Picking on some of our own!
Dec 30 2011
When featuring fugly horses to point out conformational flaws we very often wind up choosing Quarter Horses. Or Paints. Or the random unregistered stock-type crosses that you see by the dozen on craigslist. Basically, Western style horses. Can you blame us? There’s just so many of them and so little thought seems to go into their creation, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel! (But with a lot less splashing.) However, for today’s post we decided to pull a 180 and rant about some Warmblood breeders. Spread the love a little, if you will.
One of the common complaints we have when evaluating stock horses, especially the halter bred ones, is that they resemble tanks on toothpicks. Big, chunky bodies on little stick legs. They look incredibly disproportionate; you can practically see the joints breaking down as you give them the once over. And we actually have the same complaint with the crappy wannabe “Warmblood” breeders.
People tend to put a lot of stock in the “Warmblood” designation. This is because the traditional registries require a horse to go through substantial testing to make sure they meet the breed standard before they are approved for breeding. Bloodlines alone don’t cut it! Horses from other breeds (especially Thoroughbreds) are sometimes approved as breeding stock, if it is thought that that particular horse will improve the breed. Their offspring can then be registered if they are bred to an approved horse from the breed. Complicated, right? It’s an expensive and drawn out process, but it tends to result in a high percentage of quality horses being born.
Then there are the people who don’t want to jump through all those hoops (or pony up the cash to get someone else to do it), but still want a “Warmblood”. These people tend to buy cheap TB mares (or even get them for free) and breed them to the trendy WB stallion du jour. ‘Cause after all, TBs are an accepted out-breed and this way they too can have a Donnerhall or Voltaire baby. Who cares if the dam passes on the worst the TB breed has to offer? That baby’s still a “Warmblood”, goddammit! And the American and Canadian Warmblood Registries have stepped up and given these breeders a way to make that official. Oh sure, there’s still some testing before approval, but for the mares especially it’s pretty lax and mostly based on being an acceptable breed.
The following horses are all young Canadian Warmbloods fillies and mares. The photos are from fallclassicsale.com. They all have Thoroughbred dams and approved, traditional WB breed sires. They’re not atrocious looking horses, but they all have some issues common to the cross. For starters, they have dinky, light of bone TB legs attempting to carry WB bodies.
This one’s a little skinny and her legs still look tiny!
She’s only two – how top heavy will she look once she’s filled out?
Does no one look at legs anymore?
This is compounded by the fact that they also have long backs with a weak loin attachment; a very common trait in the bottom level TBs. It’s a conformation that is poorly equipped to deal with weight bearing and high impact work, and yet all of these horses are advertised as jumping or even eventing prospects! I’m sure they’re athletic enough to get it done (at least for awhile), but they’re sure not built to last in those disciplines. There’s a reason chiropractic work and joint injections are so prevelant in the hunter jumper world!
Oh well… at least these ones were spared the indignity of the weak little hip that so often shows up in this cross. For that we have this girl!
Doesn’t it look like someone pointed a shrink-ray at her butt? It’ll improve a bit with proper conditioning, but nothing will make that a strong hip. Her TB blood is actually a little more dilute than the others – her dam’s dam was a registered TB – but she still shows all the signs of it.
- Long back? Check!
- Weak loin? Check!
- Light of bone? Check!
To top it all off, she’s actually back at the knee, with an overly upright shoulder and a short humerus that’s nearly parallel to the ground. Her wimpy butt and overly straight hind legs mean she’s going to have a hard time stepping under herself and really using her hocks; that front end conformation will limit the degree she’ll be able to stretch her front legs out in front of her.
Don’t believe us?
Photo by PolyGon.
See? No bend in her hocks, weight on the forehand and she’s not even tracking up. This one, of course, is offered as a dressage prospect. Because that is the movement they look for in the dressage ring. *insert eye-rolling here*
We’re not dissing all TB/WB crosses – they produce some seriously gorgeous horses. We just wish people would stop for a second and think before they breed! Breeding to a nice stud does not guarantee a nice foal. Amazingly enough, the mare is a factor too!
156 comments to “Picking on some of our own!”
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Part of the problem is that the American Thoroughbred has become extremely light-boned in general. You see better TB/Warmblood crosses in Europe where TBs tend to have more bone.
And some of it is that any breed cross is inherently risky. I’ve seen Draft/TB crosses that got the worst traits of both breeds *shudder*.
To be honest, I haven’t seen a draft/TB cross that *didn’t* get the worse of both sides. This includes the drafts that were crossed into Warmbloods in the early 20th century, none of whom left any imprint on the breed – they were culled after only a couple of seasons and cannot be found in today’s pedigrees at all. The TBs that were crossed in, on the other hand, continue to remain.
And fully agree on the lightboned American TB problem – in Britain and Ireland, with a stronger emphasis on National Hunt (Jump) racing, you can still find plenty of TBs with good bone and conformation very close to that of a WB. (On the other hand, more TBs with conformation problems – if they’re fast, breeders overlook problems. WB registries are less forgiving.
Thanks for doing this! My family dabbled in Dutch Warmbloods for a few years and really got to noticing what was wrong with some of the horses being brought to keurs (the breed evaluations) and what some warmblood breeders considered to be breed standard material (some of it was not pretty. Not pretty at all). I really like the system that the WB registries have set up. While there is room for error and I’m sure someone could argue that the system is totally skewed to the rich and the professionals, it’s not that hard for an amateur to breed a good horse in that system since it is really clear what they are looking for in an acceptable horse.
Ok, I’ll play. I love conformation discussions but I think “Warmblood” can mean some scary, scary conformation flaws as long as the horse exceeds 16.1 hands. Mare #1 has legs so far behind her that I can’t imagine her being able to get underneath herself, along with that loin attachment, don’t see it happening. I would like to take the neck from the 4th mare and place it on the hip of the 3rd mare. Mare #2 has a straight up and down shoulder and a nice loin. No horse is perfect but I’m attaching a photo of a colt that looks like he’s going to be a well balanced, strong individual. He has a nice shoulder and neck, strong back and lovely hip. Based on the size of his knees and hocks, I’d expect him to have adequate bone when full grown. This is the type of conformation I would want for dressage.
http://i896.photobucket.com/albums/ac163/blondemare/th_warmbloodcolt.jpg?t=1325265860
He’s pretty but maybe too young to really tell and don’t you think his shoulder is a bit up and down?
He’s at an awkward age and still shows overall balance. His shoulder looks pretty close to 45 to me and I like that the point of shoulder is up high (no nest as fugs would say). Also, being a QH owner I just love his big hip. He looks like he’ll be powerful behind. I just watched a video of him moving next to his dam and he is a lovely mover. Floaty trot, naturally collected canter – the little guy even did a pirouette! I don’t claim to be a structure expert but other than wishing he had a deeper heartgirth, I LOVE this guy. And for $14,000 he can be mine….
Love the post! Badly bred Warmbloods are pet peeves of mine
The worst part is the disrespect for Thoroughbreds… people would rather ride a badly bred Warmblood than a Thoroughbred that was too slow for the track but has perfect conformation and willingness to be a jumper/dressage horse/eventer/hunter…. Because Warmbloods are just intrinsically supposed to be good sport horses?!?!?
I have to say I really like the the third horse, from the elbow up!
Long backs with weak loins are common in even approved warmbloods, because of their carriage horse heritage. They’re all built for lots of driving power but it takes a lot of effort to get them to tuck up and carry weight over their haunches – enter whips, spurs, and harsh bits. Not so with the light breeds that are truly built for dressage like Lipizzaners. Watching them makes a $50,000 warmblood look like a cart horse!
The long back and sometimes downhill build inherent to both TBs and drafts is why crossing the two does NOT produce a well built riding horse. And don’t even get me started on people who think a TB/Percheron cross makes a Friesian!!
Well… back in the 80′s I started riding on a TB/Percheron cross. And you’re right, she was nothing like a Friesian. More like a knight’s destrier. But she was an awesome, awesome mare, and if I had a nickel for every time someone at a show offered to buy her for 50k thinking she was a Dutch Warmblood or something similar I could buy a Starbucks coffee. She had enormous bones, good feet, a good mind, and the softest, lightest, most elegant canter I’ve ever ridden. We got her from a hunt master, rode her in the hunter ring, she won Children’s hunter in our region, qualified me for Medal/Maclay, the whole works. She gave us two great babies, one of whom is doing well for a teenager in the hunter ring today. Lost track of the other but she was an all right lower level dressage horse, honestly not really built for dressage but that’s what they wanted to do with her. She died several years ago at the age of 34, having lived an exemplary life, and if I could buy another just like her I would in a hot minute.
Thing is, there are good ones and bad ones out of any cross. Breed two very nice horses together and you may end up with a very nice horse, or you may not, because in a cross, you’re breeding dissimilar horses, and they may get the best of both worlds or the worst. AND IN THE 1980s THAT WAS FINE because there were plenty of homes for the not-so-great horses that inevitably resulted in the quest for a great one. This mare was 10 when I got her in 1982, which means she was bred in 1971, when the world was a very, very different place.
That really can’t be emphasized enough. What was responsible breeding in a world with lots of land, plenty of money, back when our monthly cost for full board and training was 90 bucks, is not responsible breeding today, in the age of shipped semen making high-quality stallions much more available, a poor economy, no land, kids who are more interested in video games than riding, and monthly board in the thousands of dollars. It’s simply not okay to breed a dozen mediocre crosses, hope one of them turns out great, and send the other eleven to Mexico.
At that time the US was actually sending about 3 – 4 times as many horses to slaughter than go now. Sad but true.
However, at that time it was a given that OTTBs were sent to slaughter, so that has really nothing to do with the average owner’s horse.
I was just thinking about this today on the way to work — about how long-backed some of these w/b horses are and that, combined with the various “angle” problems and lack of neck or proper neck “connection,” how unathletic and uncoordinated so many of them turn out to be. I have a very nicely put-together OTTB I use in dressage. He has a very slight roach back but otherwise all the correct angles that make him very athletic. He “puts together” beautifully when we shorten strides and reaches out nicely when we lengthen. He’ll never do GP — and neither will I
— but he would turn himself inside out trying to do the movements if a skilled rider were asking for them.
Everyone wants horses of ginormous size, too, and that is asking for a whole ‘nuther set of soundness problems. Look at some 18hh or taller horse being ridden in dressage and notice things like bar shoes on all four hooves, bell boots on all fours for warmup, and the fact that the horses often cannot track straight.
My OTTB is 16hh and a smidge; by dressage standards, he’s a midget. But he’s sound and athletic, and I “fit” him.
In my experience, long-backedness is rarely the problem, as long as the coupling is strong and the horse is overall athletic. Long-backed horses might need a little longer to learn to collect, but it’s fault I’ve learnt to become tolerant of. A weak coupling, *particularly* in combination with a short back is much less attractive.
I couldn’t agree with you more! I have a mix of long and short backed horses and while it does take more effort for the long backed ones to collect and round up, they are fully capable of doing it. One problem I don’t have with my long backed horses is them clipping the fronts while trying to learn to carry themselves when they reach up from behind with their back feet. That is more of a problem for me.
I rode my long backed gelding today and find that he moves quite nicely. He isn’t quite ‘collected’ yet but he’s fluid, poll at wither height and near vertical. I find that long backed horses can be less jarring and add a long neck to the mix and it helps balance out the extended cab.
On top of that, I think a lot of the short cuts and crap in modern dressage comes from people feeling they HAVE to have a horse of at least 16.3 in order to be competitive…instead of a horse that is actually the right size.
When the horse is 16.3, long back and long leg and the rider is 5 foot nothing and female, the rider is GOING to find it much harder to correctly bring that horse together without putting in a lot of gym time…and hey, that would take TIME, and we can’t have that.
Darn! Wish I could find the video I saw a few months ago of a very small women on a very large stallion doing beautiful dressage in a bitless bridle, with minimal contact. Amazing what happens when the horse is well built and well trained.
