Quote of the day: Diane on the looming uniformity of type in modern Arabian breeding
Reader Diane, from Australia, on the quest for standardized perfection and the resulting uniformity of type in Arabian breeding today, had this precious comment, in one of the recent threads on this site:
Western people, it appears, have a problem accepting an individual [Arabian horse] that isn’t quite absolute PERFECTION. This is what the Standard is advocating. The individual asil is not necessarily perfection in itself but is perfect for what it should be able to do per its original parameters / breeder/user requirements. Who are we, as westerners, to change this? Westerners need to learn that it’s not about perfection but what is functional.
Wifrid Scaven Blunt wrote somwhere “The aim is not to improve the pure bred Arab horse ,but to preserve it”
This statement ,in my opinion,does not mean that we have to accept pure Asil horses with their defects..
At our Al Fadi stud in Syria I try to produce big strong horses ,for that purpose we use big strongly built mares and we use Stallions with the same carecteristics all of them Mares and stallions are race winners.
The result was that a 2 years old filly “Fatinat el Fadi” from our first crop was “Syrian National Champion in Liberty class 2010” competing against 20 horses older than her.
you can look at he picture in “New Syrian Horse blog”
our goal is to produce “real horses for real horsemen”.
I believe that “beauty” in horse shows is a trend,if you look to US national or Top Ten Champions of 1980/1 like “Bask” or “Muzulmanin” they will not even won a small Arabian show today,because the “Beauty trend” changes , a Christian Dior(the famous inventor of the New Look) dress of 1953 will look ridiculous today and so on.
So producing the same horse type (the Egyptian look) for example can lead in a few years to the phenomenon of non-selling ,because maybe the trend has changed…
For me as a child that was raised on a dairy-beef farm I was taught that we are to constantly improve our stock of all kinds. This mindset was conveyed to me from parents and teachers and 4h leaders to the judges that would give there reasons why they placed this animal over the others. So for me it never occured to me not to seek improvement in my horses.
Dear Tim
Improvement in one thing and trying to follow a trend i.e “the egyptian look” is another thing ,some breeders are trying to give this look to their stock in order to sell,this is not improvement this is Marketing.
About Wifrid Blunt statement I wrote
” This statement ,in my opinion,does not mean that we have to accept pure Asil horses with their defects”
In this vue we try to produce Asil horses who can win at a horse show ,win speed and endurance races.
Our Hussam twice reserve Syrian National Champion 2008/2009 is training in Normandie for Endurance races.
While another mare of our”Mounia”(not Asil) is training for speed in Pau (south west of France).
I sent to Edouard the photo of our Beit el Nar(a Kuheilan Krush ibn Mizher) who is 1.58m he is training for show jumping in Damascus.
We called this improvement: of bones ,lungs,heart condition and especially the mental state of our horses.
To produce extreme “Dished face”horses is the easiest thing; but to produce a racer ,an endurance horse or a jumper all of them with kind and gentle dispositions is something else.
Our horses traveled ,the same day from Damascus to Amman by road , from there to Brussels and then to Normandie without any problem and without the need of any calming injection.
All the best from Beirut
Well ya know it all depends on how you define improvement.. If your goal as a breeder is to produce horses that will stay sound under saddle, which can also be used for athletic endeavors like endurance and eventing you need strong couplings, legs with 8 inches of bone per thousand pounds of body weight, necks set high enough so the horse isn’y likely to fall on the forehand while covering uneven terrain, ears set wide enough apart to indicate a broad and strong poll which will flex easily as the horse goes on the bit. Essentially any of several of the Asil horses occasionally mentioned in this website.
Best wishes
Bruce Peek
Marvellous,why dont they participate in
ECAHO EUROPEAN SPORTHORSE CHAMPIONSHIP 9 – 11 July 2010 in Sweden – [ Traduire cette page ]ECAHO European Sporthorse Championship (Western and Classic) in Sweden 2010 … In Sweden, neither the Arabian horse society, (SAHF) nor the Arabian sport horse … 2009 Scandinavian Arabian Sporthorse Championships 24 – 26 July in …
ecaho-ec-2010.se/news_info.htm
Have a look at
European Championships for Arabian Sport …
10 min – 31 déc. 2008
Importé par ELAcrisi
http://www.youtube.com
European Championships for Arabian Sport …
10 min – 31 déc. 2008
Importé par ELAcrisi
http://www.youtube.
Just Google:
ecaho sport arabian championship
and you can watch these videos
Best regards