Were you as blunt as me? No but I beg you to understand that is what your posts are saying over and over again.
IDK what breeding she is, TWH possibly? Mixed in with a whole lot of spicy chestnut mare. She’s nice and smooth until she hits about 7.5 mph and then we got blender legs like the photo. My friend adopted her from GAIT and asked me to ride her that day. I’d never sat on/ seen her until the warm up ride the day before
The first “study” cites no sources (It says “In 2008 at an Ohio University…” but doesn’t actually provide a citation), and also refereneces the 1920 Cavalry Manual. It does however, mention the factors we’ve all been yammering on about - conformation, fitness and balance, work load, tack and equipment.
The second “study” used a group of eight horses. Eight.
And holy crap, I just caught the detail that they rode them for 45 minutes at the walk trot and canter every two weeks.
Anyone with half a brain knows that’ll make a horse sore. That study seems a bit in humane imo.
She’s lovely! Appears to be flying!
Well, she’s cool. And she looks like an ASB.
I was at the race track last night and had to catch my breath at how thin some of the 2 and 3 year olds were. Easily a 2-3 score on most of them. One could have been a 1.5 barely 2, as she was thin thin. I know racing fit and some were racing fit minus a few lbs., even so they were all shiny, cared for, plenty of umph.
So I’ll keep learning and remember there are exceptions. As horse that was super thin came in top 3 and was no slouch once her hoofs hit the track.
This study which I just finally got to read, is probably the best study of all that I’ve seen, with the exception of the ‘real life’ Tevis study.
Interestingly, the researchers call out that some of the smaller horses were better weight carriers, because they were used to carrying more weight and were fitter as a result. They also point out the loin connection issue, and they report that only one horse really seemed to have any true ill effects from carrying the 35% weight, but that horse also seemed to have some underlying soundness issues.
Yes, these are Icelandics, bred to be small but carry adults, so it would be interesting to see a study as well controlled as this using light horses. It would also be useful to have bone scans and vet workups on all horses at the beginning and the end of the study. As we all know though, horses injure themselves on the routine, so there will have to be enough of them to control for “normal pasture accidents”.
Going off on a tangent, there are so many really interesting and useful studies that could be done on different aspects of riding horses but they will never be conducted due to lack of funding. There aren’t enough organizations/corporations that have that kind of money to invest in things that are “nice to know.” That’s why the studies are few and so often flawed (e.g., insufficient number of subjects).
Anybody know any horse-owning billionaires who would be interested in underwriting an equine research program? 
Agreed! I was just trying to think about how I would design a study that really got to some good scientific outcomes and it would be hecking expensive! Maybe someday we’ll have enough funding!
To follow your tangent, it seems as though if a drug company doesn’t own it, no research gets done on anything with horses. I do realize that there have been some exceptions, but it is a shame that more isn’t done.
Grayson Jockey Club, AQHA, and Morris Animal Foundation all provide equine specific grants. The issue with them, and even when trying to get grant money from pharmaceutical companies (who are very generous and all of the ones I’ve worked with besides one don’t get pissy about results), is that they want the studies to have results that are immediately applicable. So it is difficult to get the initial proof of concept type research done.
There are also some very large, very well known sport horse and thoroughbred farms that are extremely generous with donating to scientific research. Some farms have research money specifically built into their budgets!
As far as the number of subjects, anyone can help with that! Keep an eye out for studies and volunteer your horse or yourself whenever you can. There are tons of surveys that go around and get abysmal participation. Help us researchers out by volunteering and filling out surveys 
My mare donates blood to a genetics research program in my department, and both of my horses donate research material (poop lol) for my research.
@tabula_rashah I could not possibly like your posts here more. You make some really great points. I think if any of us could snap our fingers and be our “ideal” weight (appropriate for height and not losing all muscle) of course we would. Too few of the thin people out there have any idea how many of us struggle and how much effort it takes to even drop a pound for some.
Love that pic of the mare. She really looks like she’s struggling so hard there. LOL Her expression is great, she looks like she’s having a blast and hauling a$$. I know nothing of endurance riding, but if I could afford to have a horse that would interest me as something fun to do with them rather than being in a ring. Is 4 hours for 25 miles incredibly fast? I looked it up and see that the maximum time is 6 hours if there’s a 1 hour hold, would that mean it’s actually a pace of 25 miles in 3 hours if you account for not moving for an hour?
What breed and size horse do you normally ride? I’d love to see pics of that pairing if you look so amazingly balanced on a catch ride.
Thank you!
I like that description of her- having a blast and hauling a$$ (whether I was coming along for the ride or not haha)
So the ride this was from was technically a CTR governed by ECTRA. It’s really similar to endurance but has some stricter parameters and you have a time window that you have to arrive in. To get a perfect score, you have to come in between 4 hours and 10 mins and 4 hours and 40 mins with a 20 minute hold in the middle. You can be a half hour either way without being disqualified (and I ride a division called pass fail where I just ride to accumulate mileage anyway as opposed to place)
So I have two current endurance horses- Esme, a bay Morgan mare, 15.2, 1100 lbs, and Freya, a black Rocky Mountain mare, 15.1, 1000lbs. Both of these pics- I am much heavier than in the recent pic. The one with the bay is No Frills 30 mile in VA 3 years ago. The one with the black mare is Iron Mountain Jubilee 55 in VA 2 years ago
Your Morgan mare is freakin adorable 
Thank you 
She definitely thinks so too lol
I hadn’t seen that study before and it was interesting, need to read it again to fully understand it I think!
This is another really interesting quote from the study:
"The total distance ridden in our study (4310 m; warm-up plus exercise test) and the speed (5.4 m/s) during the exercise test can reflect a common 1 day exercise for an adult Icelandic riding horse and the speed was selected as the upper limit of medium speed when riding tölt in Icelandic horses by leisure riders. With the exception of Lac and RT, the horses had recovered within 30 min, and CK and AST activity was not significantly increased from rest at 24 and 48 h recovery, indicating that the exercise test did not cause any substantial damage to the muscle tissue (Kingston, 2008). Clinical examination also showed that the test caused no or very limited new clinical findings. However, one horse showed tremor after carrying the heaviest weight and the same individual appeared ‘short-strided and earth-bound’ before the test. The importance and link between these observations are unknown. In the study by Powell et al . (2008), horses which carried 30% of their body weight for a longer distance than in our study (6400 m, ~3.3 m/s) had significantly elevated CK activity immediately post exercise and 48 h after exercise than when carrying 15%, 20% and 25% of their body weight (same exercise test) and a higher score in muscle soreness and stiffness 24 h post exercise. These results are difficult to compare with ours and their observations might also have been affected by the fact that their horses had been rested for 4 months before the study(Powell et al ., 2008) and might not have been fit enough for the exercise test.’
Sorry, there were two things I wanted to highlight there but the wysiwyg was just not cooperating.
I think all Morgan mares think they are adorable. Or queen-like. Mine goes back and forth about which, but she looks like Barbie’s Dream Horse from the 1970s, so I don’t blame her.
Both good looking horses! I’m not very familiar with the Rocky Mountain breed, so that’s gonna send me down a new rabbit hole. Not that I mind rabbit holes full of pretty horses.
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