Really sad in my opinion

There's this AQHA show this weekend and I was watching and looking at some of the horses. I was really disgusted and sad when I was looking around because the majority of those QH's did NOT look like QH's should. They looked too pleasure horse like.

...They were probably showing pleasure? Why is that disgusting?

There's a big differance between a foundation QH and your average WP horse, but I think you can have a good looking horse in both realms. I'm more prone to foundation type (17hh QH still weird me out even though I'm around them).

My sis has a foundation bred QH, 14.3 hands and chunky as a bulldog, gorgeous little QH head. She rides in anything she's eligible for and the horse can handle, which puts her in the WP ring with some 16+ hh QH's. They hold their own and rake in a few ribbons every summer. I'm personally partial to the foundation style, smaller and bulkier, in a QH.

I think we're seeing a diversion in strains of QH now, much like in the Morgan horse world, with "old" and "new" types. I have no problem with different types within a single breed as long as the judges don't discriminate between types at a breed show (or any show, for that matter.) An issue that I see lies in a QH halter class, where horses are judged according to similarity to breed standard. I don't know what the exact wording is, but I would think that that standard is most similar to the foundation type. If this is the direction AQHA wants to go, some changes need to be made, and acknowledgement of the different types, and accomodations made in the breed descriptions for classes that use these standards to judge against.

I love the old foundation type QHs, my horse Dunny was a foundation bred QH from the Hollywood Dun It line. He looked like a tank with a leg at each corner.
I am not fan of the newer looking QH that looks more like a TB than a QH, that being said, that's the only type of QH I ever showed, but they make fantastic english horses.

What scares me in the QH world is the halter horses. They have scary legs that more often than not look like pogo sticks and are so muscle bound I dunno how they move.

LOL! OMIGOSH! Pogo sticks! I can picture those muscle bound Schwarzenhorses bouncing up and down with their pogo stick legs!!! RFLOL!!!

Love the pogo stick image, lol! I'm always confused by the "Halter bred" QH's. Halter is where the horses are most closely scrutinized on their simlarity to the ideal of the breed, yet no other QH looks like the halter breds! If these beefy beasties are the ideal QH, how come the ropers, reiners, gamers and other horses with more physically strenuous "jobs" are so differently built, let alone the WP QH's! Oh, well, just an oddity I've noticed, ha ha.

For what it's worth, my horse took Grand for Halter Geldings in UPQHA in 2005 or 2006? Anyways, he is a nice-moving, non-pogo stick horse.

So not all AQHA judges choose the Schwartzenhorses over horses who are able to perform. Although, some shows a judge came in and we wouldn't even place because they'd put the Schwartzenhorses first. But it doesn't always happen, and many judges are coming around to the idea that horses who win AQHA halter should be able to move correctly.

Judges will always have their own biases, and standards seem to be always changing, IMHO. I've seen wonderfully built 'traditional' stocky QHs and Paints called 'fat' by judges who prefer the 'newer' TB look.

The reason the "halter" horses aren't used for show is because they are so big and bulky that they don't move well... although they have added a performance halter class which is for horses that are actually ridden and they are a much different look. I do have the admit that I absolutely love the old classic look of the quarter horse, short, compact and built like a tank. It's what turned me on to the breed all those years ago.....

The show industry is so screwed up it's not even funny. I went to the Midwest Horse Fair this year and almost every single QH and paint stallion was unbelievably downhill. I think I saw one QH that had a decent topline. It was depressing.