This one?
http://fuglyblog.com/2011/06/11/the-better-you-ride-the-less-you-need-to-use-your-hands/
Really a very nice video. I’m pretty light (45kgs) and probably of average height (5’6). Now, I don’t ride huge horses, simply because I don’t NEED to, but I have started horses and I think that the only issue with pulling a horse up comes from poor training or experiences where the horse has learned to go above the bit and ignore you. My gelding (15.1hh, who I have trained by myself) can be stopped by saying ‘whoa’ or making light contact on the reins and I can back him up by leaning back in my seat a little – no contact required.
On the opposite side of things, we have a pony who is much harder to handle (14.1hh, don’t know who trained her). She has a lot more time under saddle than my gelding does but despite that and her height, she is not as easy to handle as him. Size does not really make a difference if the horse has good training in my opinion, because all horses (be it a 13.2hh welshy or a 17hh TB) are stronger than us. If they aren’t trained corrctly though, then that extra strenght would probably add a lot more struggle to the equation!
http://www.operationhorserescue.blogspot.com
That’s the one!
I can tell you that some horses definitely have a predisposition to lean on the bit and be harder to engage, before they’ve even had any training. They can be taught to carry themselves correctly and not take advantage, but it’s never the same as riding a horse that’s naturally light mouthed and built for collection.
I’m short (5’2″ on a good day) with a 28″ inseam. Also I am built round, and my arms are SHORT. My current horse is I think about 15.3 or maybe 16 hands, though he has an ENORMOUS shoulder and camelicious withers. Honestly, he’s a bit too large for me. I think I’d fit better on a 15 hand horse, a robust Morgan or Crabbett Arab possibly. My horse is quite robust – he looks kind of like a warmblood with a QH head & neck – but his feet and legs are definitely NOT built to last. He’s only 16 or 17, but he’s got ringbone, which is manageable for now, but his feet & legs are definitely too dainty for his size. I hope my next horse has tree trunk legs and Dansko feet!!
I don’t understand the mania for giant horses. They’re harder to keep fed, harder to mount, harder to ride if you’re not 6′ tall. I think that people should get horses that are size-appropriate. My 6′, 260 lb. husband, now he would need a BIG horse. If he rode. Which I would pay to see.
I would imagine for some people (Myself included), the ‘mania’ for large horses is due to the fact that we simply wanted or like a big horse. I like my behemoth draft cross. He’s about 17 hands, and took a bit more after the Clyde half than he did the Thoroughbred half… but I like him the way he is, dinner plate feet and all. I’m short, but I bought him and I pay for his care and I feed him.. so really, why should anyone get to tell me what kind of horse I’m allowed to own?
If I want to buy a 19 hand horse and prance around on him on trails getting whacked in the face with tree branches, that’s my choice to make and has little or no bearing on anyone but myself and my horse.
I do think people are overmounted frequently with horses that are too much for them, but that is only rarely because the horse is physically too big. It’s much more about having too much horse for a rider’s skill level, and that is definitely something that is a stupid thing to do. But I think it’s a little silly to believe people shouldn’t choose the horse that appeals to them, even if it’s a giraffe sized one.
Yes, but I’m not talking about buying a humongous horse because you *like* humungous horses.
I’m talking about the trend in the dressage world for JUDGES to mark down small horses (and the ridiculous ban, in the US, of adults riding ponies – some adults fit well on ponies and like riding them). I’m talking about people who feel they HAVE to have a huge horse even if they’d prefer a nice, compact, 15h Morgan.
I know you were.
My response was to cattypex saying “I think that people should get horses that are size-appropriate”, not to you.
We have several nice small mares and one very nice small gelding and they’re great horses.. but we know they wouldn’t place in halter well because they’re not giant beef cows on toothpicks. One of the mares in particular is really lovely but small, and she tends to get overlooked by people who are viewing our horses because they look immediately at my Frost or Oreo, who is a 15.3h fewspot mare who looks even bigger than she is. Lacy is a much prettier and better put together horse (Not that Oreo is ugly, but Lacy is just better), but no one ever notices it. They just look at the big ones, and I think that’s unfortunate.
They banned adults riding ponies?
Who is supposed to train them? What about if smaller adults want to ride?
Age has nothing to do with height or weight and a lot to do with experience. You can’t really put a novice on an unstarted pony and (at least in my area) you would be hard pressed to find a child capable of training a pony at all, let alone doing it well. Seems ridiculous to me.
http://www.operationhorserescue.blogspot.com
Adults are not permitted to SHOW ponies in USDF affiliated competition. This is not (as far as I know) the case anywhere in Europe and is just plain stupid.
I don’t ride english anymore but I did take lessons for a few years, and I have to say that I LOVE a small horse/large pony as a mount. I feel a little bit out of place on a big ol’ behemoth, I’m not comfortable up there. I wasn’t a big fan of the big fancy wb horses, which is probably a good thing because I sure as heck can’t afford one or the english show circuit. I think that’s why people cross to hope for a nice “WB”, because not everyone can afford that pricetag on a horse. My affinity is for barrel racing, it’s within my price range, it’s very active around here, and I can easily get a nice horse built to do that. The horses I look for have big hips, short cannon bones, are broad, stocky, stand square, and I like them wide between the front legs too.
A lot of good horses are being sold cheap just because hay is so gosh dang expensive right now. I saw a few horses a kill buyer (I guess he tries to find homes for the better ones?) had at the trade days that I would have loved to put ride time on and resell this past weekend. All were quiet, saddled, and a guy was getting on them and riding them around for people to see. One had Dual Pep, Peppy Sanbadger, and Smart little Lena on his papers. He was a young grey and was broke but had some buck to him is what the KB said. Another was a red roan that had King on his papers 3 times, and I think some Poco Bueno. Foundation breeding is not really my thing, but he was a nice, kind, cute horse for that little of money. He could have used an upgrade. I didn’t know that the guy was a KB until I looked at his business card later and recognized his name, and if he’s trying to find a home for some then I guess more power to him. He’s doing more for horses than a local “rescue” we have around here that I’m just waiting for to get busted.
My price tag for my two horses was a total of $250, and one was free. I got lucky getting both of mine. I bought my gelding the last day of August and I’ve already got him running 3D-4D times in poles and barrels. And he’s not a loon. He’s sensible and quiet, he stops, backs up, sidepasses. I can open gates off of him and take him out on the trails. He knows more speeds that GO, and can even do a really nice slow lope. He’s my dream horse and I got him for unrealistically cheap. He’s a flashy dark chestnut homozygous paint, almost a liver and he is pretty and he has papers. He is a double grandson to Shots flying Spark. He’s bigger than my mare but I think he’s 15.0 or just a hair under.
My 26 year old is a typical bay working QH. She’s my freebie, and she was bought from a kill sale for 50 bucks when she was 23 by her prior owner. She’s 14.2 and a total tank. Muscles everywhere, bug eyes, plain but pretty. Her neck ties in nice and she’s got a really big hip/butt. She’s very square and balanced, and she moves flat with no frills. She turns mostly off of her back end. She still runs 3-4D times and the last rodeo I ran her in was in November. She’s semi retired now that I got my 5 year old going, but she still cuts up in her pen and spooks at the ducks. Her spunk makes me happy.
Hey – I contacted the USDF and asked about showing ponies as I’m an adult rider who rides a pony. Here was their response (names witheld)
Dear XXXXXXXXX,
Thank you for your email. There are no USEF or USDF rules stating
ponies cannot be ridden by adults. If you have any additional questions
please feel free to contact me. Have a great day!
Sincerely,
Krystina Firth
Senior Competitions Coordinator
United States Dressage Federation
4051 Iron Works Parkway
Lexington, KY 40511
Direct Line: (859) 271-7895
Fax: (859) 971-7722
http://www.usdf.org
I will contact her again to clarify between “riding” and “showing”
HUh. Either I’m misinformed, or it’s a Maryland thing, then.
Re: adults on pones; can’t specifically comment on US rules, but in Canada, adults can show ponies, but not in the designated Pony divisions; those require a junior rider. I suspect it is the same in the U.S. Which means that while adults can show ponies, they won’t get to compete in divisions with the height of fences and distances set for ponies, they’d be in open classes showing against horses (and at a big disadvantage on courses designed with big warmbloods in mind). So it feels a bit pointless to show a pony if you can’t go in the classes meant for ponies. Tends to turn adults off showing ponies in the hunter/jumper world, except for putting some miles on a green pony to get it ready for a kid (even then it makes more sense to find a small, skilled teenager who is still eligible for the pony divisions).
I have to say, in the h/j world it kind of makes sense, there is a big money in show ponies and adults in the pony division would lead to a bunch of professional riders in there taking the ribbons away from the 8-year-olds. (But a separate, adult-amateur pony division would be great!)
Hey! I e-mailed her back, just to make sure, and she said there are no rules or regulations preventing adults from showing ponies in USDF shows.
I’m sure there will be biased AGAINST ponies as they just don’t cover as much ground as a big warmblood. BUT, I’m going to ride and show my pony and not care about what people think, as long as my pony and I are happy and working together. She’s too much of a firecracker to be ridden by kiddos – so she’s stuck with me
Get the best, breed to the best and hope for the best…..It’s a good mandate. What I think most people don’t seem to understand is that the mare carries 65% of what the foal gets. The stallion only give 45%. The mare has to be good to get a good foal! Eventer Denny Emerson has a really good blog going at the moment about researching TB bloodlines and what each “Top” breeding stallion has brought to the breed. You might want to check it out.
I have heard this before but fail to understand this statement. A baby is 50/50 of what the parents can give to it. The double helix DNA stand unrolls and then rerolls as it combines to make a new set of combinations of genes. It has to match up. I don’t think there is any scientific basis for this and usually hear it from older horse people….
Okay, let me explain this…those older horse people are not completely wrong.
All organisms have two kinds of DNA – mitochondrial and nucleid.
Nucleid DNA is indeed 50 percent from the father and fifty percent from the mother.
Mitochondrial DNA under normal circumstances comes only from the mother. Mitochondrial DNA can effect such things as metabolic rate (and thus how good a keeper a horse is)…I’m not sure what else.
The second factor to bear in mind is that ONLY the dam (unless using a nurse mare) has any *nurture* effect on the foal. A well behaved, well mannered mare will teach that to her foals – a hellion will likely give you another hellion – hence why it is SUCH a bad idea to breed a crazy mare ‘to settle her down’.
The genes are 50-50, but the mare, by carrying the foal and being its first and possibly most important source of socialization, provides more than the stallion, who’s just a sperm donor, most of the time.
I think it’s due to the fact that the stallion often has more offspring, which therefore have more variety among them. If a mare only has a few foals they’re more likely to be similar to each other than to half siblings on the sire’s side.
Ummm… 65 plus 45 equals 110. Just sayin’!
hey now if baseball can be “90% mental and the other half physical” then horses can totally be 110% ^_~ math is totally subjective (being silly here in case anyone couldn’t tell ^_~)
Yeah… breeding any old thoroughbred mare to produce a ‘warmblood’ has always made my blood boil. Don’t even get me started on AWS. Ugh!
Yes, lol, AWS deserves a post of its own!
WittyHorseoftheDay
I see way too many freaky looking warmblood crosses. Draft/TB crosses are some of the craziest ones. I think when breeding it’s important to pick two horses that have more similarities than dissimilarities. The mare is actually more important than the stallion. Personally I don’t like crosses and wonder why even bother.
Crosses are actually incredibly important – they widen the gene pool.
When you don’t out-cross with horses of other breeds at least occasionally then you end up with the gradual shrinkage of each breed’s genetic variety, and it is that variety that promotes things like strong immune systems.
But I’m not saying that we should out-cross on a whim. That’s when you end up with some of the worst “frankenhorses”. But if you look at history, many breeds were actually improved with select out-crossing. I DO think that the horses should be of compatible type though. Like in most cases a Draft/Arab cross is probably a BAD idea (especially if the Arab in question is very ‘type-y’ – the two just wouldn’t be very compatible. But I could see crossing a lighter-type QH with an Arab.
Yeah I suppose. But crossing should only be done by expert breeders and I think that the opposite is true. That is, it is done by the village idiots more than not and I suppose that is the problem. So I’ll stick to my “why bother” stance for the time being.
