blog



The S.P.S-B.S. is more efficient than ever, we are told. I have recorded here my own experience of the new "efficiency".
2008
	On the 7th August 2008, I sent off my applications to register 3 foals. The dam of one had been purchased in foal so I had the stinting certificate signed by the vendor/alleged stallion owner. On 29th September, I was sent a letter to say the signature could not be accepted as the vendor was not the registered owner of the foal's sire. I was told a signature from the registered owner would not be accepted either as they no longer had the stallion. I wrote to Council in time for the Council meeting of the 14th November to ask whether, due to exceptional circumstances surrounding the purchase of the mare & the ownership of the stallion, the colt foal, Tyrone, could be registered.
	On 28th November, two weeks after the Council meeting of the 14th November, the office phoned me to ask if I had received a reply to my letter as they had been trying for a week to contact Mrs. Sue Bowling (vice president) to ascertain the outcome of the meeting. Yet, in July, we were assured in writing that the president & vice president are in daily contact with the office. As we had been told at the A.G.M. on 9th August that turnaround time for transactions was 7 - 15 days (by December, turnaround time for transactions had extended to 30 days.) , I had expected my applications to have been processed before 4 months had passed but was told by the secretary that under the "new system", if there is a fault with any one application, the whole lot will be returned to the breeder! What a waste of Society's & members' money! However, she said she would process the 2 foal applications & credit me for the 3rd until the matter of Tyrone's registration was resolved. Passports for 2 foals duly arrived on the 2nd December. Four months after the applications were sent.
	It was approaching the end of the year with no answer from Council to my letter of 30th October so I thought it best to have Tyrone DNA tested against his sire. Legally, he required a passport by the end of the year & Christmas & New Year holidays were looming. The test proved he was by the said sire & his passport duly arrived on the 13th December.
	It was a major surprise to receive a letter from Council, dated 21st December, to say that the signature of the owner of the Tyrone's sire would be acceptable after all. Over 5 weeks after the Council meeting of 14th November!!! And a week after his passport had arrived. Of course, there was no mention of who the registered owner of the stallion was so it would have taken more time to find out & get their signature on a stinting certificate. It cost £40 for the DNA test which, if Council had replied earlier, was an unnecessary extra expense.
	I had intended keeping the 2 standard colt foals through the winter & selling the miniature filly but as her passport arrived so late, she could not be sold which creates a huge problem as she will have to run with 2 standard colts through the spring. Welfare of ponies does not seem to be uppermost in the minds of Council members. I still have no receipt for Tyrone's registration & passport so cannot reclaim the VAT or show a receipt in my account book.

	The December Newsletter informed us that the International Meeting had been held at Perth. Guy Hurst, the president, had spoken to foreign delegates about our stud-book. He told them that our stud-book is a record of pedigrees with all entries tracing to Volume 1 except for "a limited number inspected after the war". Not strictly true of course, as many ponies were registered until Volume 11 & beyond with no pedigree at all. And which war was he speaking about? Mares were inspected long before World War II. The 1st inspected mare was Gostries Grace (1) I.S. inspected on 26th October 1910! Before World War 1 even. In Volume 21 (published in 1911) of the stud-book, 384 inspected mares were registered. From 1910, 2,145 mares were inspected until 1971 when the stud-book was closed. By 1971, 2,145 Inspected mares, 7,451 section A mares & 931 section B mares had been registered. Many of the fully registered mares were descended from inspected mares who left important & influential blood lines in our breed. These "few" were a fair percentage of the total number of mares. Fortunately, very few daughter stud-book representatives were present at the meeting to hear Mr. Hurst's impression of our stud-books! Interesting perhaps to note that the total society membership at the end of 2006 was 2,268 - fairly similar to the number of inspected mares dismissed as "the few".

	I wrote a letter on the 4th January to Mr. Hurst & for the attention of Council members, pointing out that mare inspections began in 1910. Curiously, although received by the office, this letter was not sent to Council members. Had it not been for my having given a paper copy to a Council member who told me he had not received a copy via the office, this letter would not have been circulated. As it was, he very kindly photocopied my letter & gave a copy to each Council member. Warning - do not suppose that if you write to Council, your letter will be copied to Council members. It may not. I have heard of at least one other letter that was received but not circulated. If you want to be sure of your letter being copied to Council members, send it by Recorded Delivery & give a paper copy to a trusted Council member.

