew the flow. Paperwork started at 9am and then 10 foals and 2 mares got inspected, then all the babies got branded, microchipped, and hair pulled for DNA.  RPSI merged with Westfalen last year, so it's now Westfalen NA with the same judge and secretary as RPSI had last year.

Poor Maisie was not a happy camper by the end. She thought it was quite a rude process but she made it through with minimal angst.

Mid-day nap

The actual inspection part went well. A very nice girl handled Jetta for me so I could handle the baby. Maisie wanted nothing to do with standing apart from her mom to get her conformation looked at and she insisted on burying her head in Jetta's side so that the lady doing paperwork had a hard time drawing her blaze.

She did a good job showing off her walk and trot, I thought her canter was a little too bunny-hopping, but the judge said she had a nice length of stride, her neck was a nice length (that was something he dinged on a lot of foals, that their necks were too short). He liked her walk and trot, though he said she could be more under herself in the trot. Her canter was "forward and uphill". He made me laugh when he said that her head was improved upon by the sire. That's pretty much the only thing he dislikes about Jetta - he said last year that her head was "unfeminine" which, I mean, it is pretty giant. Overall, she scored a 7.5 so she didn't make premium. The babies who did were SO FANCY. I wanted to stuff them all in my trailer and take them home.

Random photo from last year

The branding was kind of entertaining to watch - some babies didn't even notice and others freaked out. Maisie was in-between. She was still while the brand was on her and then a couple seconds after it was pulled off she leaped into the air. Luckily the judge is SUPER fast for everything and she didn't even have time to pull away for both the microchip or brand. I thought it was nice, at the end he asked me if I had rebred Jetta because he "really liked her, she's a nice mare" and we discussed a handful of stallions he think might suit her (not that I'm planning on breeding her again, once was plenty for me!)

Freshly branded

Maisie didn't get the full brand (with the crown over the W) because Mirabeau is in Stallion Book II. It's kind of a bummer, but oh well, it doesn't matter to me in the long run since I plan on keeping her, and she's still registered!

My little pumpkin

Itchy baby

Hopefully I'll get some pictures eventually and I'll share them when I do!