Questions about various disciplines and breeds

Here's a picture of us doing HUS many years ago,



At Congress, my 15.2hh paint was completely dwarfed and placed last. He has very "western pleasure movement", so he has a shorter stride than most of the horses out there.

The baby I have now I plan to use in all-around, but her sire is one of the big HUS stallions out there. She should mature to 16hh, which is a good size for an all-around horse. Still small enough to do the western, but still large enough to do the english. If you were just going to specialize in english pleasure, I wouldn't look for anything smaller than 16hh, and even 16hh might look small in the upper levels.

Here is a video of Lily's stallion performing. You can see that even though he is 16.1/16.2, some the horses that pass by him make him look tiny!:

Charisma is a handsome fella. I am not yet into paints but like with Quarterhorses, I am finding some that really make my head turn. This is a big change for me.

Why do Western horses need to be small? Couldn't a 17 hand horse compete in Western Pleasure?

Oh vair oh; you look very cute in the photo of you on your paint horse.

I personally would much rather ride the Saddlebreds. That looks like fun!

The HUS video is cool. I just don't personally liek having the head lower than my seat. It just feels like their's nothing in front of you. The stud has nice movement for such a big horse.

It is extremely difficult to get the level of collection and slowness on a 17 hand horse. Their strides are just naturally too big, and even though they would look pretty, they would still be going naturally faster than everyone else.

This is All Time Fancy, the big trend in APHA stallions this year.


He's 17 hands.

This is his son:


I've seen this horse compete western pleasure to get an all-around title. The horse was put at almost a full "cant" (no apostrophe), basically moving sideways down the entire arena in order to keep pace with the smaller horses. It was not a very good look.

Just wanted to add my 2 cents. The downhill is seen most in halter horses today. You actually don't want downhill in an QH performance horse....be it reining, cutting, rail classes etc. You want a level horse with a low hock set. So pretty much downhill is a no-no, however you see it a lot because QH bloodlines show so many of the discipline-geared bloodline out-crosses...including the TB influence which also brings the downhill stature.

This is interesting to me. In dog shows, the judge is judging each individual dog against the standard, not against the other dogs in the ring (or he/she should be) and then picks the dog that is the closest to the standard.

Now, in a Western Pleasure class you would think they would be able to account for a horses size and say "he is moving correctly base on his size" and not just say "oh he passed up the 15 hand horse, so it is wrong." I mean, I know that isn't exactly what you are saying but... In order to have an all around horse, it seems you must have one large enough to compete in the HUS classes and not so big that it can collect enough to not be passing up all the 15 hand horses.

To me, that seems sort of... wrong. Shouldn't they be able judge the horse over all and see that even though the stride is longer due to his size, he is an amazingly collected horse, is using himself well, set head etc.... so he places well? Did that make sense? It did in my head. I guess I am not sure how to ask the question in my head. Also, I never want to offend anyone and it seems so many people here are in Hyper defense mode about their breeds.

I know that mode, I used to be there about Saddlebreds because they were so looked down on by, um, Western people. Ha ha I have learned to ignore most of that but I do wish to educate about things when I see someone jumping to wrong conclusions about my favorite breeds.

I tried to just edit and add but it timed out so...


Here I see they are all pretty close in size

Totally different from what I am used to seeing or rather hearing at a high level show. At ours we hear a lot of screaming, hooting and lot of energy. This is definitely more sedate. I think my mind would have a hard time concentrating in this quiet. Again, I am NOT making fun of it. I think it is cool. I can see the people concentrating on doing each step right. From the outside (non western person) it is hard to see that each step matters. I guess that when a person is good and a horse is trained well, it looks very very easy.

^ I love the hooting and hollering at the ASB shows. But I also love the serenity and quiet of a WP class....especially when these horses move so slight and soft on their feet, you don't hear a noise.