Thatâs pretty much his Winter Look.
AKA: Yak
@scribbler If (& I hope so) youâre referring to my guy, agreed.
His neck is on the thick side & another inch of leg would go well, but no dwarfism present.
And he is darned athletic!
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What about the Amish? Do they have good breeding programs for work horses? You would think they would be interested in perpetuating the draft horse.
Thatâs not at all what I meant. I meant that there are a lot of breeders like that out there, which is why I thought she might be a mostly field breeder whose dogs were not successful in the show ring. And those breeders often complain about âunfair judgingâ when in reality they are unable to see that their dogs are just not as good as they think. (Which doesnât make them bad dogs, just not as good in the show ring.)
If she is winning in the Lab ring - she is obviously not a crap breeder. Labs are very competitive, and lots of lab owners hire pro handlers in order to finish their dogs because of the large number of good dogs. In my area, labs will be in the ring for an hour, easily. Itâs hard to win.
My breed is not rare, but nowhere near as competitive as labs. At least if you lose - you lose quickly! 
I havenât read the replies but I think we have bred the soundness right out of them.
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Breeds? There are breeds besides warmbloods* & Quarter Horses?
Yes, I know they arenât a âbreedâ
⊠try and fix horses, and then, if they arenât sound enough to ride, BREED THEM. The ads for lame horses offered as broodmares just make my head 
. This is not helping those of us who want horses who will stay sound into their 20âs.
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Oh, ok. Yes, she does send her males out with a handler, although she used to show a lot herself, it has gotten a lot more competitive.
I wonder if the worst issues in soundness arenât perpetuated by futurities such as Arabian halter, stock horse halter, and cutting/reining with baby horses. Those colts and fillies only need to stay sound for their first couple of years to win big money.
Our farrier was talking about how many young, broken down stock horses she sees that were discarded and picked up as a semi sound riding horse for cheap (if theyâre lucky). If this is a contributor to unsoundness in the industry, itâs so specialized that I wonder how much effect it has on the industry as a whole? I have seen some unbroken Arabians sold that showed in halter when they were young, but weâre too crazy to break for riding. They show up very cheap on CL.
If only we could do away with big money in futurities. Low cash prizes. Save the big cash for the mature animals.
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This. An acquaintance just made a listing for a 10yo tb mare who raced way back when, they havenât been able to keep her sound. She said in the ad that she has arthritis in the right front fetlock, no idea what diagnostics or treatments theyâve tried. So now theyâre offering her out as a broodmare. head desk
The woman teaches up down lessons at the barn that I used to ride at. When I was there the BO was breeding quality warmbloods, stood a very nice stallion. Put a lot of effort into finding suitable matches. Homebred mares were bred to quality outside studs. Amateur friendly and athletic. Iâve kept track of several of my favourite babies, theyâre now late teens and early 20âs and for the most part have stayed sound. Somehow this lady convinced the BO that thereâs nothing better than a tb. Donât get me wrong, there are lovely ones out there, Iâve owned a ridden a few. But the ones that she has picked up, and the couple that she bred to the stud at the barn are not sporthorse types. The resulting babies are fugly. Luckily the BO has a young family now and has stepped away from breeding, no need to flood the local market with poor quality stock.
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So as I said upthread, the working life for an urban cart horse in the 1890s was about 7 years after which I assume they were crippled and shot. I expect that they worked through a lot of low level NQR by that point.
When I was a kid in the 1970s our horses stayed sound but we did almost no arena time and no jumping except random logs. Horses are made to go in straight lines and over fairly firm footing. Kids trail horses and old time working ranch horses are most just going forward over natural terrain with a few insane bursts of speed.
Schooling in an arena, schooling circles, longeing circles, round pen work, and all the disciplines take way more out of a horses joints than working a ranch or bombing around bareback with a tween rider. And the very early age some disciplines start rigorous work at is a problem.
