Equine Health

If you’re considering the addition of breeding to your list of equine business pursuits for 2010, you may want to think twice—at least. That’s the seasoned advice of Gary Carpenter, the new executive director of breed integrity and animal welfare for the American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA) in Amarillo, Texas. The association’s creation of this new position is yet another testimony to the importance it places on breeding and on the humane considerations of our four-legged friends.

“It’s somewhat like entering a partnership,” says Carpenter, a nine-year AQHA veteran who’s been racing, showing and breeding most of his career. “You don’t enter into a partnership without knowing how you’ll get out of it.”

Once that cute, wonderful foal is on the ground and eating out of your hand, your challenges are just beginning, he says, so you absolutely, positively must have a plan and not just an idea. If not, there may be no ultimate place for the horse to go if its genetics or conformation aren’t good enough—and the bar here is already set very high—because then the foal could become an unwanted horse.

Ask yourself, suggests Carpenter, whether you intend to show the horse or race it. Have you given it every advantage, like nominating it for programs that will enhance its marketability? Can you train it yourself, and if not, can you afford for someone else to do it? If you’re inexperienced, consider also that maybe you’d be better off going to a sale and buying what you want instead of trying your luck at breeding.

Carpenter reminds Quarter Horse owners of the greater potential and encourages all horse owners to do their homework first. “We’ve created a tremendous athlete that can go a number of directions. We have more tools and more access to records and other information. We can therefore make better decisions,” he says.

The association, which places a major emphasis on breeding outcomes, doesn’t want to make the process so bureaucratic that members are intimidated, but, like other proactive breed associations, urges its constituency to take the process very seriously.

Want to forge ahead in the New Year? Take charge. “Talk to lots of people and don’t rely on one opinion, one advertisement. Develop your eye for horses and be aware. Breeding is a real responsibility,” says Carpenter.

BE THOROUGH

It’s also a labor of love for breeders like dressage aficionado Judy Reggio of Windy Ridge Farm in Bethel, Pa., where the Royal Dutch Sport Horse, a.k.a., Dutch Warmblood, is celebrated under the directives of the KWPN-NA studbook (www.nawpn.org). Reggio appreciates the detailed, finite approach, “the thoroughness,” of that studbook, which identifies 20 specific, desirable traits such as length of pastern or slope of shoulder.

Reggio cautions us not to get bogged down in rules, however. “A dressage horse is not a static thing, but constantly evolving. Horses of 20 years ago look nothing like today’s horses. Now they’re refined, lighter on their feet: It’s been a process.” She urges breeders not to be fixated on one well-known stallion name. “That’s going backwards. Instead, try to find a son doing well.”

Breeders, she says, can work to continually improve the animal to make its job easier, for although many horses can do dressage, if the neck isn’t set right, the poll isn’t right, if they can’t sit on their haunches, “dressage will be difficult for them.”