	At the end of December, we eventually received Volume 107 of the stud-book. Normally issued in the early part of the year, dismal excuses have been given for such a delay. I was horrified to find that the details of the 2 mares I had registered had been altered without my knowledge or consent. One had been entered simply as "skewbald", with no colour given. A thing I would not do. The other had been falsely described as "Dark cream dun" in spite of her having neither cream nor dun in her pedigree. Anyone with a slight knowledge of coat colour genetics will interpret this entry as having the wrong sire - a blight on my character & reputation. Again, I wrote to Council to ask who took the decision to alter the details & who, without seeing the pony or asking me, decided she is "Dark cream dun". She has no eel stripe, which is part of the dun pattern & neither parent is dun, which would be required before a dun foal can be produced. Deliberately giving false details of one's own pony is regarded as a serious offence. To deliberately falsify the details of someone else's pony is a far more serious matter.

Decreed by Council to be "Cream dun"!!

2009	Having written 3 letters for the attention of Council members to be circulated for the February Council meeting, I received a reply dated 25th February. Not one of my grievances has been addressed. I have, however, been sent the new list of officially acceptable colours for 2009 & the future. Members registering foals may be interested to know just what colours will be accepted. Listed are:
NEW official colour list	BLACK, BROWN, BAY, CHESTNUT, GREY (although greys must have "a mosaic of black and white hairs", so chestnut or palomino going grey will not come into this category), PIEBALD, SKEWBALD (must have "large irregular patches of white" so any pony which is, for instance, white with a chestnut head & tail may not fit here), PALOMINO, ROANS (which must have a basic colour given), DUN. NOTE : NO cream or cremello/blue eyed cream is on the list so I assume will not be permitted in future. This does not equate well with the breed description which says : Shetlands may be any colour known in horses except spotted. The letter from Council says that "all applications to register foals and mare/stallion applications will be returned to the applicant if they do not have the correct approved colour description".

N.B. 7th May	A letter was sent to me saying that cream & cremello are on the list of 'approved' colours. Just not apparently on the definitive list I was sent! Sure enough, the list on the Society web site has been hastily added to with cream & cremello inserted between palomino & roan. In fact, so hastily copied from someone else's web site that no-one seems to have realised that, in the UK, we do not spell colour as 'color'! No credit has been given to the author of the donor information but that may come next.

20th June	Vol. 109 of the stud-book arrived! Although, in December 2008, we were told it could be ready by March 2009. As it is, this is no earlier than usual in previous years in spite of the splendid new Grassroots system. The more observant readers of the latest stud-book will have noticed that exactly the same ponies appear to have won their respective classes at the Royal Show in 2008 as did in 2007. Could it be possible that there are errors in this stud-book in spite of assurances that there would be no need for proof reading as nothing could go wrong?? One of the Objects of the Society, contained in the Memorandum of Association, is to publish the stud-book but there seems little point in publishing the book if we do not know which information is correct.

International Meeting	Initial reports of the International Meeting held recently at Stansted are worrying. It seems that hospitality was poor & those who had made the effort to attend from Europe are far from happy with our Society.


July 2009 INDEX No. 4	I understand this has now been printed but, apparently omitting the AA, AB & AC stallions! Perhaps too much reliance has been put on the Grassroots system. The potential problem was pointed out well before the Index was published but seems to have been ignored. Our stud-books are scarcely worth the price now if they cannot be more accurate.

	NEWSLETTERS
	A few years ago, the decision was made to try to make the Newsletter more appealing. A bit of colour was added with a photograph & something for Junior Members. We seem to have lost the photograph & Junior page. In fact, we seem to have lost all news of Shetland ponies. Shetland ponies do not seem to be of importance to Council now. News of Shetlands that have made it to Olympia or have achieved other heights is left to magazines such as 'Horse & Hound' or 'Native Pony'. These ponies are the ones that promote the breed but are ignored by Council. Sad to say, there is very little of interest in Newsletters these days and absolutely nothing for Junior Members.

