I am considering a TB mare to be used primarily for dressage. Do these bloodlines tell you anything?
The mares name is Summer Exploration.
Thank you.
I’m going to tell you from a racing perspective what your mare’s pedigree is. You might hear from others about her sports potential.
her sire, Exploration, is from the family (2nd dam) of successful runner Bodemeister, so that’s nice. He was bred from a long line of successful racers, but himself was not. These are the commercial horses of Ky, and his 2nd dam was a MGSW (multiple graded stakes winner). The studs in his pedigree are impeccable and are all chefs de race. Bottom line is Exploration is well bred but didn’t perform up to snuff. These stallions are quickly shuttled off to regional markets, in his case Alberta.
The female side features west coast sires, including the dandy Siberian Summer, who won the G1 Charles H Strub Stakes. He has some really good fillies who went on to be good producers. He’s another good example of a decent KY horse going west to California for stud. Knight in Savannah looks like a west coast minor stakes horse, and Son of Briartic was another good regional sire.
The distaff is a good running Washington family with black type. Your mare is 1/2 sister to Barfly’s Survivor, who won the Albert Breeders Cup H. at 8.5 furlongs. There are other stakes horses from Washington. Of note, this female family produce the sire, Officer.
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Giants Causeway and AP Indy are both well known for sport horses, Storm Cat can throw a little sass in there, but AP Indy should bring some level headedness.
I am currently showing a TB mare Training level with goals to carry on up the levels, she is doing extremely well and winning almost all her outings and scoring high 60s/70s. Telling people she is off the track is the best at shows, everyone is always shocked! You really can not beat a good TB 
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I would suggest that you look at a nine generation pedigree to find out how much Bay Ronald she has. IMO, this is the primary TB line that produces TBs capable of pure dressage. Bay Ronald lines were very, very common in both US and foreign TB race breeding twenty or more years ago… Hyperion, for example, was in the direct male line of almost every TB that excelled in international dressage back in the day, and he’s Bay Ronald through Gainsborough.
The more instances of Bay Ronald you can find in the pedigree the more you increase the chance that genes good for dressage made it to the current horse.
I should point out that the German WB has traditionally used TB stallions with Bay Ronald lines as improvement stallions, from Dark Ronald to Teddy to Forli to Prince Thatch to Lauries Crusador to Cottage Son and Ladykiller.
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Vineyridge, I did a quick, well I spent half the afternoon, printing pedigrees looking for Hyperion and Teddy. How far back do you go? I would not say exhaustive but I found 5 Hyperion, 19 Teddy, and at least 20 Nearco, Apprx 8 Princquillo, I saw other names repeat like Gainsborough but my brain was swimming.
If you go back far enough wouldn’t all TBs have that many repeats?
Not really. Nearco certainly, and Teddy in the USA. There is a breeding theory that talks about the engine room which is defined as the sixth through ninth generations. It posits that the more instances of a particular line you can find there will increase the chance that you will get the gene combinations you want in modern descendants.
One thing you can do if you are really interested is pay $10 for a one month subscription to pedigree query and look at their options for breeding information in their reports. They will calculate the percentages of every ancestor in the pedigree in a given number of generations. They have nine generation pedigrees. Even if Bay Ronald is too far back for them, you can still approximate his influence through his known descendants. They have a linebreeding, an inbreeding, and a common ancestor report.
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Ok I have been interested in how that works. thanks.
What level dressage? To ride and see what she can do, sure. If you’re talking about trying to breed an UL horse… a TB ( of any bloodline) isn’t the place to start.
Dressagelvr, my interest here is to see assistance the pedigree can give and because I just find it interesting.
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