Horse/House Shopping

We’ve been out and about looking at areas and houses for our next home.? We previewed some properties online to help the real estate agent understand what we wanted.? After we saw those houses I kept saying how much online pictures either made a house look better than it did in real life or how a house looked much better through my own eyes than it did in pictures, following that up a couple times with ?just like when I see pictures or videos of a horse and then go to see it in person.?? I realized that the longer I looked at houses the more it reminded me of the many horse hunts I’ve been on in terms of time, distance covered, and also the frustration in the horses not living up to my expectations. Have you ever seen a video where there are several horses shown’ You really like one horse but the others not so much.? You make an appointment to see the horse that has caught your eye, and to be polite you agree to also look at the others.? When you get there, the big bright horse you thought you wanted turns out to be an ?Eh’? but the mousy little mare shown later on the video has real spark that immediately catches your heart. I feel that way sometimes when I judge.? I hate to judge out of a car or truck, which sometimes happens when a judge?s booth or trailer isn?t available or when the weather turns bad.? I feel that the windshield separates me somewhat from the horse and flattens my perspective, and that maybe even my scores go down a bit.? I want to see and hear the horses with the clearest possible view to appreciate the impact of their presentation. I saw a video of dressage megastar Totilas in Europe last year, and I noticed an acquaintance of mine in the first row of the audience.? I couldn?t wait to ask him if the Totilas he saw in real life was better/less/the same as the Totilas we all saw on YouTube.? He said:? Better!? And this is a horse that is earning unheard of scores in the 80s and 90s! Hard to imagine, and now I’m really looking forward to seeing Totilas for myself next year at the London Olympics.