But that IS the problem – all of the “expert” breeders are focusing on purebreds that are worth big money because of their pedigree, and the quality of the breeds is declining. We would have a lot more healthy, sound, athletic horses if the quality breeders ignored breed requirements and focused solely on matching horses whose conformation, attitude and performance complimented each other nicely.
To be honest, when you have a gene pool the size of Thoroughbreds or WB registries *plus* TBs *plus* some Arabs… crossing out to other breeds or to unpapered horses won’t make a blind bit of difference, and the same goes for Quarter horses. When you have a breed with 500 or 5000 individuals, outcrosses are important, and not too strict selection (cough, Friesians where perfectly good horses are culled from the gene pool for having a spot too much white on the fetlock) becomes vital; better to compromise on a non-functional breed characteristic than to narrow the gene pool.
And the other question is how wide your breed basis is. The Lippizan breed is tiny, but it has very little inbreeding, whereas it’s not always easy to find a TB that’s free of Northern Dancer blood and the stallion-du-jour will turn up in performance breeds over and over again.
The Lipizzaners are actually having huge trouble with inbreeding! It all started with financial hardship – then they started to increase the numbers of shows – which put undue strain on the stallions – and the stallions no longer have “time” to “waste” on their breeding careers…. they are thus having lots of trouble associated to inbreeding. The quality of the Spanish Riding School shows has drastically decreased in the last 5 years… I have also heard rumors that some of their breeding stock got Equine Viral Arteritis??
Maybe I’m looking at different pedigrees or talking only to responsible breeders, but the inbreeding does not appear to be half as much of a problem as in, say Frisians.
The problems with Vienna are profit-driven – too many performances, not enough time for training and recouperation. The skills are still there, but the riders have less option to exercise them. Which makes me very sad indeed.
I may regret this lol but how do I post a picture of my mare? I would love to hear what others think of her conformation wise. I see a lot of picture links that say photobucket, is that something I would have to sign up for?
you can upload a picture to tinypic.com or imgur.com without registering first i think c: then just copy and paste the “direct link” into your fuglyblog comments *thumbsup*
Thank you Casca. Let’s see how this works.
This is her sale picture taken the day after her last loss on the track.
This is the adorable little face that made me book an appointment and race to the track to buy her. She nuzzled me and licked me, so I brought her home – no trial ride, no vet check, not even a little trot to see if she looked sound like they said she was. Luckily for me, she is sound and very sane.
She is stunning!! IMHO, her shoulder is a bit too upright and her hoofs are small (typical TB issue). Other than that, she is gorgeous!! She has a nice, solid hip – lots of freedom of the stifle….. But then, I’m no expert…
Thank you Liz-z. The feet, although little, are very good according to the farrier. He believes that she should be able to go barefoot. He did say that they were a good shape for a TB so that is a bonus.
What will an upright shoulder affect?
Upright shoulders mainly affect the stride. It makes them shorter/more choppy and if the pasterns match the shoulder angle (as they should) then they are less capable of acting as shock absorbers, meaning the hooves usually suffer more concussion.
Honestly though I didn’t think her shoulder was too bad. At any rate, we have a mare with upright shoulders/pasterns and she doesn’t have issues, but then she is a hardy little pony with hooves like a mustang!
http://www.operationhorserescue.blogspot.com
In general true, but the smoothest horse I’ve ever ridden was a Mustang with short upright pasterns. He had nice reachy gaits, I don’t know how, but he did. And jumped nicely too… no huge courses, but still.
Ok, I am not an expert but I have been studying up lately because I am in buy mode; so unless I am either not explaining myself well or I am not understanding things properly, conformation isn’t that hard to judge with a good picture and a ruler. Everyone please feel free to correct me because I am trying to learn as much as I can. So, here goes:
In general, an upright shoulder makes for a jarring, percussive (concussive?) gait and some difficulty really swinging through the shoulder either to extend a gait or to jump an obstacle.
The best way to evaluate your horses conformation is to square her up on a flat surface, take a picture and then drop a line that is tangent from the point of buttock to the ground; draw a triangle from the point of shoulder to the point of elbow to the withers, the point of buttock to the point of hip to the point of stifle? (are these the right spots to be looking at here?), and drop a vertical line behind the withers and another vertical line at the point of the croup. In the end all your diagrams should show a well-balanced horse (split roughly into thirds with the vertical lines behind the withers and the croup) with a long, sloping shoulder (shoulder triangle) and a strong, balanced hindquarter. The gaskins should be well-angled and the cannons should be short and straight, with “good bone” measured by taping just under the knee. My rule of thumb is the measurement just under the knee shouldn’t be more narrow than the measurement halfway down. I have no idea if this is an accurate rule, but it seems logical in my pointy little brain.
The tied-in, back or other knee issues result in restricting the freedom of the joint and the tendons etc as they move – this is a wear and tear issue. The line from the point of the buttock to the ground should pass along the hind leg from the point of the hock to the ankle. If the line cuts into the leg the horse is camped out and if it doesn’t touch because the leg is forward the horse is camped under. Practical Horseman has examples of this evaluation every month if a visual would help.
No horse is perfect, it’s all a question of relativity, care and intended use. Find a horse whose conformation doesn’t make it too difficult for the horse to do what you want (such as a long-backed, camped-out, straight-shouldered TB intended for dressage (ahem, like mine)) and then have a great time.
Your mare is lovely, she has a sweet face. I hope you two have a great time together.
There are SO many lines that can be drawn it’s confusing.
If you want a really good look into what conformation faults effect what, try and get a copy of “Realizing your horses true potential” – there are pages and pages that show you where to draw lines for bone structure, tendons, muscles ect ect. The only problem I had with it was that I found it a little overwhelming to think of all the ways that one things can impact another and that a horse can have an upright shoulder but a good humerus which can make a difference to stride length or scope or something? I’m confused again =S
http://www.operationhorserescue.blogspot.com
Actually, I doubt she actually *has* a straight shoulder. We need to see a photo of her standing *squarely* with both fore and hind cannons vertical to have a fair idea of her structure.
(The camera LIES a great deal). Her forlegs are slanted back, her hind legs shoved forward; pull the forelegs back, and ANY horse will look straight-shouldered, because the leg bone’s connected to the shoulder bone, etc. 
This position is a mild version of the “circus horse on a pedestal” stance.
Yep, in this picture both her shoulder and her hind legs look terrible, and I bet they’re really not if she were standing better. She looks like maybe her feet are a little ouchie, was she just shod right before this or something?
@ alliecat, I don’t know whether she had been shod shortly before this shot was taken, I bought her 2 days later. She had raced the day before (or even that day, not sure if her picture was taken on the Tuesday of her last race or Wednesday when she was listed for sale). Other than her racing history including a few race videos I found and her pedigree, I know nothing of her life before I brought her home.
No, it isn’t the greatest picture but the closest I have to a conformation shot. She does have the circus pose though doesn’t she?
She looks lovely. She is one that I could picture being a very fancy hunter when she has had a chance to fill out and bild different muscle after coming off the track
Thank you everyone for your comments. Sorry it wasn’t a better picture but I haven’t taken a picture for conformation. Although I do have a video of her out for a good “play” and burning a little energy off. She had some time off after racing and has been putting on weight and we are slowly bringing her along under saddle. She has great manners on the ground and is amazingly easy to ride – quiet, no spook and really tries hard to please. We’ll work on flat for now and start working towards jumps if/when she is ready. We’ll hopefully take rides around the block and enjoy the fields and woods around the barn as well. Whatever happens, she has landed a home for life. I’ve waited over 40 years to get a horse and am loving every minute of it.
She had 19 starts, made over $100k and bounced through several owners. The last one got her in a claiming race, ran her once and listed her with the placement agency I found her through. I was able to send a picture of her being fed a carrot in a pasture by my 5 year old son. He was thrilled that she is now in a home where she is happy and loved and no longer racing. I must say that in spite of the many stories you hear of horses on the track, it is very clear that this girl has been very well treated her entire life. She has no issues with people, trusts them completely and just loves attention.
I hate TB/Draft crosses. It makes NO sense. At a barn I used to work at there was a TB x Percheron cross who was atrocious. Gigantic head, skinny but short neck, short backed, but super weak loined, with tiny feet. Painfull to ride. But the owner thought she could get somewhere in the 11k range for ‘it’ because it was A DRESSAGE PROSPECT!!!
And I hate the dressage prospect thing. In the simplest sense of the term, any horse is a dressage prospect. Any. Horse. Any horse can walk and trot and do a circle, which is all most of the intro tests call for…. does that mean they’ll even do THAT well? No. But they’re capable of walking and trotting, yes. So really what you see is any horse that is built too crappy to jump well, or built even so crappy that they couldn’t ever place in HUS, is a “dressage prospect.”
I think the badly built Warmblood and draft cross market preys on middle aged, timid, beginner riders. They want a pretty horse, they don’t want to do anything ‘dangerous’ or ‘fast’ so they do dressage. They see ‘dressage prospect’ so they buy it, they have more money than an adventurous kid looking for their first horse so 10k doesn’t matter if it’s a ‘dressage prospect.’ Then they spend 10 years on the intro and 1st level tests, over thinking all that “one with the horse” and collection and suspension that their horse is not at all capable of performing, and they never move up from there. I’m not saying that’s the RULE so middle aged dressage riders please don’t kill me, but it’s not those two components that matter – it’s the TIMID and BEGINNER part.
I’ve waited too long and it was never the right time financially to breed my own TB mare (she’s only 11 but I love her too much to breed her for the first time in her teens, and it’s still not the right time) but I think she’s conformationally very nice, and I have had warmblood breeders before, when she was younger, ask if I was ever interested in breeding her. I said no, not to a warmblood; she’s too fine boned. She’s got great, hard feet and she’s never (knock on wood) been unsound, she’s really lanky and refined. A head shot of her would make you think she was an anglo arab. but she shouldn’t be bred to a big, thick horse. It would be a disaster, I think. I always envisioned breeding her to more of a hunter-type, refined quarter horse that had GOOD big feet, not teacup feet, and a better hind end, or something like a Sport Pony. Nothing about her build says that a foal from her ought to be bigger than her (she’s 16hh) or bulkier than her.
And that’s another thing: I really hope something starts to trend to handy, smaller sport horses. There’s NO REASON a riding horse ought to be 17hh and above, and it comes with a crap load of leg and foot problems. A smaller, light, horse, like my horse, with a slightly smaller foot, has a better chance of staying sound than a 17.3hh muscle monster with a smaller foot. It’s just become the norm to need hock injections, poultice daily, nerve blocks, therapy. Why? A friend of mine recently had to put her brilliant, beloved show horse down because he had navicular pain so badly that all the money in the world wasn’t going to get him pasture sound. I believe he was 9 when he had to be retired, and was put down at 13 years old. He was a warmblood. His feet were way too small, and it eventually killed him. That’s not fair, at all.
Aww, I actually LOVE the draft x TB crosses. If done correctly.
They seem to make very handy eventers and if the cross comes out the way you want it to, has the mind and sturdiness of the draft with the athleticism of the TB. It actually (in theory) is not a bad idea, especially price wise, for people who can’t afford $20k+ warmbloods.
At the horse park I ride and compete at I have seen a surge of these crosses in recent years and I have yet to see a single one I don’t like. Maybe their conformation isn’t perfect all the time, but they are always sweet, hard workers who take care of their riders… who yes, mostly seem to be middle aged women.
But hey, I would take a draft x over my wonky TB (who has excellent conformation, but unfortunately seems to be lacking a brain) any day!
I got lucky enough to ride a mare who had all the size (and power) of a Percheron with the brain of a TB. Oh lord! 1600 lb going runaway at the sight of a butterfly, with 200 lb of neck between me and the brakes was a scary thing indeed! Don’t get me wrong, she was a blast to ride when she was being good, but having that much power going into panicked flight response is not a feeling I enjoy – and I’m not an easy one to scare. Definitely not a horse for a timid rider to plod around the park on!
