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Moving to France with your horse?
Are you thinking of re-locating to France and taking your horse with you? If you are and you are wanting to compete, then you will need to register your horse. An account of Angela Allen's experiences in attempting to do this follows. It is something she thought would be relatively simple, as all horses in the UK now need passports anyway and France is only a hop, skip and a jump away... but French horse bureaucracy was something Angela wasn't quite prepared for!
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Registering Horses in the UK
As horse owners will know, horses in the UK can be registered with a specific breed society, depending on the breed of the horse (usually non-thoroughbreds), with an affiliation such as Ponies UK or the National Pony Society who register native or mountain & moorland ponies (such as Exmoor or New Forest), or with a well-known establishment such as Weatherbys, who register all thoroughbreds and registered non-thoroughbreds. The latter must be over 14.2h and have at least 50% thoroughbred blood in them. (Weatherbys is a UK company which has been involved in all things to with racing and horses since the 18th century. It not only registers horses but is also able to provide export licences and horse passports.)
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Registering Horses in France
Meanwhile, in order to register a horse in France, you need to have obtained a passport for the horse (now mandatory in the UK anyway), a sketch of the horse done by a French Vet, and an export licence. The horse also needs to have been micro-chipped.
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Micro-chipping, sketching and export licences
All the Allen's horses were micro-chipped in France except one which was done in England by their vet as the horse in question was, in Angela's words 'likely to cause trouble!' They had a French vet put all the sketches together with lots of other forms, and they sent them all to Weatherbys to issue export licences. (These were free as the horses were not going to be used for racing.)
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Thoroughbred procedures
Once the export licences where issued for the thoroughbred horses, Wetherbys sent all the necessary papers to France's equivalent of Weatherbys, France Galop, in order for them to confirm that the Allen's pure thoroughbreds were actually pure thoroughbreds. (France Galop do not charge for this service.) France Galop was to subsequently send them onto Haras Nationaux to be registered on the French database. (Haras Nationaux is France's equestrian body which has to register all horses in France.)
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Non-thoroughbred procedures
The particulars of the Allen's other horses which were not pure thoroughbreds, Weatherbys sent straight to Haras Nationaux for registering, this time a charge was involved of 110€. It sounds simple enough but they found it far from simple! It seems the passports Angela had issued in the UK for her non-thoroughbred horses were not acceptable. Angela writes:
'Before leaving Britain we applied for Pleasure Horse Society Passports for some of the horses that were not registered with a breed society. A couple of weeks before leaving we were told that the French authorities do not recognise these passports - panic stations! We had to get letters from the vet to say the horses concerned were fit and healthy to travel. Fortunately John Parker, the transporter, arranged for a vet to examine the horses while they stayed at his yard over night. Our old pony of 36 years caused a problem as our vet didn't think we should take the risk and take her with us, but there was no way we were leaving her so we persuaded him to sign the papers. Another of our horses was only registered as non-thoroughbred, but we managed to get Wetherbys to do a quick up-date so all was well… or so we thought!'
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French bureaucracy
When Angela checked the Haras Nationaux website several months ago she found only three of the five horses were registered. Since then one more has been registered, but one non-thoroughbred is still missing from the database. And this horse, although not a pure thoroughbred, had excellent pedigree as it could be traced back to the famous Seabiscuit. Still, they had registered two unknown horses with Angela who she didn’t know anything about! So Weatherbys were contacted, who said they had sent all the papers to France Galop. Yet Haras Nationaux said they never received any papers... so where had they gone? The Allens asked Haras Nationaux to take it up with France Galop rather than them being a go-between, which they are currently doing.
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The chances of competing
The long and short of it is that the Allens cannot compete with this last horse until it is registered. Their only hope now is to send photocopies to Haras Nationaux and hope for the best. Angela feels that although the Haras Nationaux website states that horses don't have to be thoroughbreds to compete, English horses do. So although they've been in France just over a year now, with the time its taken for their horses to be registered, they'll be lucky if they do one show this year (Angela's daughters competed nearly every weekend in England). Not a perfect situation - but it's wise to expect teething problems like this when moving over to France. That way if things work out smoothly it'll be a pleasant surprise.
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your comments...
1. Update on the registration process required for competition horses...
An update from the Allens which will be of interest to those wanting to compete in France, says that they have since discovered that you must register your horses twice in order to compete. Firstly with Haras Nationaux, and secondly with either a Club or Sport Register, depending on your level of competition. For the second registration, you must provide your horse's sire number which you can obtain from Haras Nationaux.
2. Further update on the process involved in obtaining sire numbers...
The Allens say:
Hi - things are finally coming to an end. We sent the passports back to the Haras Nationaux so they could give us the sire numbers. This was in June. We heard nothing from them for some time except to say that Candles For Pelly would have to have her name registered to be a brood mare. She wasn't going to be a brood mare, and after finally getting this point over, they said her name wasn't registered at all so we'd need to do that. Meanwhile they had sent our passports on to France Galop.
By the time August came we still had got no further, still no sire numbers and still no returned passports. France Galop and Haras Nationaux were chased a number of times. A slight concern was that we were aware that horse owners must have their horse passports with them at all times. If the horse passports aren't available during a routine inspection, the horses can taken away.
Last week the three passports came back with the sire numbers in them! We have sent a cheque for 101€ to have Candys name registered, so let's see how long that takes.
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