Catalogue Fibs

I was paging through the catalogue for the Cape Yearling Sale (Feb 7, 2010) and I was somewhat shocked to see that our TBA has allowed the blatant "doubling up" of black type. Apparently this started more than a year ago and escaped me.

The norm was to allow mentioning under the 1st Dam a black type full, 3/4 or 1/2 brother or sister (which would be repeated under the 2nd dam). What we see now is the listing of the black type sons or daughters of the half sister as well. That's apparently not enough because in some cases they list the black typed offspring of the half-sister's daughters.

The effect is often an amazing presence of black type winners on a page that otherwise would have been quite ordinary and very bare.

It's hard to fault breeders for trying to make their yearlings look as desirable as possible in print, however there must be a point where a catalogue page changes into an advert. No outright lies are being told but the display of feature winners as BOLD TYPE and feature placed horses as Small Bold Type has allowed buyers to be able to gauge the strength of a female line by the proportion of 'black type' on the page.

It's a gimmick to print the same names more than once on a page because it is not easy by eye to eliminate duplications. After many years of using catalogues with the 'normal' display of black type the user can very easily fall into believing the page is much stronger than it is. Obviously this is the direct and conscious intent, especially as I imagine the these alterations must be made manually for each duplication.

As a battling breeder myself I can see the temptation, but I am of the opinion that a temptation is what it should have stayed.