This mare is also one of the few Perch/TBs I think got lucky in the confirmation department. She was a big girl alright, but more compact than a pure draft while still having excellent bone. I see sooo many that look like a Percheron on TB legs – not a good thing! I don’t know if that’s true as much with other draft Xs since Percherons already had a lot of riding horses crossed in to make them taller, and less bone mass as a result.
Oh well my mistake – I thought that the “big horse” thing was over. Most women do not need 17hh horses. I’ve had people say things like oh your warmbloods would be my dream horse and I think (OK sometimes I say) why would you want a horse like that. Ah well. 16hh is the perfect size IMO and sometimes I think 15hh is even better.
Thought I’d throw my two cents in since I am the very proud owner of a 17.3hh Hanoverian/TB monster – actually I prefer to call him a monstrosity, but that’s just a personal preference
I got my boy when he was 4 years old. We did some jumpers but my love is dressage – and really so is his. He will be 18 years old on April 20 and he is perfectly sound. In fact, when people ask how old he is every single one of them is shocked when I tell them. He neither looks his age nor acts it! Now, I’m sure he’s the exception; I’ve taken *great* care of him over the years and he is quite honestly the happiest horse I’ve ever known (she says as she gleams with pride lol). I wanted to put this out there though so poeple don’t have a negative view of the 17+hh horses – the problem with making generalizations is that we sometimes forget to evaluate the individual and not just write it off because of some mass hysteria about 17+hh horses, in this case. The same can be said for conformational flaws – just because a horse has a weak coupling or is built downhill doesn’t mean they can’t still be an excellent competition horse. The horse’s natural athleticism and desire can make up for some flaws. I think it was one of Anky’s Grand Prix stallions that was downhill or had a roach back or something and he was (obviously) a high level, successful competition horse.
Just some food for thought
-Snugly
There is nothing wrong with a 17.3 hh horse. There is also nothing right with one. The frustration I and many others have is this obsession with height that we seem to have, especially with Americans. I call it the ‘basketball’ measurement, since so many basketball teams fudge their measurements on their players’ heights. Bigger is evidently better, and I was always amazed when I’d be told that a horse was 16 hands, when I knew darn well it wouldn’t stick for 15.2, even on a good day.
Hunter people are a lot more vicious about catching that type of hype– I don’t know too many hunters who are ‘bigger than they appear’. But just last spring I went to look at a trail prospect, reluctantly, because really I didn’t want a 15.3 hand trail horse. I wanted something smaller. Fortunately for me, when they led out their ‘big’ mare, I discovered her to be about 14.2, if she’s lucky. My old trail horse was 16.2, and everyone assured me that she was actually 17 or more. It doesn’t matter, other than to illustrate the point that people seem to have some sort of weird Napoleon complex that makes them talk up the big ones, and add inches to the small ones.
Try it. You’ll like having a better idea of equine size.:)
lmao! This is very good advice for normal people. Unfortunately, the ONLY thing I can measure with my eyes is hands!! I’m a total failure at anything else, including human height, but give me a horse and let me stand close to it, and I can tell you within a half inch how tall it is in hands. Now, ask me to convert it to inches…. (epic fail at math here).
“You might be horse crazy if you assign hand height designations to your family members.”
Exactly what I do! I’m 16.3 and my chin is 15hh. If I can rest it on their withers, they’re a pony; and they’re not 17hh unless they’re taller than me at the withers. My guesstimate is almost always within 1-2 inches of accurate – and I know how to use a tape correctly!
I bred my lovely gaited TB to a Swedish WB, Amorex standing at Magpie Farm in Yakima, WA, and got a Class 1 (at the SWANA 2007 inspection) colt that is now coming 5. He has excellent gaits, is 16.2, finished his first HT in August at the Starter division on his dressage score of 26.5. He has a trusting, willing mind. Don’t be afraid to breed your mare to a WB. It doesn’t have to be a clunky draft. The Swedish registry is very friendly and easy to work with.
The real irony is that the 17.3 monsters don’t cover their riders any better than a compact 16.1 with good depth of girth. My horse took a wider saddle and the same length girth as all of the tall (17.2 -18.3) warmbloods I have known (and I have known considerable numbers) – at a smidgeon under 16hh he would have covered a taller rider than me (I’m 5’10). Some of the bigger horses – particularly the 18.3 – felt flimsy and unsubstantial in comparison – that one was all leg and no body, and he had no body awareness at all.
My experience is that 17.2 is about the cutoff point, with 16.1-16.3 being the ideal range for warmbloods – beyond that, they’re likely to have been overfed as youngsters and they’re much more likely to suffer from soundness problems. (Not that my horse was sound… sigh, but that had other reasons.)
Personally, I love a good draft cross. my mare was sold to me advertised as a 50/50 Perch/TB cross. I believe the Perch part, but that delicate feminine head of hers did not come from either a Perch or a TB. She is just over 15 hands, has a wonderfully short back, uphill build with legs and hooves that she definitely got from the draft side of the equation. my vet’s first words when he saw here were “my god she’s got good bone!”. on the rare occasions that I have put shoes on her she wears a 2.
when I got her as a 7 year old, she was straight off if the PMU production lines and was barely halter broke. In the 5 years that I have owned her she has blossomed into a fearless, bomb-proof, hunter/ low level dressage/ harness/trails/what are we doing today, Mom? Sort of horse.
Every Perch cross I have ever known is much like her in both build and personality. I do not know if it is just the Perch’s that cross well on the lighter breeds (they are lighter than some of the other draft breeds and do have some Arab ancestry) or if I have just known some exemplary examples.
my apologies for the capitalization errors…trying to learn how to touch-type on an iPad.
ahhhh, but the gray mare has such a cute expression on her big head; shouldn’t that make up for everything?
Good legs, balance, who needs that stuff if one can get a WB approval.
a cute expression certainly means she should be forgiven for her flaws and be bought and loved (like all horses should) but a cute expression does NOT mean she should ever be bred nor will it get her any ribbons in the ring!
OH wait that’s right but who cares about training and showing your horses? As long as his great great great grandsire had a big name, your baby should be worth top dollar even if it’s a 5 year old halter broke unsound friesawalkaloosa. ;D Actual performance is overrated and breeds who do performance/conformation tests for their stock are big fat meanies!
No, but she is gray, that will be their biggest selling point. I actually have owned a few like this and they make great lower level horses, they try and though they can’t get all the way under themselves they are perfect for ammy riders that don’t even want to show 1st level. Would I buy her, no and I wouldn’t have bred it either..
Again biggest selling point will be the color, people love grays!
me included I have 2
I have done the WB/TB cross but my mare was MMB with one of the main european registries. She was just a few points from premium and some of that was because she jigged instead of walking. She was not the typical longbacked downhill TB either. She was very short backed and built uphill. She moved unnderneath herself quite well but was lacking in suspension. The cross was very nice. Her son that I have kept track of has been in the high 60′s and low 70′s at recognized shows at 2nd level. I truely regret selling her as I had people asking me to breed more. That being said, I see many people who seem to look only at bloodlines and not how the horse is conformed.
The approval process for the reputable european registries is good but certainly has it’s faults. I do feel that the judges who are approving the breeding stock and foals should not know the what the breeding is or the owner until after the horses have been scored. There is definately favoritism and politics involved. I really don’t get excited about something going premium as a foal as often they don’t perform to expectations as they mature.
I am finding major amusement with the current saga with the 70 day test here in the US. For those who don’t know what it is; stallion candidates for the european registries are sent in for a rigorous training period and a final test. They are scored along the way and those scores plus the final jumping and rideability scores are combined and this can be a deciding factor in whether the stallion receives breeding approval. Most of the stallions are 3, so it can be very taxing on them. There are multiple tests in Germany but only one in the US each year. This year the ISR/OldNA which is an american owned registry and not the US division of the Oldenburg Verband decided that they didn’t like the scores that were given and recalculated the scores for the stallions which would be included in their studbooks…ironically they were the lowest scoring stallions in the group…the lone TB stallion received higher scores that their ISR stallions. They tweaked their own stallion’s scores so they were high enough to gain admission into the studbook…now is that really bettering the breed as a whole? It’s a bit like a soap opera to follow it.
Lolz, or my personal favorite, the standardbred/Belgian cross. Yes yes, I know, very nice horses, but advertise your ‘Warmblood’ eventing prospect and let slip that it’s a standardbred/Belgian cross, and every person in our area of Indiana snorts and thinks, “Lovely, another Amish buggy mare got loose with the yearling plow colt.”
To be honest, I often have people tell me about the wonderful advantages of TBs, and they aren’t my favorite in build, although I have seen some super athletic, super nice ones.
On a side note, a pleasure mare with some points in pleasure and halter, 12 years old, broke, Obvious Conclusion on the top and Zippo Pine Bar on the bottom: No sale at $350 at Shipshe today. Not many horses up there at all, and prices were pretty rock bottom. Then again, the horses that were there weren’t cleaned up. The pleasure mare was intriguing, and the dealer who brought her knew she was worth more than the bids. I never did check to see if she was NH or NN though.
Or the breeder in my area who is breeding Lipizzan/Standardbred crosses! ARGHHHHH!
I speak as a frothing-at-mouth fan of standardbreds (a PERFORMANCE registry, not a conformation-based registry): they generally don’t cross well with anything except endurance-bred Arabs, and that is only if you are seeking a sturdy, sensible endurance horse.
My standie mare is a dressage machine as well as my endurance mount. She’s athletic and versatile. She’s even got a pretty face (not a breed strength). Does that mean I need to breed her? Ah, no. If I need another standie, I can get one (or more) free or cheaply from the harness track…and that way, I’m not creating a mongrel or contributing to the overpopulation problem.
Lol, Charm. When I read “Standardbred/Belgian cross” I said Amish out loud before I got to your Amish buggy horse sentence. We have plenty of those around here! I cannot say that I have ever looked at one and had eventing prospect come to mind! They are frequently the product of exactly what you described…..whoops! What a sad statement that is to read of that OC & ZPB mare you saw today. Bloodlines alone won’t market anything now – they need the whole package. Hopefully she gets cleaned up and finds a home!
I live in NY State which has become the land of the free TB. Unfortunately, that also means the land of the “Look at all these pretty TB mares I got for free! I’m going to breed them to ” Never does this seem to work out well but people keep doing it. There is just no thought whatsoever put into such crosses. Breeding just any mare to an outstanding stallion is not a responsible plan. Breeding an outstanding mare to an outstanding stallion may not work out well either if a lot of thought wasn’t put into the cross. World Champion X World Champion does NOT always = World Champion. Weaknesses on both sides must be factored in. Maybe they are both outstanding credentialed individuals but they are weak in the same conformational area (bad necked for example). Find a new match because the odds are incredibly high that foal will have an atrocious neck!
There would be fewer cast away horses if everybody really put some thought into what they were trying to produce before breeding. What discipline are you breeding for? Have you studied both sire and dam not just as individuals but their lineage? Production tendencies on both sides? ACTUAL marketability of the foal you are producing? (NOT perceived marketability) Your free TB mare bred to your neighbor’s Percheron stallion is unlikely to produce that $25k colt you just saw on Dreamhorse. (and I am not knocking free horses – I’ve known many wonderful freebies – I just know we are full of free “broodmares” in my neck of the woods and they are NOT meant to reproduce!)
One last point that has always driven me batty. When you breed your 15hh TB mare to a 17hh Warmblood stallion you WILL NOT LIKELY get a 16hh foal! The parents will not average each other out in the height department – this is an enormous myth! You can certainly try to stack the deck for height on a foal but adding the sire & dam’s heights and dividing by 2 is not the way you go about it! And I am not just picking on the WB/TB cross here – it applies across the board to all breeds, all outcrosses, all horses.
HAHAHAHAHA Amish!! For people who use horses daily, a lot of them make some… interesting … choices. I guess it’s like car owners. Not all of us are very familiar with what goes on under the hood.
The Amish family I know well prefers old-timey Morgans because “they just go and go and go.” They also have a couple of cute half-Morgan mules, from their uninspiring but sturdy little stallion. But they’re not much for farming – they are carpenters.
