About tail carriage. I am sure you all know by now that I am a fanatic about PURE Arab blood. I have noticed that the undoubtedly pure (or as pure as one can find) Arab has a slightly different tail carriage than the other lines of Arabs, on through to the Shagya Arab. I have trained my eye to notice tail carriage.
The first thing I noticed in the Holstein mare line book was, in the pictures of the more ancient lineage mares (pre Ramzes AA), a tail carriage (and croup conformation) that showed undoubted Arab influence even though the rest of the horse did not show great amounts of Arab influence (except for some mitbahs.) So I went back in the pedigrees way, way back and found, your guessed it, Arab blood. There was more concentration of TB blood in these horses (through Ethelbert among others) than there was Arab blood, even so, in some lines, the croup/tail carriage showed much more Arab influence than TB influence in certain earlier Holstein horses. (This Arab influence was mainly through Amurath 1881, probably one of the most prepotent and influencial Arab stallions in history.)
And watching videos of modern Holstein horses, several of the ones who make it into international competition have a high tail carriage, not the tail carriage of an Arab, but a much higher tail carriage than I expected from a horse that is, to get down to the nitty gritty, a TB/colder blood cross. Yes, Ramses AA helped, but that good tail carriage predated Ramses AA, he just reinforced what was already there.
I ride hunt seat. I boarded for many years at a hunt seat barn that essentially worshiped TBs, pure or part. My sole paying horse job was at another hunter/jumper farm that had two TB stallions that the local hunt people used on their TB and high grade mares. Of the two TB stallions, the one most responsible for good jumpers had a better tail carriage than the other stallion who, though more powerful in the hindquarters, had a “normal” TB tail carriage The rest of the TBs I saw never really “carried” their tails expect in play, if then.
When I talk about tail carriage in the TBs I am talking about a horse that carries his tail a little higher than most TBs, and it is not very high when you get down to it. Holstein horses with “poor” tail carriage for a Holstein horse carry their tails higher than TBs with a good tail carriage for a TB.
Since Holstein horses look so much like TBs now compared to the Holsteins before the modern TB crosses (Lady Killer, Cottage Son) I for one would have thought the TB cross would be wonderful. Apparently it is not. Too bad. It would make life much simpler.
I am just trying to come up with alternate ideas for selecting a TB stallion that does not completely “kill the jump” since the current TB stallion selection process is obviously not getting the job done. It is a purely intellectual exercise on my part because if I ever get to the point I could breed horses it would be Arabs, not WBs.
