Not all of them have diaper butts and posty legs!
I love a good QH and also a good cob…although I’m perpetually allergic (not literally) to hair. That crap gets shaved off in my barn!
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We need to realize that “mustangs” are feral domestic horses genetically and from the same stock and many directly from bona fide quarter horses.
Quarter horses come in many types, unlike so many other breeds.
Different types, some for more all around use, others for more specialized tasks, some bigger, some smallish, some heavy boned, some lighter, still all quarter horses. 
We can take our pick which type to like or own. 
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i’ve only rarely seen a typey QH that i like the looks of.
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You are really stereotyping horses! I’ve had welsh cobs (first photo) and now have a QH, pictured in the second photo. He is sleek and built like a TB or WB cross. Ranch bred, cutting, and reining QHs have a much different, sporty build compared to the halter horses with huge butts, post legs, and tiny feet. To me, the halter horses are functional cripples.
Some cobs make great dressage horses, but not all. The cob pictured was more of a carriage type, although I did show him in dressage. The QH gets consistent 7s and sometime 8s on gaits. FYI, I paid almost nothing for the cob and under 10k for the QH. You have to be willing to look long and hard for the off-breed that is the right type for your sport.
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love both of yours!
you can’t throw a stone without hitting a QH around here. And maybe that’s part of my problem…there are just so dang many of them.
Also, I think maybe a lot of it is the typical butt on a QH, that low-slung biceps femoris (had to google that lol). Not so much the tiny feet or thin legs and straight hocks…it’s the butt that gets me.
Like i said, i’m prejudiced. And it’s superficial…looks alone. I’ve never known one well.
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Expand your horizons! I joined the AQHA last year and received their slick, monthly journal. It’s interesting to look at stallion ads. What a difference in body types. Some of the reining horses look like Andalusians. The halter horses look like cows. Reiners and cutters are bred with a longer neck, open throat latch and a more uphill build so they can “sit.” Those are the attributes in a good dressage prospect.
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The QH is by far the most common breed in the US, and there are no enforced standards. Some of the halter QH lines have gone off the deep end in non-functionality. I think they are being bred to aesthetically resemble a beef steer. Then there are weedy little backyard critters.
A quality QH bred for performance or for real ranch work is a very nice very functional horse. Compared to TB or WB, they have larger haunches, somewhat shorter necks (but proportionate) and are crazy handy. They are not ever going to wipe out and slide under the fence in turnout play! They do well here in the lower jumpers and eventing.
I’ve had two horses of my own in my life 
but have ridden and observed a lot, as a kid and adult. My current horse is a big Paint, supposed to be Paint x Appendix. She’s got a lot of athleticism, though not specifically for dressage. My childhood horse originated as a feral horse off Indian band land. I bought her off a dude string. She turned into the absolutely perfect horse for a hot rodding teen, amazing stamina and zip. But she had no inherent talent for a particular discipline though we learned a lot of Western slide and rollback together. Because of her I’ve had a lifelong interest in feral horse populations, but also I’ve never romanticized them. I also saw some of her cousins at the dude string. They took fugly to a new extreme.
If you have an eye for a horse, you can pick out nicely built feral horses from a given herd. But honestly most of them IMHO don’t have conformation to specialize in a discipline. And why would they? The body types that win out in feral populations are the functional ones. Feral populations tend in my observation to favor economical gaits, shorter necks, and to be smaller, usually under 15 hands. Fantastic using horses but not the model for English sport.
Some isolated populations like the Kiger in Oregon appear to maintain a strong percentage of old Spanish blood and can look like an Iberian cross. Some other feral populations have more recent infusions of for instance cavalry remount TB or QH or draft escapees or abandoned horses. Other populations honestly have a high percentage of solid but fugly little horses whose big super power is survival.
Anyhow as a kid I was in the world of low end horses, where I got to observe and evaluate the innate talents of a range of horses belonging to my friends. As an adult I’m at the low end of nice horses, where I get to see a lot of reasonably well bred horses that are projects, problems, rehabs, or fell through the cracks unbroke adults. Indeed I’m currently working with a lovely Iberian cross who could do dressage almost naturally if we could ever get her past her panic bucking…
I’ve accepted that at my age, I’m not going to make the leap up to “middle range of nice horses” and start competing in anything. Paint has some ability at lower level evebting but honestly I’ve accepted I’m not that brave, and we can just gallop on the trails.
