Ridecamp: Re: [RC] RC Shivering

> Just a thought, here...It seems that most folks remarking on shivering
> horses are talking about Arabs.  Could it be breed-related to a certain
> extent, like the shivering in Chihuahuas?
>
> Heidi, Susan....your thoughts on this?

Yes, to a certain extent it is.  It's sort of a part of an overall
phenomenon that I've been seeing on the rise the past 30 years, as Arabian
breeders have actually selected for a "nervy" sort of horse that is far
departed from the desert Arab.  So would add that it is part of something
that is pretty common in the subset of the breed that has departed from the
original.  Were there horses like this before?  Sure, otherwise one couldn't
have selected these "wired" critters out to "breed them up" (which I put in
quotes because I personally think it is breeding down, not up).  But they
were not the norm, because they were not suited to the work, and now that
work is not the norm, but being bug-eyed and pop-veined to either fly around
the ring like a kite on a string or to go around in some abnormal pumped-up
version of a trot with the same out-of-your-mind expression IS the norm,
these horses have been selected and purposefully bred to BE the norm.
Fitting these horses back into a sport like endurance is like fitting a
square peg into a round hole--I'm not saying it can't be done, if one is
determined, but it is SO much easier to choose horses that are metabolically
and mentally "designed" to do the task at hand.  And those horses are out
there--and no surprise that those are the horses that climb to the top of
the sport.

Heidi


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