Here is a link to the horse I talked about in my earlier post, Ingrid Klimke’s gold medal eventer, Abraxxas (bred by the breeder @eqsiu mentioned, Friedrich Butt). It’s kind of fun to follow the pedigree back. You can see how he’s 99.80% “blood” (TB, predominantly, but waaaay back it shows barb influence).
Interesting! In an eventer, all that blood would certainly be an advantage.
Oh, you mean the WB “markup”. :lol: Average horse, average skill set, iffy record, no real documentation for OR against heritage… calling it a “WB cross” or if you’re so lucky as to encounter the more unscrupulous horse trader/seller, a “WB without papers” allows you to add a couple thousand to the price tag. A $5k horse becomes the “a steal at $8500” horse.
8 and 12 are the most common ages of unpapered sale horses… :lol:
I agree with you. It also seems, from my American POV, that the same applies to “Canadian WBs”. I say this because there is a somewhat large breeder in the U.S. who sells “Canadian WBs” and a good friend purchased 2. She calls the one she still owns a WB cross, although there is a smidge of Hanoverian amongst the draft and TB. I think this horse was the product of PMU breeding, as I think most of the Canadian-born horses of this breeder are. I get annoyed at the marketing of this breeding farm for a variety of reasons, but the horses are great all-arounders and I think many, most would be great eventers through TL and maybe higher and great fox-hunters.
I’m not sure how I feel about calling a Hot x Cold blooded horse a WB in this day and age, because WB has a specific definition. It’s not to say that people don’t use this term, I’m just giving my opinion.
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Yes indeed. Even more advantage in being bred for sport for multiple generations instead of being bred for racing. I really wish there was a viable registry for sport-bred TBs in the US. The Jockey Club’s live cover requirement puts a damper on things for many small breeders.
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It really does. I think it is a shame because there are some recent (TB) sires that, IMHO, would be wonderful to freeze for sport: some of them would be very desirable for modernizing heavier WBs, though we do have some spectacular WB sires that are light and modern now as well.
The TB has changed significantly in the last decade. I almost think the TB now is better quality (in terms of movement + sport) than it was a handful of decades ago. The more certain sires infiltrate the pool the better the breed seems to get. Time for people’s outdated impressions of the TB to change: I still have trainers (that I respect in terms of horse knowledge) react with dropped jaws when they hear my big moving, bus of a horse is a TB. In my eyes he is a good representative of the breed but he is not unusual or incredibly exceptional: there are many exceptional TBs out there.
That’s interesting, beowulf. I must be looking in the wrong places, because I love a good TB brain but I have not found many lately with the build, movement, or longevity for sport as compared to even as recently as the mid-90s when we had more TB sport breeding. And I’m not sure the JC has anything to do with it really. I’ve had 2 tattooed TBs and one sport bred, and the sport bred TB and most if not all of his close kin (all sport horses) did not have a tattoo and were more likely to see a hunter futurity ring as a youngster than anything else. The mares from the line eventually in the early-mid 2000s were bred with WBs, but the TB side was known to be pretty difficult but so worth it if you could get through the early years. I don’t see that mixing too well with most WBs 
and so I think that blood has fizzled out.
Maybe your location? I’m in one of the meccas of TB racing (NY). I will say there are some stallions closer to you that I am envious of (Stonesider for one). I’m most familiar with the NY-breds but I have always looked to the track for my next prospect and I think I am seeing better horses now than I did ten years ago.
I’ve seen a lot of very nice TBs come from some more “recent” sire lines - AP Indy’s sons are almost always nice for sport, Giant’s Causeway, Forestry/Hennesey/Frost Giant/Freud/Johannesburg, El Prado, High Cotton, Corinthian (Hunt Crossing in particular - he is out your way and he doesn’t look like much conformationally but he is passing on 9/10 movement), Private Account sons, I could keep typing – but I think the quality now is hugely improved, over prior, where they did not exist.
As far as the soundness… I think the soundness has remained the same, for the most part - but the movement is finally coming through with some thanks to super “sporty” type TB stallions that are also very commercial (Storm Cat + sons, for one).
I have had bad luck with TB soundness. I’m not sure if it’s because of the early stress on them as OTTBS or if it’s breeding issues, but pretty much every TB I know has something wrong, or multiple things wrong soundness wise.
All the KWPN-NA horses we have bred have DNA on file and must be confirmed to stallion and dam on papers.
I think just about every horse I know, being competed, has some soundness complaint. As far as I know, there is not a difference in percentage of wastage from TBs vs, say, WBs.
It’s definitely not breeding issues. If the TB was inherently unsound it wouldn’t be able to race. They perform the toughest job in the world, a job that systematically does cause structural damage, and they are sound in spite of that.
If they race, or if they race-trained, you can guarantee even in the best of care there will be residual physical complaints - it’s a hard, tough job - but it’s not a job a structurally weak horse can do.
There’s the problem sometimes, when looking at OTTBs – as a retrainer or owner, you are almost always looking at the racing industry’s failures and cast-offs - in other words, you are unlikely to get the “best horse” that industry can give you. Which means by process of elimination, the OTTB for sale in front of you is for sale because it is not the best horse for the industry. Either it wasn’t sound enough, or it wasn’t fast enough - or usually, a combination of the two.
