Eh, the thing about the Hunter side of Planet H/J is all about a certain aesthetic. A huge part of "The Hunter" is the look and the style. There's more to a winning trip than 8 good spots and all your leads. A really cowy 14.3hh QH may be able to get over the fences and scoot down the lines to make the step but it isn't going to be a Hunter round. He'll have done the job, but not necessarily *well*.

Conformity is king and if you are going to stray from the norm, you have to be able to back it up. If you stray too far from the expected norms in the Hunter ring (navy coat, one of the 'in' helmets, boots, TS or Ariat pants, french styled saddle on a warmblood with a standing martingale and a d-ring bit) then you start to look like an outsider and the expectation of a good trip diminishes significantly. To carry off something non-standard in the Hunter ring means you have to be that much better. It is totally possible to go out and win without a warmblood, TS breeches, a french styled saddle, a GPA or a navy coat - but the people that do that already know the game they have to play.

My PROUDEST moments have always been when I've successfully pulled the wool over everyone's eyes with my own fakes. "Oh, where'd you import this one from?" is a favorite (the response is usually "some field" or "the track"). The best though is overhearing horse-show gossip about "that cute welsh cross so-and-so has for sale", when I know for a fact that it's a Quarter/Arab, because I'm the one that pulled him out of the field, cleaned him up and sold him to So-and-So. Those moments for me, indicate that I know the game well enough that I do not have to play it anymore - and in my head that means I've won

Spooksandbolts wrote:
blah, blah, blah, blah and the dog ate your homework and I can smell bovine excrement