I feel very badly for all the used-up Amish Standardbreds I see on the road, but I’ve seen some VERY well-cared-for Belgians in Amish pastures. It’s all about utility with them. *sigh*
I’d love to see what Judy Wardrope would have to input on these animals, or any animal who is put up for confirmational discussion. I used to think I knew about confirmation until I went to one of her seminars. When you strip away the exterior and learn to see the skeleton and understand how the bones work together – the stifle placement on the grey will not allow for great extension, however it also will not prohibit “sitting” which is necessary for the canter pirouettes. Horses can have a long, strong, back, where the weakness come is where the lumbral sacral gap crossects with the point of the hip. This mare’s doesn’t look that bad.
You cannot look at the angle of the shoulder without considering the angle and length of the humerus, as the horses front leg, all the way from the shoulder to the top of the knee – acts like a pendulum and no one of those parts can move without the other 2 moving as well. A lot more to consider than just the angle and depth of a shoulder.
She has far less concern with a horse that might be a bit back or over at the knee.
Judy has a great website, and her 10 confirmational myths book will add another level to assessing the confirmation and discipline appropriatness of a chosen horse. http://www.jwequine.com/
I know I’ve read some of her reviews – she’s good.
I have a friend whose sister owns two horses. People often ask why I’m not friends with the sister because we both like horses. Well here’s why: #1 the only turnout she has is a paddock that can’t be more than 16′X30′, and she wonders why her TB mare is “crazy” under saddle: #2 she bred said fugly TB mare to a local WB stallion… at 19 years old! Some people just don’t seem to get it – any of it.
Ha! It’s like when people ask me, “You love horses, how come you’re not following the Kentucky Derby??”
Then they get an earful of why I am not the biggest fan of a big chunk of the Racing Industry.
With the title of this post I thought you were going to actually look at your OWN horses. Can we do that? Can we give submissions of our own critters whom we love dearly but have their own…erm…physical shortcomings? Maybe a conformation pic but also a pic of something they’re good at, like for example: my pony may be a downhill, mutton withered, toed in, block headed, tank of a pony but she always jumps a 10 and is worth her weight in gold for how kind she is. We have so much fun picking apart what we find on the internet, but how about we openly giggle at the ones in our own barns?
haha actually we had started out with the post being about our own horses and were going to ask people to submit theirs to be critiqued after that – unfrtunately we’ve been so water logged here we haven’t been able to get decent photos. Soon though! But if you want to get the ball rolling and send us some pics we’d love to get some conformation clinics going
Done and done! she’s a fat furry tank of a pony.
Speaking of TB/Draft crosses (in this case a Clydey) here’s a NZ stallion who has competed in GP Showjumping and currently competing GP dressage. Performance speaks volumes in my opinion. http://www.airthreylodgesporthorses.co.nz/stallion/photos
Photo 2 – THAT, ladies and gentleman, is the definition of collection!
NO No No!! “Collection” means they’ve got their necks arched way back and their mouths are frothing!!
Seriously, That is one magnificent horse.
Oh yeah: And their noses must be vertical. *snort*
Really, that whole vertical head = collection thing just drives me NUTS. All it means is that the horse is carrying his head… vertically. I’d rather see a relaxed horse flexing at the poll with juuuust enough contact. Who cares where his damn nose is – if he’s truly collected and carrying himself well, it will be just where it needs to be, and that WON’T be up in the air. A horse is not a chess piece.
I know you’re kidding, but my comment was based on the engagement in his hind end which created the lift he needs for that be-a-utiful forehand suspension. His head could be in the rider’s lap for all I care.
And I agree with you 100000000000%, because that photo captures such beautiful, relaxed, elegant, “uphill”, ready-for-anything, light-as-a-feather collection. I love watching pirouettes done by horse/riders who have achieved this. It’s just breathtaking.
Isn’t it just so amazing that such a big, hearty animal can move so gracefully and lightly? I never tire of watching that. Someday, if I win the lottery, get the right horse and trainer, and go through years of expert instruction and hours of practice every day, I might get there….
Same with that bitless video posted above. I’m so used to seeing big wobbly pirouettes that look like the horse is about to fall apart any moment. When I watched that BIG horse do a tight, balanced, energetic one I had to watch it over and over. Modern competition has ruined dressage >.<
As someone who knows that grey horse, I will say that while I, personally, did not particularly care for her…. you are looking at a THREE YEAR OLD warmblood. That’s like a yearling QH, in growth spurts. They can be bloody ugly. And, to boot, the conformation shot was taken before she was even broke, and the under saddle shot at less than 30 days. She was in the middle of a growth spurt, and no amount of feed would get her weight up – so yes, she was slightly underweight.
Having seen a few who look like her mature, that hip will strengthen decently when she grows into herself and fill out. The loins, well, they are what they are, but the mare had strong legs with decent bone. As a dressage prospect for an amateur rider in the market she’s in, she’d be fine. Her movement under saddle improved as she a) gained strength and b) gained balance under her rider.
And, for what it’s worth, the weak hind end is not characteristic of the thoroughbred in her bloodline…. It is characteristic of the sire, and was seen in all of the offspring I’ve seen to date. And, believe it or not, some are very successful! And, I should add, make really nice amateur rides.
That’s kind of more important than super flashy movement that only a pro can ride.
As for myself – I own a TB/Warmblood. Dam is a Secretariat granddaughter, Sire is phenomenally bred. He is PUNY. 15.1h but with nice bone structure. What it looks like I will get right now, based on his ever changing 3 year old body, is a very thoroughbred type with WOW movement. (and a head that only his mother could love. Oy vey!) I’m no complaining. His full siblings were all much larger, but it meant that I got a nice little cropout for a phenomenally low price. He’s not perfect, but I’m in love with the fact that he typed towards the TB for build (I hate riding tanks) and the WB for movement. Plus he has the quietest, kindest personality.
My other horse is a TB and he is phenomenal, albeit 3 and just off the track. Personally, I’d rather ride a TB than any warmblood as I much prefer my horses to have a light frame, as I fit them better. Incidentally, he is WAY more physically mature than my warmblood, even though they are the same age. As in, I wouldn’t dare sit on the WB yet… but the TB? Yep, he’s fine to ride.
Just food for thought. I agree with a lot of the premise discussed, but feel that perhaps fully mature warmbloods would be better representative of the argument.
Well, if you’re going to bring that up, I have to point out that the rider being hunched over like SHE’S about to fall on her face, never mind too much contact for a less-than-30 day horse (with a martingale to boot) is largely contributing to the mare traveling on her forehand. Say it with me: rhythm, suppleness, contact, impulsion…
*I* think she looks like an AQHA Hunter Under Saddle horse.
That is not a compliment.
Don’t you mean “Western Pleasure in English Tack”?
Zackly. It’s all about the horse’s managing to keep moving although it’s head & neck are forced low. This can only be achieved when the neck & head are completely disengaged from the rest of the body, breaking the fulcrum that is the forehand and forcing the horse to travel “downhill” to maintain this dysfunctional balancing act.
Breeding horses to naturally carry their heads, necks & shoulders like this can not end well.
Anyway, this young mare looks exactly like a 2-year-old HUS horse entering its “training.” The trainer’s hunchy position and encouragement to the horse when it puts its head lower look for all the world like something at an AQHA barn. The martingale, too, though in a stock horse barn it would be called a “training fork” and be even more severe.
Sad to see a dressage prospect (?) getting its initial training this way. Any natural talent she’s got (her conformation isn’t a total disaster… not the greatest, but I’ve seen worse looking horses do OK) will have to be unearthed by the next trainer.
Let’s just hope that this photo was taken at an awkward, atypical moment, though why you’d want that put up for all the Internet to see is beyond me.
please, cattyplex, since you are so quick to judge others… might you have a photo of YOU riding that we can judge?
ha ha …. if I did, you would see a pudgy, short-legged middle aged lady who hasn’t had a lesson in far too long, and whose butt looks mighty big in breeches….
My leg looks ok, I’m always good at sinking my weight down in my heels, but my hands tend to go horizontal and I have had trouble the past few years of finding the “sweet spot” of contact: either I get too enthusiastic about taking “control” of the poor horse’s mouth and let him leeeeeean into my hands, or I get too lax and let the reins just slip thru my fingers.
My current horse gets VERY worried if you take too much contact, and he’s a sweet old man to boot, so I have been erring on the side of loooose reins, since we just putter around the ring & pasture anyway.
I can feel my diagonals and leads without looking, which are useful tricks, but I tend to really drop my shoulder & collapse my hip going ’round a turn. And since I don’t ride often these days, it’s HARD to maintain inside leg/outside hand at anything faster than a walk.
Nope, I’m far from perfect in the saddle. I have more “pretty” habits than effective ones, though I can maintain a balanced 2-point trotting or cantering around the ring (with stirrups) without falling on my hands until I get super tired. I can sit a moderate buck (not a string of them) without freaking out, or a big shy.
However, my eyes work JUST FINE, and I’ve had enough good instruction in my life, and studied enough, to recognize BAD equitation, and equipment that is questionable. Perhaps this trainer is just having one of those not-pretty “trainerly” sessions, but that photo just smacks of the AQHA FAIL that makes my teeth hurt, even though that isn’t a stock horse, and I presume she’s not a stock horse trainer.
I rode at a barn (briefly!!) where the owner/”trainer” attached her training fork at the cinch. You know, the ones that are meant to go on a breast collar? I spent the whole ride trying to keep the mare from tripping on her damn nose. Never mind that she had the worst gaits I have EVER RIDDEN.
Ugh.
“Amazingly enough, the mare is a factor too!”
This sentence says it all! In almost every breed I’ve been associated with, I’ve known some of the ugliest mares bred because they were “purebred” and the stud was just the best. I mean they were bred to some really outstanding stallions, but the resulting foals never sold for as much as the stud fees, etc, etc. IMHO the mare adds more than 50% of what comes out after 11 months. The stud is usually just a semen donor.
And the “X” factor, or large heart gene, is only passed on the x chromosone = mares! Secretariat had the large heart which was a huge (no pun intended!) factor in his career. Problem was, he couldn’t pass it on as only the dam carries it. Now, if they had paid more attention to mares than stallions, maybe we would’ve had a super-superhorse sired by him. I myself wonder if Zenyatta has the large heart gene. I can’t wait to follow the life of her and Bernardini’s foal. Finally, mares are on the map! (Z & Rachel – mares deluxe!!)
I doubt that Queen Z has the large heart gene, but she does have soundness and the ability to carry her speed to at least the Classic distance.
Bernardini, on the other hand, is by A.P. Indy – a Belmont winner. That’s the golden cross of Seattle Slew to Weekend Surprise who was by Secretariat. That cross also produced Summer Squall. Bernardini’s dam, Cara Rafaela, carries two crosses to Dr. Fager – a precious rarity. Even though he was primarily a sprinter, sometimes stretching out to a mile, Dr. Fager could hold his speed and carry a significant amount of weight. Cara Rafaela also contributes two crosses to Princequillo through her sire, Quiet American. I’ll admit, it’s pretty far back, but when you consider that Secretariat was a grandson of Princequillo…that all adds up to a hefty dose of (potential) stamina. On paper, I like those odds. In the real world…we’ll see what happens.
I don’t know bloodlines except for the basics but I’d been hoping they would breed Z to AP Indy. I wonder if his declining fertility made Bernardini the 1st choice. He is a beautifully correct horse IMO, balanced with decent bone and an overall appearance of strength. I’m happy they chose him although there was significant more thought to lineage than I know. I heard a lot of people were rooting for Dynaformer and forgive me, but yuck. To me he’s very unbalanced and awkward for a horse who was getting a $150k stud fee prior to being pensioned.
What exactly is in her structure that made her run like she did? She’s over 17 hands, larger than average by a hand. She had a huge stride and ate up the ground. It seems as if her low stifle allowed more swing to her hind end, her range was knocking on the 180 degree door. She has a huge barrel, nice shoulder, good bone and made running look easy. She should’ve won the ’10 Classic if only…. I peek in at her website and am amazed at how quickly she filled out after a hard season. Lanes End has done a wonderful job with her, she looks happy and sound. I can’t imagine her foal not being a gorgeous specimen. I hope it gets the same management that Z did. Who knows what would’ve happened if they pushed her at two instead of vying their time and waiting until she was mature enough.
