At the Southeast Equestrian Trails Conference (SETC) every since I have
been going and I've been going a long time - the Tennessee Walkinghorse
association is a sponsor. They have a booth with material promoting the
TWH as the "worlds best trail horse." Normally you will also find a
Walking horse breeder in the area of the show with a booth. I think
that last year the Paso association was also there.
Seems to be that if the AHA were serious about addressing this big and
growing market - they would be there and at other regional and national
trails conferences.
Truman
Lif Strand wrote:
At 09:03
PM 6/18/2004, Kristen A Fisher wrote:
Here are some of the latest breed promotion
materials developed over the past year or so by AHA.
Absolutely no offense meant, Kristen - but is this program working?
Maybe it is. Maybe new Arabian registrations are increasing and new
owners are increasing and I've heard wrong. That's not what Equus
Magazine has been reporting for the past few years. Maybe I'm simply
impatient and things will turn around in another ten or twenty years.
If I had a say in AHA's future (which I've tried before and got nowhere
with) I'd be focusing on public education, and I'd be putting AHA money
where it wants to go in the future, which would hopefully include
distance riding as a premier use of Arabian horses. If AHA sees other
areas than shows being how Arabians are used, then let's see tons of
support for those other efforts - less in marketing materials and more
in *supporting* these efforts. Let's see real incentives that are
based on something other than the show world model.
I can tell you this, though - even show people are hungry for something
other than showing. In the late 1990s, I hosted a trade show booth for
AERC at Scottsdale. We had AERC brochures, and we showed the same tape
of Tevis riders going over Cougar Rock over and over until I thought I
could see it in my sleep, AERC T-shirts to sell and aside from that we
had nothing else because it was all we could do at that point. Now
here we were at a big mucky muck horse show and here I was thinking
we're maybe in the wrong place, that people would maybe put us down,
but instead we had people coming over to us thanking us for offering an
alternative to showing, not slack jawed in disbelief, but with wonder
and a sense of excitement that Cougar Rock/Tevis/Endurance/Distance
Riding could be something you could do with an Arabian horse. We had
an incredibly positive response, and we had some Big Name
-- "It is necessary to be noble, and yet take humility as a basis
"It
is necessary to be noble, and yet
take humility as a basis.
It is necessary
to be exalted, and yet take modesty as a foundation."
