I would watch out for the NEW horse. My stallion and his relatives are very
slightly "cow-hocked" but travel WIDE in back. He has been all over the
place and we haven't had a lick of trouble with him. Never interferes or
acts lame or anything. Even went through race training fine.
I believe that toed out a bit is good, and the reason is because if you look
at your horse's stifles and how they look compared to the horse's belly
which happens to be RIGHT in front of it, think about what happens when that
horse moves his leg forward. The stifle must point a bit out to get AROUND
the belly of the horse (obviously this is not as true with super fit no gut
horses). NOw, if the toes don't match the stifle, you would have an
incredibly crooked leg, making for a lot of torque/stress during
competition.
On no gut horses(supposedly superfit), the muscles should hopefully be
MUCH stronger in that
region of the leg, which I think would tend to pull the stifle in more
toward the midline of the horse. THis should make the horse a very straong
traveler. I noticed this with my stallion, who tends toward loose stifles.
His leg straightened considerably when he was race trained, due to muscling.
I hope you understand my explanation, that was how we learned
it on judging team, and it makes sense to me.
Slight cowhock is ok, but I
don't like to see it NOTICEABLY. I shouldn't be able to walk up to a horse
and say, "Hey he's really cowhocked!" I would like to have to watch the
horse a bit to be able to ascertain that he IS cow hocked, because it also
depends on the stance of the horse unless the cowhock is really bad.
I have no intention of ever propagating a truly cowhocked horse. Same with
sickle hocks. It really frustrates me as a breeder to see the nice old PURE
Crabbets that are being bred for the sole reason that they are PURE. That is
fine except for the fact that certain strains, COunt Dorsaz being one in
particular, are very sickle. Don't look at the pedigree first, but if it
compliments the horse, keep it. Like I should have to tell anyone who is
doing endurance. NO hock, no horse. Don't get me wrong either. I have a very
correct Count Dorsaz grandson who taught me to ride and was one of the
toughest horses I ever met. His greatgrandparents were US Cavalry horses
and his dad did the Vermont 100.
All IMHO, any comments welcome, of course.
Gwen
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| Gwen Dluehosh |
| Desert Storm Arabians (| |)_____ |
| 2249 Mt. Tabor Rd / \ \__=___ |
| Blacksburg, VA 24060 (= + =) \___=___ |
| 703/953-1792 \ + / \__=____ |
| dluehosh@vt.edu | + | \____=___ |
| Endurance/racing ()+() \ _______ |
| halter stock available \_/ |
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