People seem to love the idea of an “unraced” TB but to me that can be a big red flag; common mistake for a first-time OTTB buyer who thinks they’re getting a deal and a fresh clean slate with this horse that has “no mileage”. Chances are that “clean slate” is unraced because it couldn’t hold up to the job; it still went through race training, and will still have the physical baggage associated with it. I almost always prefer to see an OTTB with some racing mileage under its belt. Of course in a perfect world, I’d prefer a TB that never trained to race at all and was sport-bred, but that is not how the racing industry works.
No one has a crystal ball but generally, a horse that shows he can race consistently is a good bet for a horse that can do something else consistently as well, provided he likes the job being asked of him. It’s tough to look at a horse and know for certain if he is going to be sound in the future - I’d argue that is almost impossible - but you can hedge the bet in your favor by looking at his race record, looking at his pedigree (and their race record), and critically assessing the conformation - because a horse with bad conformation will always struggle to be as sound as a horse with ideal conformation, all other things equal.
There is apparently a recognized link now, between starting them this early and spinal issues. Something to think about. RAyers posted the study in a different thread. So the bones benefit from the early work, but the spine doesn’t seem to. Maybe it is the nature of flexion during training rather than the work itself.
Several of the soundest horses I have known have been TBs. Certainly, the soundest horses I’ve owned have been TBs, full stop and without question. I had a TB gelding that was, bar an issue with his back caused by bad saddle fit, was sound until the day he died. I had him for ten years, worked him hard, evented him (Training/Prelim), hunted him, competed him in SJ + rallies, took him to two different WS jobs with BNTs (which was physically a lot to ask of this horse) – and other than the two weeks he had off for a popped splint as a 3 y/o, was the soundest horse I knew, period. While my barnmates were cold-hosing their horse for their third reinjury of a DDFT, or wrapping for a stone bruise, or missing a show because of an unexpected injury, I was hacking or riding. He really spoiled me because I never had to worry with him. Which was funny because he was small, not that pretty, and not that well built. Apparently, not uncommon for his breeding to be tough as dirt (Dixie Brass x Rare Brick). I would have a million of him if I could.
My first OTTB (78 starts) was also an incredibly sound horse - though he did sustain two injuries in his life (a bowed tendon on the track + suspensory injury shortly after I got him). Once those two things were taken care of he competed with not just one but two pony-club goons, for 18 years, before he needed to be retired. No reinjuries, no secondary soft tissue injuries, and minimal maintenance (chiro + massage). In the end, he did have cervical arthritis - but I don’t think for a second that he was an unsound horse - I think he was sound in spite of the CA. He competed regularly, consistently, and honestly through three different careers for two decades.
Which brings me to my other point – and this response is getting long, so I will try to keep it brief. The way you ride and keep a horse impacts its soundness profoundly. I am not some horse-keeping maven that has discovered the elixir to soundness; that I’ve managed to luck out a few times with incredibly sound horses is not a fact that is lost to me. However… my horses are not kept in stalls. They are not kept in confined management, or left to sit for six to twelve hours a day and then pulled out to be ridden. This has a profound impact on their future soundness. My trainer used dryly to ask why our horses were always sound while their competition string was recovering from suspensories, DDFTs, collateral ligament injuries, etc; it’s because my horses are outside, 24/7 - their limbs conditioned from constant movement. Stalling is incredibly detrimental to the horse; in just a few hours of confined movement you are already looking at inflammatory changes in the coffin bone - this has a domino effect on the rest of the structures in the limb. Routine stalling will have a big impact on the horse. I understand that stalling is necessary in many parts of the world, especially where turnout is limited - but if you can get them out, it is so much better for them physically and mentally. I can say as a barn manager, owner, rider, that I have seen for myself that 24/7 turnout (or as close as you can get to it) goes a long way to promote soundness in the horse.
Just about every horse in the world is going to have some sort of thing that needs help being maintained. I know as many boarder horses with WBs, ISHs, and sport-bred crosses that are literally being held together by zip-ties, injections, and therapy just to do “low end” pursuits like cart their ammy around a BN course.
I am a big fan of the TBs that run 40+ races over 4 or more years. If they vet sound, they will probably hold up pretty well for lower level sport. Even upper level if talented enough. I am much more willing to put maintenance into a horse like that as compared to a local horse I know who never went to the track at all and was getting hocks and stifles injected at 5 years old doing novice level eventing.
I also look at the race records of parents and siblings. If a lot of them are racing for a long time, soundness is much less likely to be an issue. Of course, when looking at sporthorse stallions for breeding I prefer older horses with long performance records for the same reason.
Part of the problem in the racing industry is that horses are fairly disposable. And the ones that are sound and fast don’t become OTTBs. I’ve had really good experiences with my own TBs over the years, however I have seen a number of horses that needed to not be eventers. Several that were too crippled to ride by age 14. Sometimes I think what veterinary medicine can do to keep a horse sound is not always in that horse’s best interest long term.
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