Liveshow Reken 2020

Yesterday I attended my first liveshow this year. For me, liveshows belong to collecting model horses. Others might disagree, or simply don't have any in their surroundings that they could attend.
There are quite a lot of shows in Germany, we have about 20 a year. Most of them are further up north.  

Liveshows are a good opportunity to meet other collectors, and the bigger ones even have visitors from other countries! In Reken, we had a large group of collectors from the Netherlands and Austria. I've seen collectors from Italy,Switzerland and even Russia on other shows.

The main event is to show your models, they are judged in different categories and classes. To have better chances at placing, a model horse should have a good conformation and no flaws (i.e. paint chips, broken or bent ears). Modified horses are also judged on the quality of their paint job or resculpt work. There's also a tack and a performance category at most shows. Tack is horse and tack only, and only the tack gets judged. Performance is more about a whole scene, comparable to a diorama.

Reken is about a three hour drive from us, we left at 5am in the morning. Dad accompanied me, he generously showed my horses at last year's show while I was in New Zealand and he liked it! 

My show string is a group of about 30 horses, some of them have been in my show string for years, while some only go to one or two shows. I tend to just try and see how my own customs are doing so most of them have only been to one show. 

Seeing the other competitors, my horses placed rather well. With 50 participants and the possibility to enter 3 horses per class per person, you could expect every class to have approximately 30 horses. They place from first to fifth place.

I also saw familiar faces, both human and equine. Some people drive hours to attend shows. The largest distance that I travelled to a show was 500km each to Dresden and Munich, though I plan to attend at least one British show in the near future.

 I hope to be able to attend the show in Reken again next year, if it isn't as close to my exams as this year. A sidenote: I only own the first horse. The others belong to fellow hobbyists.