ridecamp@endurance.net: akhal tekkes
akhal tekkes
Lucia Humphrey (laneyh@ix.netcom.com)
Sat, 10 Jun 1995 12:41:40 -0700
Dear All -
A few days ago Lynne wrote asking about crossing AT's with
Arabians. A local AT stud owner has used him on her arab mare & also
on a mostly Quarter Horse mare. Both babies are about a year old now
and very nice looking. I see the ATxQH baby being ponied in the local
parks which she has been since she was just a few days old. She runs
along side Mom, having a ball! Neither baby will be used for endurance
so I have no idea how the cross, based on these babies, would do but
it's fun to speculate. Miklos Jankovich, in "The rode into Europe; the
fruitful exchange in the arts of horsemanship between East and West,"
hypothesizes that the AT is the closest modern horse to the original
horse of the steppes of Central Asia from which the Arabian also
descends because the AT has been bred in the same part of the Steppes
for thousands of years. But he doesn't comment on the quality or
breeding of the modern AT.
I helped introduce a breed of dog a long time ago. The dogs we
started with came from Nepal as gifts so we knew nothing about their
quality. We were really lucky in that they turned out to be really
good. My sire passed his excellence along to all of his get. We
started with a really small gene pool but enough new imports came along
so we didn't have to in-breed. I certainly learned to find out as much
as possible about the breeding background of any animal from a rare
breed, horse, dog or whatever and to be willing to deal with less than
hoped for results of any breeding. If I were thinking of breeding to
an AT, I would be sure my horse was as good as possible, with
conformation that wouldn't compound the conformation "failings" of the
AT breed.
Happy trails,
Laney