After reading a lot of topics, I realized there might be more cultural differences between my home country Germany and the US/NA. It’s really interesting to me, but I somehow misused another topic and I certainly would do this again, this is why I thought of starting this thread, were all cultural differences can be discussed without interupting other threads. I added Europe as a whole, cause many countries are quite similar to Germany and so the can be included in the discussion.
I copy/paste my initial post and my answers, but I’m not sure, if it would be allowed to copy the answer I allready got. So I’ll post the link to where the discussion started:
First post:
I didn’t read through all the posts, but I wonder about how WBs are viewed here. Maybe those types of horses are very expensive in the US or the basic riding skills are much lower, but some posts gave me the impression, that WBs are difficult, hot and not easy to handle and quite expensive as well.
Where I’m from WBs are the absolute standard horse breed. We have way more WBs than any other breed. They are the most recommended breed for anyone, who wants to do a little dressage, jumping or eventing. Maybe this is really different in the US. But the easiest breed to handle, care and ride are WBs in my opinion. Around here nobody would recommend any “western” type of horse for showjumping. Some use their QH or PH for jumping, but that’s like 1 in 1000.
Next to WBs german riding ponys are the next most used breed for such purposes. TBs come way later, due to being a lot hotter than any standard WB. But our breeding clubs tend to use a lot of TB blood mainly for the eventing lines of the WBs, so you always get some amount of TB in any WB you buy. Unless you buy a very “old fashioned” WB where there’s not much of TB in it. After WBs, TBs and german riding ponys the Haflinger is used quite a lot for “low level” showing.
Are WBs that expensive in the US? I read budgets about 40 to 60k? This is insane. Only very high end WBs cost this much over here. Most “amateur” WBs are around 10 - 20k. Even very good ones placed high in shows about 4’2 are found inside this range.
So as somebody who mainly rides WBs (Hanoverians, Holsteins, Trakehners etc.) I can recommend them for the purposes of the OP and I think she should part with the trainer, who recommends very unsuitable breeds.
Second Post:
Thanks for all your input. Liked reading it! So intresting.
Didn’t think QH would be the largest breed. But it makes sense somehow. We don’t have QH/TB or draft/TB crosses over here (Germany). That’s just non existant. And no saddlebreds or something like this. Apart from rare occurances. QH/PH are quite expensive. At least the same “level” of QH would be more expensive than a WB.
TBs in general are quite uncommon. We have like 2 in a barn of 120 horses. One never was on the track and one is a OTTB. OTTBs are sold to good skilled riders, because often times they are sold right from the track, so no reschooling done. That’s why many keep away from buying a OTTB. In addition they are mostly used for eventing purposes. People find there gaits not spectacular enough for dressage. Even for showjumping most profi riders don’t want them, cause they “have a bad front leg”. Of course this is lots of stigma. But numbers are way smaller in DE. (2.000 broodmares in DE, 65.000 in US), so you don’t see them as much.
We have load of ponys. Riding ponys, Haflingers, Icelandics, Fjords, Welsh (mostly B), Freibergers, Connemaras, Irish Cobs. The latter are mostly used for hacking and not so much for shows. If you wanna show, you buy a WB or riding pony. Otherwise you will not have a real chance to achieve anyhting. In contrast to the UK or other countries, german judges are quite narrow minded. Even my 15h/15.2h hannoverian mare isn’t seen as a sufficient dressage horse. This starts as early as in the second of 5 levels you can compete in. Not enough movement, gaits to flat, no enough expression. She’s more of a showjumper line, so this makes somehow sense. But even with dressage bred horses you may end in level 3, cause the judges want to see horses like the big riders have (Totilas, Weihegold and other very fancy horses!). Of course the occasional WB from some amateur won’t be able to step into such big steps. So it’s totally different over here.
I don’t show dressage. First reason is, that my mare is to flat, to downhill. Second reason is me not being able to do a proper sitting trotSo I only showed in Dressage once and immediately reggreted doing so. Hence we stick so sj and eventing (only the cross country part). Apart from that we are able to do dressage figures, like flying changes, shoulder in, traverse, learning half-pass atm and so on.
Sorry in advance for using this topic. Just wanted to reply to all the nice comments answering my questions.
Third post:
I’ll promise it’s the last time, I’ll post on here, so I keep it short. I would appreciate a hint as to where we could discuss all these cultural differences further, cause I like reading all those posts very much. So maybe somebody could help me out on this.
Thought TBs were originally from UK. Thats why we call them “english thoroughbred” (german term translated). I know there’s different lines of throughbreds, Amercian, French, Irish, German and many other countries. But in general the race horse industry is getting smaller and smaller in germany as a whole. Hence we don’t have that much TBs at all. But germany is also significantly smaller than the US. Germany fits into Texas. You need about 10 to 11 hours from bottom to top. So we are kinda small compared to the US. So numbers are of course much smaller.
As to TB percentages in WBs: All of them have some TB in them. But unless your looking for an eventer, most of the WBs have around 20 - 30% TB blood. They calculate about 6 or 7 generations back. So even my mare has around 28% TB, although the first TBs come in 7th generation, dating back to 1950 or earlier.
(My mare, if somebody is interested: https://www.horsetelex.de/horses/pedigree/1749421/contendra-i )
So yeah, there are big cultural differences, so I can relate to the OP, which was confused on why somebody would look for a stock horse for somebody, that is aiming for a jumping “career”, even if it’s as low as 3’3 or 3’6. (Which compares to Level E (first) and Level A (second) in the german competition system, which isn’t that far away from how Swiss is doing theirs).
I would love some more input on all those cultural differences! And I love to hear, if anybody of you has experienced such differences themselves? Maybe, because you are from Europe, too or you have visited Europe or you just heard something about Europe/Germany.
You can ask me about stereotypes as well, if you have any about germany/germans/german riding community. Just feel free to ask anything! I’m very happy to help. Just keep in mind, I’m a single individuum, so my opinion and knowledge will not reflect all horse people in Germany 
