How can a horse's conformation ever be this bad?

Holy......crow.........oh, my gosh.......

I've seen plenty of horses with sway backs, not that extreme, but who still live in comfort. Sure it looks funky, but he loks OOOOLD, and aside from something funky with his hocks (sickle hocks?) he actually isn't that badly built. He looks like a faithful old horse who has done his time serving people and who hopefully is enjoying retirement.

He actually may have been born like that. We have a horse at my ranch that has a sway back that looks almost exactly like that, and he's had it since he was born. It is a medical condition called lordosis as was mentioned earlier, but most of the time it is not actually painful, and can get better with exercises. It looks really bad, but its not that big of an issue. Here's an article about it: http://www.equisearch.com/horses_car...backs_081205/*

Poor thing! I've never seen a swayback that bad before.

Actually, aside from the lordosis (I'd assume it's that, not just a simple aging process) and a slightly weak hq, and slightly sickle hocks, he's actually not terrible.
As long as he's comfortable (many horses with severe lordosis are) I don't see any reason he can't be a pasture puff....

Exactly! No need for the "that horse should have been put down years ago!"

And I don't think the hocks look all that bad - I've seen worse.

Photoshop, Duh!

Maybe we should evaluate his conformation... is that a beer gut? You should have been put down years ago....

its not photoshopped

I've seen this happen when breeding young mares to early! My friend bought an arabian mare that was bred when she was 1 1/5 !! She is now swaybacked but not to this extream! They bred her young because the stallion that they wanted to cross with her was about to die. I still don't know why they risked her though! She is a very pretty mare with EXTREAMLY rare Sheykh Obeyd bloodlines!