To the best of my knowledge, and the Three Chimney’s website, Dynaformer isn’t pensioned. I’m not sure that cranky old cannibal won’t go on forever.
His 2012 fee is holding steady at 150k.
I went to Three Chimneys in 2009 and we had a meet and greet with Big Brown, Smarty Jones, Point Given and others but not Dynaformer. He wore a chain over his nose with a large clip for easy capture in his stall and I understand that they won’t cover maiden mares with him. I had a chance to speak to Ann (believe that was her name) the stallion manager and she told me how the sound stallions are still ridden daily and get as much turnout as possible. They keep the routine of breeding, riding, turnout, etc at the same times each day. I was impressed with the operation but was curious to find out the deal with the ‘cannibal’. Does he eat man or mares? He appears well mannered in the youtubes of him. I thought I read he was pensioned…maybe I had Rahy on the brain, who I hear has passed on.
Sandy, not Ann.
My understanding is that they stopped riding Dynaformer after he bit off a groom’s finger. The stallion manager at the time, Wes Lanter, said it wasn’t worth messing with him anymore. He wears that chain and clip on his halter at all times, indoors and outdoors, because he’s such a bad actor. His halter is reportedly pretty rough looking these days from wear and tear, but no one really wants to change it. There have been nastier stallions, but he does have quite the reputation!
Meh, maybe the whole Barbaro thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth, just can’t see breeding to a stallion with less than stellar conformation AND a bad disposition. I know he’s quite popular and there must be something in the genetics that drove his stud fee from $5k to $150k. But since we’re talking about conformation, there are other studs with strong records and good conformation that I’d prefer to gamble on. My fav’s are Bernardini, Curlin, Medaglia D’Oro, Giant’s Causeway, Malibu Moon….based on my limited knowledge of lineage and solely on my eyes’ point of view. I wish there was a list of top MARES by earnings like the Stallion Register on Bloodhorse. Sigh. We mares have to come to fhotd to get any attention.
Dynaformer has sired 126 stakes winners, including 23 Grade 1 winners and 18 millionaires. To date, his progeny account for nearly $100,000,000 in racing earnings. He might look like the lovechild of a moose and a stepladder (maybe he looked slightly better when he was young and fit?) but people follow the dollar signs. Besides, Barbaro received a lot of press, but on the whole, Dynaformers aren’t known for being particularly fragile.
You might not like Dynaformer’s conformation, but that horse can produce an athlete, cranky or not.
I don’t follow jumps racing all that closely, but a quick glance at the results in Chronicle now and again always shows me Dynaformer’s name in the winner’s pedigree of some jumps race or other and those are most always older horses with long campaigns behind them. He can throw the speed for flat racing, but he can also throw stamina and soundness with it. as for him being a nasty piece of work, I read a book a long time ago called “Wild Ride” that was about the rise and fall of Calumet Farm. The suggestion in that book was that when stallions started being pushed to breed more than the traditional book of mares, they basically got what amounts to testosterone poisoning and turned into mean, cranky, rotten horses. Anyone else got any thoughts on the truth of that?
As for what makes Queen Z able to run like she did? You got me!
Sounds like you’ve done a more thorough analysis of her conformation than I ever have, although I will say this – she is big, but I never got the feeling from her that she was graceful or adjustable. By that I mean, that she had to settle at the back and get her rhythm flowing and then Mike Smith could swing her to the outside (or the rail if there was a clear path) and just send her. She wore down her opponents with a bigger stride and sheer power, but I always wondered if she could regain that momentum if she got into trouble.
I own a Dynaformer grandson and he got quite a bit of his traits when it comes to being athletic. He is not the prettiest confo wise (he is for sale also because he is too tall for little me) he has a massive shoulder and hip ran great at distance and is short backed and a very strongly built guy, he is also 17h. He looks like his sire (Dove Hunt), nothing like his dam (curious) and moves like Dynaformer. I snatched him up quickly because when you find a Dynaformer offspring (even being a grand baby) they have athleticism all over the place, this guy can jump anything moves naturally under himself, always pushes over his back and can go for days. He is strong willed (not mean, just knows what he is doing), but loves challenges, has great strong legs and really big feet (I know TB, no TB feet! YAY) and a heart to match.
I have been on the look out for more Dynaformer get, but it seems they are either all still racing or they have kept most of the mares for breeding, every once in while they pop up but are out of my price range. I did hear that my guys Dam, was a royal Bitch which explains him for the first week I got him, mean guy. Bit anything or anyone and would kick out, 2 days of ground work and he stopped doing it, will still try to bite mom (who he hates for some reason) but won’t toward anyone else.
And he is a true 17h (17.1 with his pads on), had pads at the moment due to our crappy weather and gravel bruising his front feet, never went lame but I knew he needed them protected. Farrier says he has the best feet he shoes, and he does a lot of horses in two diff states.
I also owned an Oops baby that was Irish Drat/Friesian, he is lovely, and really built to be a great eventer and if he could hold a canter in a 20m circle I would have kept him but 3 years of hill work and conditioning and he still couldn’t hold it in the ring. Breeder claimed he was trained for 3 and 4th level, and he could do shoulder in, haunches in, half passes trot and canter changes and everything he just couldnt do the canter circles…oi vey, my farriers wife has him and she does low level dressage and eventing and mostly does it at home and enjoys him. He was about 16-16.1 really uphill, nice strong back, decent head jet black with 2 teeny little white markings on both hind legs and jumped like the old school photos show a horse should jump, lovely arch, cracked his back and knees to his eyeballs. Mother was a registered but not for riding (had an accident in field) Friesian, and daddy was Clover Hill, the lady told the vet to breed the black Tb mare on the right, he did the Friesian black mare on the left..oops.
Z’s story is something I’ve followed closely and it touches my heart. Good decisions were made regarding her training and development and she’s owned by people who truly love her. She’s classy, correct and has incredible presence for a mare. Her running style as a closer may have kept her out of sprints but the way she tore up the field in the Classic is nothing short of incredible. BOTH trips. For a horse to retire 19-1 while only losing by a nose in her second try against all males in the race of races….sigh. Coulda woulda shoulda, I feel for Mike Smith – I’ll bet he’s ridden that race a thousand times and moved a bit sooner and shut off Blame at the wire. Z is Americana all the way as was Secretariat in the 70′s. She will not soon be forgotten. What I wouldn’t do to give her a wither scratch or two.
Just read that Z has a 26′ long stride, huge and possibly longer than Secretariat’s. She was also closing at over 40 mph in the Classic. That’s a lot of punch after tailing for over a mile by double digit lengths. Amazing!
Not sure if someone else caught this but the stallion can and does pass the X gene to fillies which is why Secretariat was a big producer of quality broodmares. A stallion passes the y to a colt and the x to a filly. The filly can then pass that to her offspring.
Thank you, you’re totally correct. I’d read about this months ago…and yes, a filly has to have 2 “X” chromosones so dad has to provide one of the two. My point was that it is only in recent studies that people are willing to admit and focus on the fact that mares are more significant than originally thought.
True – I’m sure they aren’t all unsound, and I didn’t mean to sound like I thought that. I also don’t think ALL draft crosses are horrible, but if it’s hit and miss in the breeding, then it sucks for the ‘misses.’ The first lady I rode with when I was a kid had a gigantic appaloosa/draft/warmblood cross thing. He was super well put together, and super sound. But it’s just not always the case. ‘
As far as the breeding, I wish people would just breed type similar horses. A weird cross that I think works really well conformationally are saddlebred x friesians, morgian x friesians, if you think about it, they’re the same type, but with more bone, and helps stave off the genetic issues friesians have.
The crosses that I have seen that worked better were clyd crosses, not perch crosses, I don’t know much about draft horses, but for some reason the clyd crosses I’ve met didn’t have the big head, skinny but short neck with bad neck set issue…
It’s just, I think people inexperienced with breeding take horses too dissimilar and try to breed them together not realizing that breeding a horse with a super short back to a horse with a too long back may not get you a horse with a good back. You could just get one or the other. So breeding a TB to a 17hh draft horse MIGHT not get you the correct proportions.
Not all horses can get away with having feet as small as my horse, either; but her heels aren’t constricted and her hoof wall is good. If she was 4 inches higher I think she’d have problems, if her feet were just a little constricted I think she would too. If someone saw her at a glance they might write her off for her hoof size.
I wish I knew a large sound warmblood, I just don’t happen to. I also don’t know a lot of really big warmbloods, but between my friends horse that was just put down from navicular complications, another friend who’s 7 year old is on-and-off three legged lame with nothing to show on xrays (she admits that his feet are too small, again, but he’s SO nice otherwise, and that’s the truth) and a boarders hanovarian mare, who I swear has a bad abscess every month and is crippled with stone bruises also all the time, it’s unfortunate but I know more problems than good.
I tend to like the Clyde crosses better than the Perch crosses too.. that’s why I ended up with the one I have. He has a pretty enough head, but it’s on a larger scale than is considered ideal, but I liked his sire (the TB), because he was short backed and I liked his build. On a cosmetic note, I admit I also liked that he was grey, because I like grey horses visually. My gelding is fairly short backed and despite his size is built in a similarly compact way that I appreciate. He is also nicely upright in movement when he’s not being appallingly lazy. His usual high speed is a slightly faster rambling walk or slow trot.
He has a quiet, thoughtful draft mind, and his worst shortcoming to me is nothing physical. It’s that he’s a very one-person horse and does not want other people handling him. It’s one of the reasons I haven’t moved him from my father in law’s place down to where we recently moved yet.. I haven’t found a place that wouldn’t need to handle him, and he is likely to object to someone touching him that isn’t me. He’s never mean or pushy or aggressive about it. He just will not let someone else halter him and calmly moves away or puts his head out of reach so they can’t get him. It is an annoyance but we have learned to work with him despite that quirk… it just makes finding boarding sort of challenging. The recent move was otherwise great for our family, but I sure miss him.
I actually don’t mind mare number 3. Her front legs aren’t the greatest and I am not the biggest fan of her neck, but overall I think she’s kind of cute. Not that I would recommend using her for jumping or breeding, though.
I looked at mare number 4 and straight away noticed she was back at the knee. It looks like she really tries to do the best with what she’s got though.
http://www.operationhorserescue.blogspot.com
Love the post. I think the worst offenders are the Canadian and American WB registries. I bred 3 Swedish WB colts. 2 out of a Swedish mare and one out of a TB with lovely gaits. All by Amorex, a Swedish stallion standing in Yakima , WA. They were all taken to inspection and received Class 1, Class 2, and Class 1. The highest scorer was the TB/Amorex cross. He is coming 5 now, evented at Starter last year, finished his first HT on his Dressage score of 26.5. He has the speed of the TB, the gaits of his sire and an even mind that we all argue where it came from. I stopped breeding as it was a lot to start them and sell them in this economy. The reputable European registries make it very difficult to slip thru a shoddy animal. The bad WB/TB crosses are a North America phenom.
We once had a boarder with the fugliest TB mare you could imagine: hammer-headed, ewe-necked, long-backed, cow-hocked, the works. She was incredibly ugly. So of course he bred her to a local WB stallion. The resulting colt was the first (and only) ram-head I’ve ever seen! Tiny tapered head on a lonnnnng neck, short body, arrgghh! I’ve also seen some TB/draft crosses with a draft front end and tiny little TB read-end. I hate to think about how the horse’s innards are sorted!
It is too much to expect the average horse owner to exercise expert judgement when it comes to breeding.
This post is the answer to some prayers, you two know that, right? =D
Whenever Fugs or anyone else wanted to bash the stock breeds for breeding conformational garbage on purpose I always kicked myself for letting go of two things:
- One was the stallion ad for a TB stallion whose name I can’t remember now and had never heard of before anway. This was a full=page color that was carried in the Thoroughbred Times stallion register – a national publication – and the chestnut stallion with 4 beautiful gleaming white socks was so over his knees that he looked like he was going to kneel in the grass in his conformation photo. Not only had this horse been raced in stakes company, but they wanted to make more of him and charge people several thousand dollars for the privilege. I always wished I had saved that ad, if only to use it as proof that the stock breeds people are not the only ones producing flawed merchandise.
