I think I can hear some choice Irish cursing all the way from here 
5 Likes
Warmbloods were created in Europe so are as common there as QHs are here. It isn’t really that difficult to understand. They are not cheap here. WB foals are often 5 figures when they hit the ground. You can get an off breed for half the price, that can do the job well enough for many ammys.
11 Likes
I think we need more of these voices on this thread.
There are more amateur riders than there are upper level riders. The idea that breeders should be aiming for the upper levels with every cross and all the mere mortals can just ride the culls and castoffs is flawed.
I think the main responsibility of the breeder is to make sure their crosses will be useful members of equine society. That means producing crosses that will have a purpose for someone, and making sure those horses have every opportunity to fulfill that purpose.
That purpose can even be your own desires, however, if it’s for yourself, you need to make darn sure that horse has a contingency plan in case things don’t work out as intended. I think this is where most breeders get themselves in trouble and create so much overall negativity towards breeding.
14 Likes
I personally do not agree with the mindset that anyone should be able to breed anything they want. If you haven’t said this then you really don’t need to jump my case.
I also believe that if one breeds, they should know what they are doing. They should understand the inheritability of traits such a genetic performance traits, traits likely passed on temperamentally, the inheritability of certain conformational aspects, inheritability of certain genetic issues and how to best avoid them, how management and husbandry can influence mares and foals, so on, so forth. There is a lot more to breeding than breeding two pretty specimens. Like it or not, there are a plethora of low quality horses bred and being bred in the US because someone without any real knowledge or education decided to breed horses.
I also don’t find any offensive to @thereadinghorse’s perspective. Thanks for sharing it.
10 Likes
Unfortunately, there are even respectable “breeders” who aren’t as interested in learning as they should be.
It’s really quite odd how breeders make names for themselves in this country. There are quite a few well known ones who shouldn’t garner the level of respect they receive.
4 Likes
My friend in Austria is in the same boat. She competed successfully for years in eventing and CD with a welsh cob, and now has two lovely, sport bred haflingers. She takes dressage lessons and trail rides. Her dressage instructor is the one who sold her on the haflinger - “you aren’t trying to go to the Olympics, get a haflinger and have fun”,
7 Likes
Oh. I didn’t mean I don’t understand why there are these differences. It’s just so intresting to me. Coming from my “german bubble” into your world is an expierence and I enjoy diving into these cultural differences. By no means this is meant to be rude or meant to state that WBs are any better than any other horse. I’m just sharing my expierence and journey of me coming out of my shell and learning new things. And some part of me just loving my horse to death So the posts about her might be a bit… exaggerated, cause I love her so much 
9 Likes
It’s really interesting to hear how common and normal WB are in Germany. That they can be average “low end nice” horses and not cost a fortune. In North America, they are absolutely relatively rare and absolutely command a “designer price” premium.
I’m trying to think of a comparable situation in consumer goods but can’t come up with a good example. But imagine there is a brand in one country that’s just considered every day super common basic, but in another country it’s considered an expensive designer item and tourists buy it up. One of my friends does international student homestay and had a lovely wealthy young Mexican woman for a semester who was buying up all the Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren branded clothes that are all over our discount outlets but expensive in Mexico, because folks back home would love them as gifts carrying the American prestige .designer aura (whereas I have a drawer full of those polo shirts for summer barn time!).
American sport horse riders absolutely look up to the equestrian success of Germany, especially dressage, and a German/European WB is super desirable for many. People even import because that can be cheaper than buying an American foal. If we had enough WB to flood the market at an affordable cost, I’m sure there’d be way more lower end English sport horse people with WB like @thereadinghorse instead of draftx, OTTB, QH etc. But the supply just isn’t there and there’s no incentive to make them affordable!
6 Likes
And to be honest: Us germans tend to be very stiff and stick to our traditions You get massive side eyes, when trying to compete with let’s say a halfinger in M-level dressage. Many judges still tend to have huge “racism” problems, because anything that is no WB will be inspected quite thorough, beause “this ain’t a dressage horse!”
2 Likes
Before coming to COTH a few weeks ago I have never really thought about why horse riding is so different in the US. I knew, there were fewer WBs, but I’m still in the process of learning HOW different it really is. And I just love to chat and write and express my amazement about how many differences there are. For example, and please don’t take this as an offense, but you would never hear somebody say “Ah, no. I prefer my QH/Haflinger cross for medium level dressage, because I couldn’t handle a dressage WB.” That’s just something you would never ever hear somebody say. That’s because WBs are such a basic thing here. I know, that’s because we created them, we have tons of them and we have all the range from the nice daily hacking companion to the Totilas (though he was dutch) and Weihegolds I think the WBs imported to the US have to have at least some sort of quality, because you wouldn’t import a 5k WB into the US. That’s unreasonable. But of course those 5k horses exist. But they will never be imported, so the WBs coming to the US are filtered and this is something I have never really thought about before.
