This is just a story. This is a true story that happened yesterday. For those of you within the QH or pleasure horse industry, I think you will see the significance of it without much explanation. For the rest of you, well, maybe you want to skip this post ;-)
Husband for Kharma?
One of my horses has her own Facebook page and she made the comment that she may need a husband in 2012...anyone got any ideas?
Invest N Vitals Signs Tom Powers 08
A friend of mine who is an avid animal lover (but has next to zero knowledge of horse breeds, showing, leads, canter versus lope, or basically anything other than being able to identify horses at all) suggested a beautiful black and white homozygous tobiano stallion. As I looked at the link she sent me, I called her and explained that he was not the correct breed anyway, but even if he was, his weak topline and straight shoulder would eliminate him from consideration. I had a 15 minute telephone conversation with her explaining the type of conformation that was desirable and how it contributed to the type of movement that we were looking for in the current western pleasure industry. I did this on my way to work.
Great teacher or genius student?
So a few hours later, she sent me a text message suggesting Blazing Hot. Wow! That's a big turn around! I thought, this girl is a fast learner! ;-) I told her a couple of horses that I really liked, such as VS Code Red and a few others, via text message, and actually forgot about it.
Later on the way home, we were once again talking on the phone. She had spent a few hours in the afternoon watching videos on youtube. She started spouting off names of horses that she had looked at and included many of the highly advertised stallions and leading sires of the day. She did good research! I was pretty impressed.
Even the uneducated can see it
She went on to describe how certain horses were less fluid, how certain horses seemed to have a HUGE amount of up and down motion in their necks, and how horses with western riding as well as pleasure videos looked so much prettier and more fluid during their patterns than on the rail (and I don't want to get into names here, as that isn't the point, but I hope you guys can take my word for it that she was dead on). She asked, why are they so much uglier on the rail when they are so pretty and fluid in the middle?
I laughed and told her she had identified one of the main problems and debates within the western pleasure horse industry. So many of us, myself included, would really like to see them speed up just a notch. I told her that many people outside the industry were true haters of the class because some people do such a poor job of going so slow. I explained that it was really hard for a horse to maintain its rhythm, cadence, flat knee, slow legs and fluid way of going at a super slow speed. It required a combination of correct training, an athletic body, and a nice horse, OR a just superior horse to begin with, but there were many, many good horses out there that looked fantastic at a speed slightly faster than we normally showed them.
Confused, she began to tell me that she had found a horse that looked like he was just slowly moving but still cadenced and correct. In fact, it was THE video that she compared all the rest to all day as she had decided he was the best and her reference point during her self education. I told her I didn't say it was impossible, just that required a combination of correct training, an athletic body, and a nice horse, OR a superior horse. There are certainly good videos out there.
I could tell she was relieved. 
She told me that the Krymsun horse seemed to be perfect to her and she liked how he was fluid and seemed to actually be doing the gaits. I said One Hot Krymsun? She said yes - she had watched his Three Moments in Time video and thought based on my criteria, he must just be a superior horse, but she had compared videos to him all afternoon and found every single one lacking. In fact, she said she didn't know who that trainer was (I told her Dave Dellin) but after watching some of the crappy movers, she wanted to go back and kiss him on the mouth for letting his horse be real!
All I could do was laugh. I told her that he WAS a superior individual. What could I say? She started on the world wide web searching for the ideal and came away with a 3 time world champion leading sire. She probably doesn't need much more of my help ;-)
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