But I know what would be necessary for someone in my position to make that step up. Number one would be a younger horse with talent for the discipline that came to me with a decent w t c foundation and no bad habits that need sorting out. Number two would be a barn with a coherent focused training program that I trust. And all of that would cost far more than I’m currently spending.
I’ve been back riding a good 15 years now, part of that time in a couple of small programs with good instruction, but mostly in a large self board club. I’m sure I’ve seen a couple hundred horses come through, and my conclusion is twofold. If you get an adult project horse, the journey will be amazing and your horsemanship will improve exponentially, but you are going to run out of time before you have any thing coherent to take to a competition. And if you get a young unbroke horse, you are going to also stall out unless you have a good trainer on speed dial to help you problem solve. Evrn the small time “pro” coaches at the barn run into blocks with their young horses that they can’t get past.
Anyhow, I’m clearly not competition focused or I would have found a different way forward. I totally get the satisfaction of having a herd of mustangs that you tame on their own timelines. I find ground and liberty work easy and useful.
But I also recognize that what I’m doing indeed have done all my life doesn’t strongly intersect with competition. I know that if I got a properly started young horse with dressage talent that I could organize enough trainer support to school her. But I also know what that would cost if I went to a breeder I respected.
So I think there are very good reasons that properly started horses bred for disciplinary talent cost a lot. And there are very good reasons why, in most cases, a cheaper project or problem or rehab or feral horse is just not going to become a coherent competition horse in a timely fashion. What you are paying for is the absence of obstacles.
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My local Facebook page has some doozies of “why did they choose that photo” pics, and that beats many of them.
My guess is that this is a European sales page trying to make the horse look “huntery” without really understanding how to do so. The horse looks confused, like he’s used to more contact, and the rider’s reins and posture look like she’s trying to imitate (poorly) the American hunter style of riding with longer reins and a lighter seat.
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And then there’s this feral, non-BLM herd in Tehachapi, CA, who are descended from ranch-bred Morgans in the area. I’d love to have one of them!
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Morgans were heavily represented in the original quarter horses also, as were many other breeds, from which AQHA inspectors, horses initially had to be inspected, would pick and choose which ones were suitable for the newly formed registry.
Our own herd was heavily remount horses by government/military provided stallions and some were also accepted for registration.
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There are still ranches that use Morgans, mostly in the northern Plains states. And I know a Texas Morgan breeder whose husband uses her stallion on QH mares for his feedlot work horses. And this horse appears 12 times in my mare’s pedigree:
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well, it was dutch.
And I doubt they were imitating the American hunter style, although there are equitation classes available to enter.
I think the rider simply exaggerated the position for the height of the jump. The horse had too little, the rider too much effort.
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Hell, my scores on my non-arab looking arab improved quite a bit (with a subset of judges, granted) when I pulled her mane and stopped declaring her breed on the entry form. Neither my riding nor her gaits changed …
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not braided or not roached?
I think @AltersAreUs means instead of the flowing long Arab circuit thing, and maybe a running braid, they pulled the mane to 3 inches and then put in button braids.
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oh. Thanks
My arab and my akhal-tekke sporthorse (1/4 arabian) have the wispiest of manes…like appaloosa manes. Thickest of course are on a few of the mustangs. And mare i’m bringing up is a curly, and i suppose i’ll do a running braid if/when she shows, as her mane is her ‘crown’. If judges judge based upon hair then ‘oh-well’ LOL. Hopefully i’ll find judges who are better than that.
The point the OP was making I think was that if a judge is looking at a horse knowing it’s an Arab they might be prewarned to see some of the things Arabs do that don’t sync up with dressage goals. Floating rather than powering from behind, swan neck rather than bascule to the bit.
That said, I’m not sure the dressage judge gets to see the breed on the entry form. I don’t know what is on the entrants list they are working with.
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interesting. Just like in dog shows, the owner’s name is scrubbed from judging scripts. Good.
At the one-and-only dressage show i’ve ever been to (one week ago today ) i heard the judge ask the rider after her ride, at her salute at G, what breed her horse was. It seemed an interesting question considering he still had his form right under his pen. But…
And also seemed in conflict with what previous poster on here stated. Thanks for responding to that bit.
and god-knows…i love me a floaty trot!!!
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Judges don’t see the entry form, only the test with the rider and horse’s name. Some shows have a printed or online program with a roster, so a judge may see the horse’s breed if they read the program and if the breed of the horse is listed. Lots of “ifs.”
Sometimes judges ask about a horse after a test if they are curious. More often than not, they like the horse and what to know more.
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