EDIT to add: I don’t judge anyone or any horse due to its breed. I don’t care, which breed you chose or which discipline you compete in or if you compete or not. I only care for them being treated well and looked after. So although this might sound like I’m feeling superior, this is never the case. I just “quote” the general “crowd” here and how things are done and handled here.
6 Likes
Well, to be fair, that’s petty uncommon here, too because dressage isn’t that popular. A massive difference between Germany and the US is the diversity of horse sports. Dressage makes up such a small percentage of horse activities.
14 Likes
That’s true. English riding is still the most common thing over here.
2 Likes
It’s not that “English riding” is uncommon here, we just have a whole lot more that falls under the term. We have your Olympic disciplines: dressage, show jumping, eventing. Then you have the hunters, which are by far the most popular “English” discipline in the US. Plus there is saddle seat/country English pleasure for breeds like saddlebreds, some Arabians, some Morgans, gaited breeds, etc. Then you have a lot of other breeds, like QHs, with hunter-like English flat classes.
And after all those, you have just as many, if not more, western horses in an equally diverse number of different sub-disciplines. Western pleasure, ranch, roping, cutting, reining, barrel racing, etc.
11 Likes
The plus side of all this diversity is you can learn skills from different disciplines.
10 Likes
I think there’s enough of a market for smaller, less ultra-performance horses, and enough being bred that I’m not worried about them disappearing. But yes, a lot do come out of very random breeding, or programs that make a person wonder just what the breeding goals were.
1 Like
Ain’t that the truth!
Not sure which direction this is meant, disparaging Irish horses or breeders or lauding them? Regardless, since the word “Irish” keeps showing up in the UL eventing world, I would say they must have a good idea or two floating around the barn.
1 Like
Europe owns the cornerstone on breeding genetic soup from unqualified stock. They got the cob. Seems like the only perquisite is to be hairy and spotty… The Irish have their ISHs. Britain and the UK has their gaited spotty… things - I see tons of spotted standardbreds listed for sale in the UK. When my friend lived in Austria for four years she rode a WBxTB and her yard was full of those.
Not that I am a repeat international traveler but, there are people breeding backyard stuff in Europe too. I’ve ridden several of them. People think this kind of thing never happens in Europe, but it does plenty. One thing that is true is that the US market is dumb enough to buy these products and think that it’s somehow superior to what’s available at home.
The US is massive by European standards and the culture is highly variable depending on the region you are in. That makes it very hard to standardize. You can drive 3 hours in Europe and have driven through several different countries - you won’t even leave my state if you drove 3 hours in some directions, and my state is small by US standards. The US also has many, many horse disciplines - I understand in Europe that the primary one is English. When you start to count all the disciplines (from racing, to driving, to endurance, to chuck-wagon racing, to barrel racing, to ranch riding, to dressage, to sorting, to team penning, to competitive trail riding, to eventing, to combined driving, to logging and draft pulling, etc) the “mass” number of horses (and breeds) produced starts to make sense. Europe doesn’t even hold a candle to the depth of disciplines the States offers. We have the space for it, Europe does not. I’m not even sure our primary discipline by sheer numbers is English - and Western has several dozen spin-offs whereas English really only has several (dressage, eventing, SJ, HJ, etc).
People everywhere gatekeep. Sometimes for financial motivation - if you breed a horse, who is going to buy a breeder’s string of foals?
What Europe is superior in is that their region is smaller, more affordable, state funded, and more accessible. You[g] can produce a world-class horse for a fraction of the price in Europe. The secret isn’t in having superior genetics; the US has access to these genetics now. The “secret” is that in Europe everything is significantly more affordable and accessible.
12 Likes
I agree! I was trying to be tongue in cheek and push back on the notion that no European breeder would deign to breed a “crossbred.” You know, those wild crossbreeds, just the foundation of the Irish Sport Horse! Especially with the Traditional Irish Horse designation coming into use to push back on the introduction of continental warmbloods to Irish breeding programs.
I don’t think anyone with a shred of a clue would claim the Irish don’t know how to breed an upper level sporthorse. And I’d put myself squarely in the “shred of a clue” category so if even I know it, it’s gotta be pretty basic 
(edited a typo and changed a word choice I didn’t agree with on a reread)
8 Likes
Absolutely this. As someone that has kept horses in Europe and the US, this is a good point.
7 Likes
