I owe Quarter Horses an apology. For the past donkey’s years, I have only ridden / trained warmblood horses. I have been completely and irrevocably spoiled by the wonderful array of gorgeous Warmbloods that I have owned, seen and ridden. When I moved to Canada 10 years ago, people would point out a horse and say, “it is a Quarter Horse”, and I was not impressed by what I saw. I realise now that the term “Quarter Horse” is sometimes used loosely to describe any horse of unknown breeding. I have since educated myself on what a Quarter Horse is; and what a wonderful new world of beautiful horses has opened up to me.
My dearest sister Jessica would joke and say a horse was a QH if she knew it was not the type I liked. So last year when, on a hunch and a gut feeling, I decided to buy two QH babies, Jessica was gobsmacked 😊
Here is my apology to AQH and APH: you are gorgeous, you move like you tread wind, you have pretty heads, strong, well built bodies, and may I add, lovely personalities. Our babies are both registered and out of outstanding bloodlines.
I guess the moral of the story is breeding matters. It is not just about putting a male horse to a female one. Breeding for us is about making a horse that is strong, healthy, and fit for the job they will one day do.
Sadly, we see too many horses that end up being moved from one place to the next and who are not physically capable of doing the job intended for them.
Jessica and I spend a lot of time learning about breeding. There are three important areas we try to include in our choice of stallion to mare: conformation, temperament, and natural disposition for a certain riding discipline. A truly ridable horse is mentally calm and trainable, healthy and fit for the type of riding it is best suited for, and a true pleasure to train, breed, own, and ride. Ridable, athletic equine partners are of more value to a trainer and rider than sheer beauty or genetics alone.
Many of the traits we look for in healthy, athletic horses are genetically passed on to offspring. We are not fans of line breeding as it narrows the gene pool and enhances unwanted traits such as small feet and other conformation issues, while increasing the risk of disease. Used among some specific breeds who are perhaps trying to develop the perfect performance horse, our opinion is that the results are not worth the risks.
Why is breeding important?
Let’s assume that you are looking for a horse to enjoy riding on trails in the bush. A horse that you will feel comfortable riding and trust.
From a breeding perspective, you will need a horse that is well put together or has good conformation. When looking at the horse from the side, you want to be able to see a clear balance in size and shape of the front and back of the horse.
This balance will make for a horse that will find it easy to balance themselves and help you balance when riding.
The horse needs to have strong hooves of a size appropriate to the body of the horse. And for me most important of all, you want a horse with a good temperament who is easy to train.
All these are traits that are passed on genetically from the sire and the dam. Now keep in mind, that statistically speaking, a dam accounts for about 60% of the genetics of the offspring. So you need to focus a great deal on finding a sire that will complement and improve on the qualities of the dam. A fabulous stallion will NOT produce fabulous offspring on a mediocre mare.
Breeding is also about choosing a sire and dam that both have a natural ability to perform the job in the chosen sport. A show jumper and a dressage horse are not built the same way. A dressage horse makes for a lousy cutting horse (a lousy one but not a hapless one, I have tried cutting calves with my dressage horse; the calves were scared witless of her, so did as she said 😉).
Horses who are bred for the discipline they will excel at are much like muscle cars which are made for power, sass, and maneuverability – they make crappy family cars. While SUV’s are your all-rounder horse who are a little bit good for a little bit of everything.
So next time you go around kicking tires when horse shopping, consider the horse best suited for the job you want to accomplish such as trail riding, dressage, or cow cutting. Color, genetics, and price have very little to say in a long-term, well suited partnership where both horse and rider are truly happy.
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