Hi! I’m so sorry to have taken so long. “Real” work has been busy and I piled on a few too many extracurriculars the last few weeks.
Congratulations on your mare and foal’s inspections! I’ll make a little plug for the NAS for the future as well. Full WBFSH membership and a true American performance studbook!
From what I have heard and seen, Tangelo sires horses with excellent temperaments and rideability. I don’t think he adds size or makes them heavier but I don’t think he is a consistent refiner either. Personally, I don’t think he brings as much blood as his pedigree suggests but I don’t think that is an issue for your mare. Sometimes their canters can be a bit average and I wouldn’t use him on a mare that was very downhill but in my opinion your mare has an appropriate balance for him and enough blood.
I’m terrible at phonetic spelling and always second guess myself until I make it sound too weird in my head to proceed but it is pronounced (at least how I heard it when living in Europe)
“Tang -gell- o” with a “g” more like the “g” in girl rather than a “j”. If you have a CMH subscription, search his name and watch a video of one of his sons at their licensing. The announcers will usually pronounce it very clearly! I tried finding a Youtube version to share in case you don’t have CMH but everything I came across (in my admittedly brief search) had music over it.
As for linebreeding/Heartbreaker - this is my personal opinion and philosophy and others will have a different opinion - I think line breeding can be beneficial and I think that the philosphy that I have heard often in relation to the racing industry that it should be done in the “engine room” or the 4th-6th generations is the right approach. I don’t like to see it any closer, although for a sporthorse I think it can work. For a stallion, I don’t like it. For me, for example, United Touch S is much too closely bred for a breeding horse and I would not use him as a stallion. Obviously as a sport horse, he is excellent. It does also matter which stallions are being linebred and what traits they bring consistently to the table and what lines you’re crossing. By way of another example, I have a G-line Hanoverian mare. When I was researching stallions the first time I bred her, I noticed that many of the best G line horses were crossed heavily with another line that “internet wisdom” often said to avoid linebreeding due to certain issues (happy to discuss names privately) so I spoke to Landgestüt Celle about it and they said that I was correct in my observation about the G-line and told me that with the G-line the more crosses to that other stallion “the better.” I still keep to my “no closer than the 4th generation” rule but I think that it can be done up to the 3rd successfully if you know the lines very well and what your mare and her mareline consistently bring to the table.
I have a Dulf mare and did do a bit of research on linebreeding Heartbreaker because at one stage I was looking for a Clinton stallion, which is hard to find without Heartbreaker. Your mare has Heartbreaker once in the 4th generation so I think that is really far enough back not to worry. Jordan Molga M aka Jarno M jumped 1.60m and he is by Etoulon and out of a Dulf vd Bisschop mare (who is by Heartbreaker). One of the best 6yr olds in the US right now has Heartbreaker twice. https://www.horsetelex.com/horses/pedigree/2031107/valcor-odf-na
There are a number of others as well if you do some digging.
Etoulon would give you two crosses to Toulon. It is on the closer side but I think acceptable for a sport horse. A good place to start researching, in my opinion, is to think about the influence the stallion you are linebreeding has in the pedigree and look at the type of mare that stallion crossed well with. Toulon was said to cross well with mares with blood and a relatively compact frame. Based on the KWPN database it looks like Etoulon is likely similar, having enough length but a slightly downhill body direction. That consistency makes it easier, rather than having a strong influence one way with one stallion and a very difference another way with the other, if that makes any sense. A concern with linebreeding Heartbreaker would be rideability, but given that Toulon had good rideability that he typically passed on, I would consider him a “good” source of that blood to double. If you are interested in Etoulon, I think it would at least be worth talking to VDL about the cross.
Hopefully some of that makes some sense and isn’t too rambling!
. She is very hot and a little too careful.
) I was told by the woman who runs the breeding barn where my mare is is that both imothep babies they’ve bred were close to 18 hands with average sized mares, I don’t mind a little taller but I don’t want Gigantic. Like I mentioned above she was very hot and spooky, got into the hands of a bad rider and that drained the heart from her and she just wouldn’t do it anymore. I was told never hot to hot or cold to cold? I’m very new to the breeding world and just trying to get as much information from people who know more than me as possible. What I do know is I LOVED riding this mare. I think if she had had better circumstances throughout her life she could have been incredible.