Because people are … different? It’s odd that you think they must all be exactly the same and want exactly the same things and all have the same knowledge. They don’t. Hence, they have different expectations.
Glad to hear you’re not going to steal DNA from this horse.
Spoke with the owner, he does not want to test the horse even if I pay, so I will be walking away. Says she hasn’t had any problems so far so she probably doesn’t have it.
I do still think it is insane that an owner of a horse with a known issue in it’s bloodline would not want the test.
Let me help you out a little…
Guy has a cheap horse. There are two options: it is free of HYPP. It is not free of HYPP.
Has it tested. Free of HYPP? That’s nice but probably doesn’t change much for him. He’s probably not going to get more for the horse, it’s a cheap horse. But if it is a carrier? He’s screwed. Now he has to disclose, and his cheap horse has probably lost what little value it had.
If the box is closed, the cat can be both dead and alive. Once you open it, the cat is either dead OR alive, and no one wants a dead cat.
I’m not saying it’s the best way to sell a horse, but having known sellers of cheap horses, the viewpoint is sure familiar. From his perspective, he’s better off not knowing.
LOL this is the best quote.
Exactly. If the DNA results are bad, he has a horse he can’t get rid of. Buyer beware and decide on the risk themselves.
Doing things behind someone’s back in generally considered shady. IMO
You don’t own the horse. If you did, you could do a of those things whenever you felt like it.
Yes and yes. What? How is this even a question?
Anytime a buyer has wanted to take a video of me riding a horse for sale before they get on, they ask if I mind if they take a video to share with whatever professional.
If you’re looking at a horse to buy, and the seller hasn’t provided what you need, you ask before you take the photos or video that you want.
Taking DNA is even worse. You’re physically removing hair or blood from a horse without its owners knowledge, first of all. Then sending it off for evaluation without their knowledge. How could it not be shady?
It’s not your horse, you don’t have the right to just do whatever you want because you might be interested in buying it.
He’s told you why he doesn’t the test. He assumes she “doesn’t have it” so it’s not worth the hassle to bother testing. Sure, it’s bizarre, and an incorrect idea of how HYPP works, but it’s his horse, he can make whatever choice he wants.
It’s quite possible she is HYPP positive and he knows it.
It’s a pretty common thing to expect clean 5 panel tests in my world.
Sometimes foals aren’t 5 paneled because we know the parents are clean or one parent carries just one copy of a recessive gene.
The correct and non shady way to do this is:
“Contingent on your mare being five panel negative, would you take $1,000 for her?”
If his answer is yes and with permission to pull the hair and you can send it in to be tested.
Then you have your price and the deal before the test.
Many owners will actually 5 panel at the request of a prospective buyer but this is such a low priced sale I wouldn’t expect him to pay.
Also, many horses can be confirmed negative through parentage. Or you know the status of sire and dam and dam is a HERDA carrier, you know you have a 25% chance of having a foal also be a HERDA carrier which doesn’t physically effect the foal, so most won’t bother to test.
Not shady to have a sale be contingent on a negative 5-panel. Very shady to DNA test a horse you don’t own without the express consent of the owner.
I know it’s been resolved but -
super, super, super shady and if I was the owner and found out you were even considering it I’d bar you from any access to my animals and potentially ask the barn owner to bar you from the property
Impressive died in 1995. This horse was born in … 2015? Twenty years later.
The problem with freaking out about genetic things like HYPP is that there are MANY Impressive bred horses who do not carry those genes. It’s very easy to look up her parents, genetic results are accessible via APHA, and if both are N/N for HYPP then it’s a moot point and not at all “insane” to not test her.
Honestly, if you want to make a purchase on a stock horse, your bigger concern these days is should probably PSSM or IMM.
Is he local to Texas? I’d drop $1,000 for a cute, sensible BS APHA mare that jumps.
Doing any of these things on a horse you don’t own and without the owner’s knowledge or consent is shady and more than a little creepy.
My step-mom bought an Impressive bred horse. He was H/N - the AQHA allows N/N and H/N horses. The only one it does not allow is H/H. If the horse is N/N, no big deal. If the horse is H/N, it will likely always look nicely muscled but you do have to be careful of it’s diet as it can have an attack. My step-mom’s horse had one not long after she got him as a 4 year old and again when he was 20-something and heading downhill in health.
So, if the horse is not tested and has Impressive on one side, it is probably fine but may be something someone wants to deal with, just like other known, similar issues.
As to taking samples of a horse to test for particular condition without telling the owner, it’s a bit like insider trading - you know something the owner does not and can use that as leverage. It is shady. It’s like sneaking behind the barn and doing a quit lameness exam without telling the owner.
Nothing is “standard” in the horse purchasing world. We move a decent number of horses and each person has a different standard related to purchase price, hopeful future career, age, previous experience buyer has had, etc. We had one tested for kissing spine. To our surprise she tested positive and the only reason the potential buyer did it was because she had a horse diagnosed with it that had to be retired early and it was rough on her.
I wondered about this myself. How likely is it these days for the Impressive bloodline to be a risk factor?
I honestly don’t have any statistics, but my gut (and many years of showing stock breeds) tells me that it’s pretty unlikely at this point to find a carrier in performance bred Impressive horses.
You may still find they pop up in the halter bred Impressive horses, as those folks tend to be a little more accepting of the risks in order to achieve the heavy muscling that does well in the pen … but even then, it’s kind of become a scarlet letter.
HERDA shows up on Poco Bueno descendants; no one panics or says “OMG THERE’S POCO BUENO ON THESE PAPERS”. Granted, HERDA is only lethal in the homozygous form.
Again, HYPP is a disease that has mostly been phased out except by some old time halter breeders who accept the risks. I pulled the data of the top 15 APHA sires as of 2020 year end standings. Some stallions on this list have been long dead (like Impressive), but every single stallion that has their genetic tests publicly on file with APHA is N/N. I believe APHA started uploading genetic tests as of the 2017/2018 breeding season - as in, they were required to be sent in before that and they exist on paper somewhere, but recently they’ve been adding more and more into the online system as breeding reports come in. Some of these listed, like Sockett, were born in the 70s and 80s before testing was widely available.
Hope this figure reproduces–table from Valberg, 2020 on incidence of HYPP.
ETA: if you right click on the broken image icon and select “open in new tab”, it works in Chrome.
More often than you think. AQHA took such a long time to start to require testing and bring genetic testing in general to light that there were sooo many HYPP positive horses.
Obviously there is more rigorous testing in place now and you cannot register H/H horses but it doesn’t stop people from breeding to genetic disease carriers.
I know several breeders that stand HYPP positive horses and tell mare owners the stud fee is free is they end up with an HYPP positive foal. The problem with HYPP is that it’s a dominant disease so horses need only one copy to carry and be affected.
Love this. Always happy when statistics back up my gut. 
Results: Highest allele frequencies among control AQHs were for type 1 PSSM (0.055) and GBED (0.054), whereas HERDA (0.021) and HYPP (0.008) were less prevalent. Control APHs uniquely harbored LWFS (0.107) and had high prevalence of HYPP (0.025), relative to AQHs. Halter horse subgroups had significantly greater allele frequencies for HYPP (0.299) and PSSM (0.155). Glycogen branching enzyme deficiency, HERDA, and PSSM were found broadly throughout subgroups; cutting subgroups were distinct for HERDA (0.142), and western pleasure subgroups were distinct for GBED (0.132). Racing and barrel racing subgroups had the lowest frequencies of the 5 disease genes.
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