Riding Western
In Scotland

 Welcome to Scottish Appaloosas web page 

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Scottish Appaloosas

In 2005 we were complaining that there were no shows to take our Appaloosas to and it was suggested to us that if we wanted shows then we should perhaps get off our backsides and organise one ourselves!!!! This we did with help from Heather Borderie who had previously run shows from Gleaneagles and also from Sandra O Gorman and Yvette Dulaney Brown, two Appaloosa Show organisers from down South.

Due to the increasing numbers of Appaloosas in Scotland we strove from the outset to promote this and ran the classes for Appaloosas separate from the Spotted Horses and Ponies, a gamble which paid off. With the first show under our belt we were looking for new ways to promote the breed set up the website www.scottishappaloosas.co.uk and after a few hicuups this is now running reasonably smoothly and is updated at the start of every month. Advertising on the site is free and people are accessing the site now to look for horses for sale, stallions at stud and general information on what’s going on as well as sending us articles about their horses to feature.

With organising the main Scottish Breed Show it still didn’t really leave us anywhere to show are own horses ourselves so we began contacting local agricultural shows to obtain classes. We were successful in achieving classes at Angus and Kirriemuir shows in 2006 and in order to make the shows viable the classes were run as joint Appaloosa and Spotted Horse classes.

The money that was made from the breed show was not enough to cover the cost of sponsoring these shows so in 2006 we created the first Appaloosa Calendar. We ran a nationwide photo competition with the winners appearing in the 2007 calendar. Stallion owners paid to advertise their stallions and 190 calendars were sold throughout the UK. We are currently running a competition for the 2008 calendar with the proceeds again going towards promoting Appaloosas, see the website for more information.

We are also interested in promoting Western riding and in a bid to kill two birds with one stone, in 2006 sponsored a new Western trophy, the High Point Appaloosa trophy which was won by Chris and his trusty steed Zips Tardee Impressive. We also ran some Western Classes at our annual show which people had lots of fun at but showed us that we had perhaps bitten off a bit more than we could chew and that it really was not our area of expertise. This year to continue to build on the little progress we have made we had an outside consultant organise the Western part of our show. All proceeds from these classes will go back to WES to further promote Western riding.

We are continuing to look for new ideas and ways to promote Appaloosas and get them seen, this year we have obtained classes at Fife Agricultural Show, Ormiston Show and Strathearn Riding Club. We have also been lobbying the Royal highland Show and will continue to do this until we are successful in achieving classes there too!

If any one has any ideas for us or would like to be added to our newsletter database (also free) then please contact us via the website or phone on 0797 996 3157.

The website address for the Appaloosa horse club Uk is www.aphcuk.org