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I donât think the âworking lifeâ means they were crippled and shot after that time. It seems there were other jobs that helped cart horses recover from the hard roads. I saw something about bathing horses that worked on beaches bringing bathing tents to and from the water. Says they had a chance to recover from injuries. There were also horse dealers everywhere that knew how to get a horse back in condition for resale. A nor lameness or injured hoof could heal, if the owner had a spare horse, otherwise, they would have been sold.
I donât think most modern horses would do very well in those jobs. The modern carriage horses have very short working hours in most cities and our roads are much better.
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Okay thatâs good to know.
I would expect the urban cart horse was also a draft or draft cross. People werenât putting race horses or saddlebreds or other light riding horses into these jobs. There would have been way more cart horses being bred.
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I wish people quit repeating that old wisdom bolded, that today we know is not so.
There have been plenty of studies now showing that early start at any we do, especially physical tasks, will help grow a body into what it will be asked to do.
That helps, doesnât hinder, a horseâs performing long and sound for the longest, unlike a body that matures first, then tries to learn a physically demanding task.
The reason that old idea formed is that yes, when a horse is trained wrong and overfaced, AT ANY TIME that happens, it may get injured or have a shorter time doing it.
The common denominator is not when a horse is started on learning, is HOW it is started.
The earlier, the sounder and longer the horse will be comfortable and good at that task.
This just one of many articles explaining these theories:
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This was Kid, the smaller Belgian we farmed with in the mountains, where we had smallish, terraced patches of land to plow and harvest.
He probably never in his life did other than walk pulling a plow, sled or wagon and pack milk daily down to the highway for the truck to pick up.
He was born in 1931 and was in that picture 28 and just getting back from us doing kidâs chore to bring sticks for the fire place, where we kept a little fire going to cook on.
He did his job fine, a bit slower as he aged, until at 32, still hauled milk a Saturday, had Sunday off and Monday was found dead, without a struggle.
He was a character, with a mind of his own, you could see him smile to himself at times.
I was so happy when I was old enough to handle him, drive him and even plow with him.
He never had a sick or off day in his long life:
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well, a dead horse wasnât a liability then either.
But people lived a hard life, so did their animals.
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I know itâs a work of fiction, but Black Beauty spoke to the realities of working horse life in the later 1800s, was met with shock and resulted in changes to animal welfare standards.
If you read the list of horse characters, you see that they often changed career for the worse as their physical infirmities increased, and sometimes ended up dead in the traces.
I would posit that not only was the working life of a horse shorter in the past, but they worked much harder, lived shorter lives overall, and were treated more often as replaceable vehicles. Veterinary care and standards were such that they were kept going as long as they were useful, but disposed off (either unceremoniously or given to the hunt as feed for hounds - considered honorable) when they could no longer work more often than not, with the definition of lameness being quite different to our modern day definition.
Nowadays, we expect a horse to live 25+ years and ideally stay sound well into their early 20s, with a huge amount of resources applied to keeping them going no matter what. The many threads people start agonizing over euthanizing an older horse who is in pain speak to this.
To speak to the OP, I think a horse with non functional conformation 80+ years ago probably didnât last long or get to breed.
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I didnt have a horse as a kid in the 60s (yes I am that old!) but hung around a lot of lower-end horses. In my memory, they were not all that sound, but often were ridden anyway. Any âlittle offâ was often unnoticed or brushed off as something the horse had to work out of. Even the local shows often had kids on horses that would be considered unsound today. Of course, back then there were few choices for diagnostics (even an xray was a big deal and often not available without going to a clinic) and few treatments. Winter was when you hoped that time would cure all.
Every fall the local horse auctions would fill up with unsound horses and those âused upâ by summer camps. If nobody else took a chance on them, AmFran was there to pay by the pound.
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An excellent book that really studied working urban cart horses is âThe Horse in the Cityâ by McShane and Tarr. Highly recommend it. While it looks at NYC, it is applicable in many northern, big industrial cities.
