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Re: [RC] To breed or not to breed - Heidi SmithThere are thousands and thousands of excess, unwanted horses (dogs, kitties, etc etc etc) bred by people that just wanted them as a hobby. This is NOT a judgement on you, Amanda. It was just my own personal feeling that if I was going to put a foal on the ground, then it was my responsibility to provide a home for life and never foist it onto an already overburdened market. While I applaud the concept that one should not "overburden" a market, I would also point out that not all excess animals are created equal, and that it can be very difficult to find a useful and athletic horse among the dross that is being discarded. (This used to be less true as riding-type horses were discarded in favor of fads, but because of that very trend, most of what is being bred and discarded these days is last year's fad, far too often not suitable to do much of anything.) I don't think it is "foisting" horses off at all to breed the types of horses that RIDERS want to buy, who want to be able to see the end result in front of them instead of breeding it themselves, and who want to shortcut all that time waiting for the baby to gestate and grow up. I already made my suggestions as to what Amanda should strive to do, should she opt to do this--and to that, I would add that if the hobby breeder does his or her homework and sticks to useful sorts of horses, then in the event that they are NOT able to keep the horse at some point, their odds of finding said horse a caring home are much better. Heidi =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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