	May 2008 The president promised us a better service. "Rest assured the SPSBS is moving forward" we were told. "..... we are in daily contact with staff regarding the everyday running of the office." The Grassroots system will allow us to access stallion breeding lists, progeny lists etc by the end of the year. The accountant was present at the Council meeting in April & was said to have been impressed by the system. "The Society is being well looked after with income up and with control of salaries it should generate a surplus."

	June 2008 The president hopes to get Newsletters sent out within a week of a Council meeting.

	December 2008 The office telephone will only be answered during certain hours on 2 days a week during December. The stud-book could have been printed in May, we are told, but would have contained many inaccuracies. The stud-book eventually reached us late in December. And contains many inaccuracies. Where is Weston-super-Filly?? However, we are told that the next volume can be printed in March 2009. (which has finally arrived today - the 20th June 2009.)

2009	March 2009 The Newsletter is sent out over a month after the Council meeting of 14th February. There is an admission that things have not run as smoothly as we were led to believe & there have been delays. At last, a mention of PONIES, even if very brief. Good advice concerning all our mares in foal during this economic recession.

	May 2009 A meagre 3 sides of Newsletter with little to get excited about. The President warns of another deficit in the Society's accounts for the past year.

25 July 2009	A year ago, in June 2008, our president told us he hoped to get the Newsletter sent out within a week of a Council meeting. Here we are, some weeks after the meeting of the beginning of July & no Newsletter. This one should also present us with the Financial Statement for the year, before the coming AGM. It is now 3 weeks before the start of the Shetland Festival, to which I am sure a number of members will be going. They will have little time to study the Financial Report before they set off - but perhaps that is the object.
	At the AGM, the Society's loss for the previous year is revealed as £12,915
	26th May. I received the Shetland Sheep Society Newsletter. Sixteen (16) pages in full colour with many interesting & varied items, including full updates on the Society's schemes, shows, veterinary requirements & many colour photographs. This quarterly production is included free in the membership fee of £15 from a much smaller society than the S.P.S-B.S.

2010 December Newsletter	Not a good year for Shetland ponies owing to there being far too many ponies 'on the market' amidst a national recession. Poor weather meant little good hay being made & only available at very high prices, forcing up the cost of keeping any equine. The Society sales showed mixed prices with a number of ponies at Reading being sold for less than the 100 guinea upset price set by the Society. Some ponies received no bid at all while others changed hands for little more. Sad to find their owners think so little of these ponies that they are prepared to let them go for 10 - 20 guineas (£22), which is less than a farmyard kitten or pet rabbit nowadays.

	The December Newsletter confirmed the Society's loss for last year as a whopping £22, 428. We are also told that the Society's loss for the current year is already a staggering £32, 625 up to September 2010. Just for this year alone!! This unwarranted & increasing downward spiral in the Society's finances of the last 3 years cannot be maintained without bankruptcy. As predicted, Council discussed the sale of our biggest asset - Shetland House, but apparently decided now was not the right time to sell it. Instead, registration fees (& other fees) are to climb to such heights as to make registration of many ponies exceed their value. It is hoped that this course does not lead to the loss of some of the important old blood lines. It will do nothing for the welfare of many unfortunate colt foals but welfare does not come high on Council's list sad to say.

	The cost of registration for a filly foal will rise to £40 - an increase of £15 which, according to the Society president, equates to " ⅓ of a round bale of hay or 4 pints of beer". The same week as the Newsletter was sent out, Aberdeen & Northern Marts had a sale of hay at Inverurie, not that far north of Perth. TOP price for round bales of hay was £27 per bale while the AVERAGE price was £21.76p per bale. That is around half the £45 per bale the president of the Society is paying for hay. Tesco is offering Guinness beer at £2.48 a litre (£1.90 per litre with a 12 pack), & Budweiser at £2.28 per litre. [4 pints = 2.272 litres] It is perhaps little wonder the Society's finances are in such a mess.