Re: Desperado V

["Susan Garlinghouse" <suendavid@worldnet.att.net>]

the"park"
> breeding. Her comment went something like the high action (like the big
lick in
> the walking horse show ring ) was made by tricks and shoeing. What they
needed to
> make it ( again like the walking horse show horse) was a big motor to
drive.
> Seems to me that drive is the key to the endurance horse.
>
> So if the high action was natural that might be bad but if the high action
came
> from heavy toe weigh shoes and other training tricks (training with
chains, etc.)
> it might not be so bad.
>
> Any thoughts

Cal Poly had the Canadian Natl Champion Park horse Reign On and that horse
could wave his knees around his ears like no other horse on earth, no
tricks, no shoeing---in fact, his eventual lameness breakdown came after a
big-name trainer insisted he wasn't "competitive" (after having already won
the Can Nat'ls) without heavy shoes.  Sure enough, he broke down and never
competed at the US Natls.  But that action was absolutely natural, and he
did sire a few hunter-action horses that have done well in endurance---Cory
Soltau's Reign Man comes to mind.  They inherited the big motor behind, and
just skipped the fancy movement up front and did just fine.

When I used to show saddlebreds, the good'uns didn't need big shoes or
tricks to move well---either its there or it isn't.  Sometimes a stakes
class would go really long to weed out the really top horses---the ones with
movement based on tricks would tire out and get strung out and sloppy, the
ones with natural action and a big motor to boot just sweated harder and
kept right on going. :-)

OTOH, Gene LaCroix once told me that when he went to Poland to pick out Park
prospects, he looked at the Arabs that had done well on the track and
presumably had the big motor, never mind what they did on front end.  I
wouldn't trust the man as far as I could throw him, but he could produce
park horses, at least in the short term.

JME
susan g