-Two was a photo of a RPSI gelding (WB stallion x TB mare) that I rode for several years who could have been the poster child for this blog. He was an honest 17.3+, toed in with a clubbed left front, severe angular limb deformity also left front, straight shoulder, slab sided, weak loin, NO hip to speak of (I called it a severe case of triangle butt) and the postiest post legs you’ve ever seen. All of this standing on hooves fit for a 15h TB and topped with an unremarkable head. The only way this horse would ever track up is if he had three vertebrae removed. His breeder was also into dressage, of course. Physically, the only nice feature he had was a lovely neck but someone had already taught him to twist it into a pretzel and avoid the bit by the time I got him. This horse’s saving grace was that he had the best mind I’ve ever seen, especially in a WB cross; about as spookless as a horse can get, forgiving, tolerant and so full of try it makes me choke up just to think about it.
About the gray filly…of course she’s a dressage prospect! All she has to do is learn to bend her neck double and move her legs at the same time, right? Even horses with crappy conformation can do that. Yes, I’m being facetious and stating so in case someone who lost their sense of humor in a tragic Internet accident happens to read it.
As a warmblood person (and not in North America either) little offends me more than those so called ‘American warmblood’ registries that will approve a quarterhorse if it’s sufficiently ‘uphill’ (another contradiction). For the NINE HUNDREDTH TIME your clydesdale/tb is NOT AN AMERICAN WARMBLOOD.
As for thoroughbred mares, judiciously they make amazing crosses. Thoroughbred stallions too. All of the European studbooks are open to superb thoroughbreds because they add to the breed and some go above and beyond what we want from the breed. Lauries Cruscador. 100% thoroughbred. And if you’d refuse to give one of his daughters a place in your breeding barn then you are a fool. Prince Thatch. Furioso. Many of the greatest warmblood lines go back to phenomenal thoroughbreds. That does not excuse stupid breeding of any old mare to the latest hot thing (usually Eurortrash that has been rejected in Germany anyway) but it would be foolish to discount the cross, including for dressage. A good TB mare can add leg, athleticism, forward and an excellent walk. All things that can be compromised in some warmbloods.
“People tend to put a lot of stock in the “Warmblood” designation. This is because the traditional registries require a horse to go through substantial testing to make sure they meet the breed standard before they are approved for breeding. Bloodlines alone don’t cut it! Horses from other breeds (especially Thoroughbreds) are sometimes approved as breeding stock, if it is thought that that particular horse will improve the breed. Their offspring can then be registered if they are bred to an approved horse from the breed. Complicated, right? It’s an expensive and drawn out process, but it tends to result in a high percentage of quality horses being born.”
pulease. those long drawn out processes really aren’t that complicated, and are much of a farce now a days.
You’ve got the right idea, but you’ve provided poor examples to back up your words. It’s akin to photos so often seen in the national equine magazines; citing one thing, but clearly showing another.
Only the bay with the star is ‘lightish’ of bone. The other three are all easily adequate for riding purposes. While you or I may prefer our horses to carry more bone, you at least need to be able to identify that which is considered ‘adequate’ by science for the intended purpose (which you’ve proven you can’t).
The only one of the four that is long backed is the grey, and more specifically she’s long through the loin. Indeed, the bay with the stripe/snip is short through the back, well under 45%. And what an extraordinary hip, LS joint placement and loin coupling on that one! It’s impossible to say for sure about the back length of the bay with the star because of the angle of the photo.
The grey is not light of bone and does not have a ‘weak little hip’. In fact, the hip is approx. 33% which is VERY good. Indeed, none of the horses you’ve chosen lack in that area. This horse’s issues are the long loin, and the post-leggedness. Even the straighter shoulder isn’t a biomechanical issue. Her humerus is not short, in fact it’s just under 59% which is more than adequate and perhaps you should consider glasses if you think it’s ‘nearly parallel’ to the ground. Maybe your problem is that you’ve chosen a photo with a horse standing on a hill, leaning over its front end, and the photographer not standing flush to the horse, thus having taken a crooked photo.
The reasons the grey horse isn’t striding well in the movement photo is fourfold:
1) the horse is post-legged (you got that one right)
2) the horse has injured its loin, which in turn
3) has created tight loin and back muscling which further restrict movement
4) is being ridden ineffectively (and probably trained just as ineffectively)
Next time, do try and match photos to your article points, otherwise we`ll start to think you don`t really know what you’re talking about. At least those of us who`ve actually studied conformation and biomechanics will, but perhaps you don`t care about accuracy?
Alrighty… where to start?
These are not super fugly horses by any stretch of the imagination and I will absolutely concede that they are not the greatest/most extreme examples of the points I was trying to make. Believe me, I’m gaining a lot of empathy for the big ‘zines – it can be incredibly hard to find photos that perfectly fit all the criteria of your article! Especially ones that also look decent and are set up to clearly see the horse’s confo. These particular pictures were chosen in part because of the known breeding of the horses, in part because of the relative consistency/clarity of the layout and in part because of the horses’ conformation.
As far as being light of bone is concerned, I’ve yet to see an absolute standard for “adequate” be agreed upon. Some experts state 7″/1000lb, others 8″/1000lb, still others feel neither of these to be sufficient. There is definitely a general consensus that it is relative to the overall body size of the animal and that more is usually better. Additionally, when I, personally, state a horse is light of bone, I’m not simply referring to the cannons, but the size of the joints in the legs as well. Not the most technically correct terminology, I know, but it is still a valid consideration.
Aside from the first bay these are all younger (2.5-3.5 y.o.) horses. It’s not the best age to assess conformation from, I know, but it does strengthen the argument that these horses have sub-par legs, at least as far as bone size is concerned. At this age the bones in their cannons, knees and hocks have completed their growth; the ones in their bodies, on the other hand, have not. The discrepancy will only increase as they mature. Intended use also needs to be taken into consideration – these horses are being marketed as potential jumpers and eventers where their legs will be subject to far more stress than your average riding horse. I don’t think having an expectation of more than “adequate” is unfair in this case.
For determining back length of the horses, I was measuring it as the length from the point of the wither to the point of the croup (the dorsal and lumbar vertabrae) and relating it to overall body length (point of shoulder to point of buttock). Not all measurements were taken from these photos, these are simply the ones that showed the best overall view of the horses. All had back lengths longer than 50% in my measurements. Both of the first two bays have a long (and potentially weak) lumbar region. The third bay does have a good hind end – in general she’s quite a nice horse! – but I am curious as to where you got 45% from? What points are using for your measurements? Not trying to be snarky/sarcastic here, I’m genuinely interested. I’m always open to new or different ways of looking at things! And I know this next sentence is a little petty, but I did specifically state that none of the bays are lacking in the hip department. :p
Finally, in regards to the gray, I completely agree that her rider isn’t doing her any favors. Plus her coloration makes it a little harder to accurately see the points of her conformation. I was looking at a larger copy of the photo and using a few other pics for reference as well, to help clarify things. By my measurements her hip is only about 28% of her body length; I suspect you are measuring to the dark mark on her flank, in the larger photo it appears the point of her hip is further back than that. I guess we’ll just have to disagree as to what constitutes adequate bone, because in no way do I think she has it.
I do actually wear glasses (they so sexy! :p); the nearly parallel to the ground remark was intended as a bit of subtle snark at the fact that they posed her uphill (the ground not being horizontal either), as well as pointing out that her humerus is far from the ideal 45 degree angle. This is clear even when they’re riding her. I’ll admit that when I went back and actually measured the humerus, it wasn’t as short as my initial impression, but I couldn’t make it equal 59% of her scapula. And I still think this combination of shoulder angles and bone length is going to result in a horse that has difficulty stepping out with her front legs.
Wow, this turned long! Congrats to anyone who made it through! Hope it clarified a few things.
Yes, actually there is an ‘adequate’ standard for bone, two in fact. 6″/1,000lbs for racehorses and 7″/1000lbs for riding and draft horses. I ‘personally’ prefer my horses to carry 8″/1,000lbs for racehorses and riding and while I’d like my drafts to also carry that 8″/1,000lbs, it’s virtually impossible to get nowadays, so 7″+/1,000lbs has to do.
Adequate bone standard isn’t simply for some backyard trail horse, but for ALL horses, regardless of level of activity. 7″/1,000lbs is as adequate for that backyard trail horse, as it is for that Olympic jumper, as it is for the plowing match champion draft.
I took the age of the horses into consideration, and only the one is lightish of bone and will finish lightish of bone.
Point of croup is not always where the LS joint is located, so you’ve measured wrong. Go out and palpate some horses and practise finding the LS joint. It’ll become clear to you in a big hurry that point of croup isn’t where the LS joint is located very often. Point of croup tends to be behind the LS joint, thus your back figures are going to tend to be too high.
The bay with the star/stripe is so far from being long-backed it’s not funny. She’s short-backed, which is actually really unusual to see in that type of breeding. I didn’t say she was 45%, I said she was UNDER 45%, which indicates short. In fact, my measurement was closer to 40% for her. But since you’ve already indicated how you measure back length, by measuring from point of croup, instead of where the LS joint really is, then I can see why you think she’s long. This one’s LS joint is right above her point of hip, which is WAY in front of her croup.
No, I wasn’t measuring from some dark patch on the grey. Her point of hip is clearly high-lighted in the photo by the natural light. She’s easy to measure her hip. She’s not short at all, but a horse standing on a hill like this, and one that’s more sloped will give the illusion of shortness.
Okay, we’ll disagree on her bone, but maybe you should go out and actually measure some bones on some horses and then take them to a weigh station to get their accurate weight and then do the math. It can be an eye-opener, since most people don’t even know what a 1,000lb horse really looks like.
In reference to you also including joint size in with bone amount, that’s incorrect to do. Joints are evaluated on their own and a horse can have adequate bone and possess joints to that scale, or have adequate bone and large/over-sized joints, or they can have adequate bone and possess small/undersized joints. The two should be evaluated separately.
There is no such thing as “45 degrees being ideal for the humerus bone’. That’s one of those made up myths, that goes along with levelness being determined by comparing point of croup height to wither height. It’s garbage.
There is, however, a measurement for adequecy in the shoulder angle (which is created by the humerus and the scapula) and that is 90 degrees. Anything less and that’s a closed shoulder angle and a problem. Most times a closed shoulder angle will be accompanied/created by a horizontal humerus. The grey horse’s shoulder angle meets the minimum requirement of 90 degrees. More than 90 is a good thing and needed for such things as: knees to chin for jumping, or knees parallel to ground in passage and piaffe, or knees high on gaiting horses. Rest assured, plenty of these horses have a humerus slope exceeding 45 degrees.
Where do you get those standards of bone measurement from? 6″/1000lb for racehorses? No wonder there’s so many breakdowns, if that’s the standard that’s being bred for! And saying there is no difference in requirement between a backyard trail horse and an Olympic jumper? Really? The stress on the bones and the joints is so incredibly different, I don’t even know what to say to that…
Point of croup is where I measure to in photos when I can’t palpate the LS joint (or in photos where the LS joint is clearly visible) and, yes, some allowance is made for it being long.
I’m aware that including joint size is technically incorrect in talking about bone, but when I say things like “dinky little legs”, I’m including it. Because it is a factor in the horse’s ability to carry weight and handle a heavy workload.
For levelness I look at the relation of the hip socket to the the base of the neck – approx. the C6 vertabrae. Sometimes hard to see in pics, but can be palpated. I’ll also take into account the relative heights of the stifle and elbow.
The 45 degree angle was more of a minimum than an ideal (sorry, bad phrasing on my part) and it’s relevant because of how the humerus relates to the scapula. I disagree that the angle of the scapula is irrelevant biomachanically, but agree that the relation between the two bones is the most important part. The gray appears to be closer to 85 degrees there to me. And for a horse that is being marketed as a jumper/dressage prospect I would expect higher, not lower.