Until very recently, horses did not retire in general. Yes, you always had a few much loved ones here and there, the exceptions that prove the rule. Horses worked until they couldnât, and then were shot. That isnât necessarily a bad thing but it isnât a thing in todayâs culture (if hay prices continue up thoughâŠ) The concept of âwell it canât work so letâs breed itâ really didnât exist, at least on the male side of things. I also suspect that horses prone to IR, allergies, and other sorts of issues also werenât as common. And any horse that had a major unsoundness occur: torn tendons, leg fractures, severe behavioural issues caused by pain such as kissing spines, would also have had a very, very short life span.
Interestingly, a lot of draft horses would be broke and used on the farm from 2/3 to 6 and then be sold to work in the cities, usually until around the age of 15-18 or so. 15-18 was old for a horse, tellingly it is when a lot of hard used horses still start to âstep downâ in levels today. Only there was no step down for an urban cart horse, field work is even harder on an animal and far less forgiving in terms of schedules.
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When I got back to living in the USA after 6 years living in South America of course I looked at every horse I could see. My general impression was that the regular horse herd in America was not very impressive at all (lived in Fairfax Co., Va. a mile from Mount Vernon, and we did long drives through Va. and Md., plus vacations up and down the East Coast and as far west as the Tetons.) The TBs were fine, the few Morgans spread out here or there were really nice for variety, but the regular grade riding horse? No, the Criollos looked better.
Nowadays when we drive through the countryside here in NC I often see pasture ornaments that I would look into if I needed a riding horse (if I was not hooked on Arabians.) Horses with decently sloped shoulders, long croups, decent heart girth, pretty nice looking legs from the distance, and now I donât see that many horses that I would totally discount as a riding horse for me.
For me the general horse herd of âjust riding horsesâ (ie. not show horses) of America has improved immensely over the past 50+ years. In the last 33 years in Stanly Co. NC I have seen, just out in the pastures, around 20 horses that I would seriously look at for a riding horse if I just wanted a riding horse. These are mostly QHs, ASBs & their crosses, an occasional Morgan or 1/2 Morgan, Appy,s, Paints, etc⊠They are of MUCH higher quality and show MUCH better breeding than the general USA just riding horses showed back in 1963.
The conformation of the general school horses I see, mostly horses that their owners âdiscardedâ often for financial reasons, are aeons above the riding school horses I saw in Fairfax Co., Va. and the surrounding counties before 1970. Even the Mustangs run a little bit better (no implied insult to our wonderful Mustangs, a truly marvelous equine resource we are fortunate to have around.)
I think one reason for the difference in quality of our horseflesh is regular effective worming. Wormy horses generally look a lot worse.
The US Cavalry Remount stud stations also played a role. Good decent riding horse stallions were provided far out away from civilization, so the locals did not have to use the one jar-headed stud who kept his balls but was cheap enough to afford. Then the breed associations got bigger, some like the Arabian established part-bred registries, based on the US Remount Service breeding practices (their studs were purebred TB, Arab and Morgan? probably more breeds, I canât remember). This allowed the part bred owners to play with the bigger guys and have fun at the big breed shows. Then the QH people did their absolutely brilliant breed promotions, allowing just about anybody to have fun with their placid horse who could also run like lightning. That ended up with a lot of QH mares being mothers.
We have better horses nowadays. The plague of lameness is partially caused by our methods of training and riding. The horses are living longer (regular worming & shots) and they wear out one way or another. These horses are often staying as sound as the old time horses, it is just back then the unsound horses were usually âdestroyedâ and turned into useful products. Now we spend a lot of time, money, veterinary appointments, chiropractors, farrier visits, etc. etc. etc. to keep horses alive, useful and happy, horses that would have been worked to death then killed back in the Victorian era. One book I read said in London that a working harness horse lasted maybe 3-4 years, then to the knackers.
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I like your insight and comparisons to other countries. You might be right, but I also wonder if some of it is because less people can afford horses now. I could show you some backroads with some crazy looking animals, but the good roads have the more expensive ones.
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