This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.
Everything is good enough to be a good useful horse who should be able to jump reasonably well. S/he looks like her body has left her neck behind just a little, which is very common at this age, that’s why it looks thin. But it connects well at the withers, and nicely above the point of the shoulder without being too far above.
How do her pasterns look to you?
They look pretty appropriate for a yearling. They are maybe a SMIDGE longer than idea, but nothing that concerns me.
They will always look “too long” on a yearling. Not only are they longer in relation to the body at that age, and the body will continue to grow in height and width while pastern length is done at this age, they are not as large in circumference as they will be as an adult, which makes them look longer/more fragile than they really are.
The study of functional conformation - conformation as it relates to usefulness - has been around a while, just not nearly as widely disseminated (or accepted) as it needs to be
Judy Wardrope of JW Equine has pioneered tremendous research in looking at how horses in the top levels, who have been there for a while and still compete well, are built. That resulted in the move to Functional Conformation. It entirely dictates how useful a horse can be, meaning, is he built to be athletic and stay sound for long.
It doesn’t guarantee anything, it doesn’t mean the perfect horse will remain sound, and it doesn’t mean no poorly conformed horse can’t get to the top. But while you might see a horse at the top with some aspect that is yikes, as a whole, he’s not going to be yikes.
The old “withers to croup” and “stifles to elbow” and all kinds of boxes, don’t work, they never worked, they were just the best people knew at the time.
A horse can be butt-high and be functionally uphill.
He can be wither high and functionally downhill.
Enjoy reading through her Functional Conformation tab on her site
I don’t like them. I have a horse with pasterns like this and she is permanently lame. My vet advised me that this is a weakness that very often causes lameness.
Like what? How old is the horse?
Pasterns don’t exist in a vacuum. Meaning, if I saw an adult horse with pasterns relatively long like this, on an adult body, I still wouldn’t run, since they are also standing up, as opposed to also sloping.
But even then, yearling pasterns always look longer relative to the body, than they will be as an adult
The longer pastern where the cannon bone is sitting behind the hoof is what he told me to look for. The suspensory has longer to travel and I notice on her, she never ever grows sole. She ended up tearing an impar ligament. She was 9 when she sustained the injury. Was very sound up until then.
Yes, on an adult horse whose bones and body are finished growing for sure.
But there’s just more to it than that. There is cannon bone length and diameter, pastern diameter, whether the horse is tied in below the knee, how sloped the pastern is relative to its length, where the front leg is in relation to the wither, and how “soft” the suspensories are, all those weigh in on how much inappropriate stress the soft tissue at the back of the leg is under.