I agree about the bias against Thb only sporthorses…as they are my favourite I have had many experiences with them. One mare I brought along had Vice Regent lines….I don’t know if it is a characteristic of those lines but she was very slow to mature (so did poorly at the track), had great deal of bone and matured to over 17 hands. Never lame a day. At every greenie show we went to one or more Warmblood enthusiasts would come over and ask abut her breeding, assuming she was warmblood by her looks, size and very good temperment. She was just a well bred Thb brought along in a sensible manner…amazing how many people think Thb=crazy and a Warmblood is a better bet. I have dealt with my share of crazy Warmbloods and believe it is in the training, not the breed, to be a good sporthorse, conformation issues aside.
I may regret this but am curious to hear people’s comments on my little mare. I know she isn’t perfect, and in the link have a few pics of her at 3 and a few of her at 5. Here is the link: http://www.freewebs.com/adelmo95/vegas.htm
Overall, I like her, but she’s either over at the knee or standing funny in the conformation shot.
I don’t know all the fancy conformation terms but I certainly know what I like and I like her. She is a very nice looking horse.
What comes to my eye first is her overlong forearm/short cannons in the front. But the rest of her is very cute. She’s well sprung in the belly it looks like and her toes are very short trimmed. Just tiny feet maybe? She’s a cutie.
Hmm. In most conformation studies, short cannons are a GOOD thing!
Yeah, but there’s a limit to it. That forearm is much longer than any other horse I’ve seen. Usually you see long gaskins like that. I’ve not seen a forearm quite so long. If you draw a line from her hocks across it doesn’t hit her knees. It could be the angle of the photo, but her forearm seems pretty long. I would think on a physics level that would cause a bit of down hilling, that sort of imbalance.
So I looked some of it up and I guess what I should have said is the gaskin’s too short. (funny how its all about what you emphasize
) I think it was the lack of muscling that drew me to the front legs as it makes them seem almost overly straight and oddly attached when really the humerus angle’s pretty good. Its just that long forearm, which is really a short gaskin in the back.
I love the way you developed her from a ‘so-so’ horse into a well muscled, round and strong young lady. She’s obviously well ridden and cared for and you should be proud of both of you. Forget the little part, she’s lovely!
Thanks blondemare, I am so proud of the way she has matured. I think she has far exceeded anyone’s expectations who saw her when she first arrived.
Thanks everyone for the comments and compliments. I appreciate the feedback on her. Just curious what implications a longer forearm/shorter gaskin would have. I think it might have been the shadow making her look over at the knee as I can tell you that isn’t one of her conformation flaws.
Her feet were also trimmed really short in the photo. I think the farrier was trying to reshape her feet and got a little carried away with one trim. When she came she had som very funny shaped hooves and they are finally looking as they should.
Good on you for taking this on…there’s lots of craptacular stuff being bred out there to market “sport horses” or “warmbloods” to people. Wayyy too much.
Thanks Snugly & Snarkly for this thoughtful, well written post. I stopped reading this blog after Fugly left, but I think you’ve convinced me to come back!
Like one of the commenters above, I don’t understand why people would sometimes rather ride a crappy warmblood than a nicely put together thoroughbred (for which you’ll often pay a fraction of the price!).
I retrained (mostly for dressage) a lovely OTTB a few years ago who had great bone, confirmation, movement and retired sound after winning $200,000+ on the track. He was basically as tough as a tank. He has the added bonus of being pretty much bombproof because he had seen it ALL during his years at the track. He was regularly mistaken for a warmblood and I was always irritated when some people would ask what breed he was and when I said he was an OTTB, his ‘value’ went down in their eyes. We were at a large boarding facility where many people owned poorly-bred warmbloods…so this beautiful OTTB was certainly out of fashion, particularly for dressage!
Granted, there are a lot of crappy thoroughbreds out there as well, but I would take a nice thoroughbred over a crap warmblood any day!
From talking to a few breeders, for someone who’s really serious about breeding, the “F1″ generation of TBxWB is not the end, but only the start. When you take a TBxWB and cross it back to another WB, that’s when you’ll start seeing the advantages of TB blood. I also know a couple of 3/4 TB, 1/4 draft crosses (in other words, “F2″ of a draft x TB cross) and they are nice horses.
That said, I’ve ridden a few TB x WB crosses, and they’ve been sturdy and athletic.
Oh how easy it is to be armchair critics, to look at photographs and pull a horse apart anonymously!
How many of you could stand in front of any of these horses, assess the conformation from all sides; watch it move in walk and trot both for correctness and swing/elasticity; evaluate the quality of the walk; assess it for breed & sex type; evaluate the conformation from head & neck, to frame, to legs; know the age of the horse you are looking at to put it in perspective; and THEN have the guts to put your scores on paper using the FEI scoring system of 1 very bad to 10 exceptional … and THEN hand it to the OWNER and have your evaluation READ OUT TO THE PUBLIC watching? Hmmmmm? You better be pretty darn sure you know what you are talking about!
Looking at the premium ribbon on one of those photographs, obviously one breeder had the guts (actually responsible good judgement) to present a horse to receive such an opinion from qualified inspectors … note ’3′ inspectors … and gee, (this poorly supported horse in the anonymous author’s mind) was rewarded with a score above a 7 average. That means that in 6 categories, this horse reached an overall ‘fairly good’, and in fact I know personally, was a mere .03 from an overall ‘GOOD’. Does it say perfect, NO …. perfect doesn’t exist in horse evaluation … is she satisfactory? YES! Is she fairly good overall? YES! Does it say that this is a useful horse that these inspectors (most with a minimum 20 years in the industry or more) felt could contribute to the industry … ABSOLUTELY, of course it does. This mare will make a wonderful riding/performance horse!!!
Please understand several things, and I’ll preface this by saying that these photographs do not give me sufficient information to make the snap judgements so many of you have above:
1. Does the author/s have either a photographer’s release or owner’s release to use these images? Does the author/s even understand the meaning of the word ‘copyright’? I doubt it, and if I were an owner you would be having a remove request coming your way real quick! Does slander mean anything to this author?
2. By picking on Warmblood, and then specifically selecting Canadian Warmblood, you are ignoring the multitude of other registries that use the Thoroughbred (or Arab, Anglo-Arab or Trakehner) as refiners in their stud books.
I would be foolish not to recognize that light boned Thoroughbreds are a concern not restricted to any one registry … especially the TB racing industry in the aftermath of ‘Eight Belles’ … neither am I agreeing that any of these images show light boned horses. So is this a personal swipe at one registry?
3. Are you aware that foreign registries inspecting on Canadian soil, do not have the governmental constraints on them as pertains to acceptance of pedigree (APA), and in fact have placed effectively grade horses, even QH, in higher Mare Books?
4. Quoting: DECEMBER 31, 2011 AT 5:58 PM … Jennifer R says it best:-
Overall, I like her, but she’s either over at the knee or standing funny in the conformation shot.
Hmm, initial impression is LIKE; secondary impression, the conformation shot doesn’t give sufficient information to make an accurate decision. Very responsible conclusion.
Someone mentioned JW Equine earlier … I can assure you Judy does not use images she has grabbed from just anywhere, rather images taken with the horse properly stood up in order to evaluate. To illustrate a particular aspect, she uses only the portion she is talking about … in this case cropped front legs, or hind legs, so that the horse cannot be identified.
Flame me if you will … I’m not knocking the subject of the discussion, just the way in which it is presented as an attack, rather than a meaningful dialogue. Very, very, sad really
Lastly, draft cross/TB are NOT Warmbloods! They are draft crosses!
Ok, can you please take a big breath or two, maybe count to ten and relax a little bit?
For starters, we’re not selling these images or using them to market ourselves, we’re using them to illustrate an educational point. Perhaps look into “fair use” law. It’s an interesting subsection of copyright law. Slander does mean something to us – it means a spoken defamatory remark. This is written. (And we’re not saying it’s defamatory!) Maybe you should research further?
Nowhere was it said that these are terrible horses – they’re not! Hell, we agree that the third mare is “fairly good” – we’d even go so far as to award her best of this bunch! They’re simply being used to illustrate a point about selective breeding in warmbloods.
Thoroughbreds are absolutely a common outbreed in many registries; that was actually noted in the post. However, not all TBs are created equal, and the fact remains that the testing for approval of breed stock in the traditional Warmblood registries is more rigorous than the testing for the CWB registery. All of these mares are by stallions that are approved by a traditional breed registery and out of a mare that isn’t. This isn’t an all out attack on Warmbloods! (Or TBs for that matter…) It’s simply a call for people to put as much consideration into the choice of mare as the choice of stallion.
And this blog is snarky. We have meaningful discussions, but that’s the tone here. It keeps things interesting and somewhat humorous!
Finally, and this is a bit of a pet peeve, there are three basic “types” of horses. The coldbloods, such as the drafts, some ponies, etc; the hotbloods, meaning Thoroughbreds, Arabs and Barbs; and the warmbloods, which are most of everything else, including the crosses between the two. We agree that if you capitalize the word – Warmblood – it definitely implies a warmblood breed as opposed to the general type, but there is nothing technically incorrect about referring to a draft/TB cross as a warmblood. But it bugs us too if people label them Warmbloods!
So the one useful bit of information I got from your post is that in order for a horse to be considered “premium,” their actual scores rate them as ALMOST good. Did these folks fail English or what?
A premium score being an average of 7.0 and over out of 10. On the FEI dressage scale, 7 = fairly good; 8 = good. So a horse attaining an average score (of 6 categories for mares, 8 for stallions), of 7.0 and over is awarded a premium. It says overall fairly good … not ‘almost’ good.
That could consist of 6 x 7.0, or scores ranging from 9.0 to 5.0 and still average to an overall 7.0.
I don’t think anyone failed English with that system.
In my experience, the bigger they are, the harder they are to keep sound. I have gravitated to a 16hh draftX for my pleasure/lower level dressage horse. She has feet like iron, is very sound and calm. She is athletic enough for whatever I will ever have time to do with her (I work and have teeenagers). I have owned and/or bred very nice Warmbloods and TB’s and enjoyed them, but I now appreciate the flight zone (like 2 feet) of the drafty types. My mare is very deep in the girth area and totally takes up my longish legs. She has the most comfortable trot and canter I have ever ridden!
If I am ever tempted to breed her, I will instead save the Stud fee, the vet bills feed/bedding/vet/farrier care for 4+ years, +60 days of Professional Training to start the baby, and go buy myself another very fine draftX, started, sane and after a few test rides!
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hello, i couldn’t find an email address to contact you.. but i happened upon this website, ICR Class A Sailor will definately get you noticed in the show ring!
I had to create a login to post on this subject. Firstly – my family have been breeding warmbloods for 40 years now. We breed for RIDERS not for would be Olympians, but just for people who want a user friendly, sound horse that will go on with them for at least the next 4 or 5 years and hopefully for a lifetime. Some of our horses have made it to Grand Prix in dressage and jumping.
Some of them have lacked bone – it wasn’t deliberate but some TB blood is often called for to increase stamina and prevent in-breeding.
Some of them have had limited movement like the grey in your photo – said horse to a rider with a bad back to Prix St George because the horse had great trainability and an awesome temperament. I have one like that at the moment and she will suit dressage – maybe not as a national level horse but certainly for a rider who wants size and temperament.
Yes OVERBREEDING is a problem. Yes producing horses with poor conformation and dubious temperaments is a problem.
Not breeding perfection to suit the grubbers on FHOD is something people have to live with.
I like this forum most of the time but honestly – your targeting of the Canadian horses in this thread based on not enough bone
pointless
We’ve met some CWBs we’ve really liked! It wasn’t a general indictment of the breed – lack of bone is not an issue that’s limited to them. And we’re aware that even the best breeding program will have some crop-outs. We’re just trying to highlight practices that will make that more likely.
I can agree with this! I have a gelding out of Ideal, the “Top Rated” Oldenberg Stallion (blah, blah blah), who was bred to a “no name” thoroughbred mare…and though I love my boy to pieces and wouldn’t change him for the world, he is ugly as sin!!!