Yuck.

Ok, so I pulled out an issue of... a big stock horse breed association's journal. (is that vague enough so as to not point fingers at any certain breed?) I was flipping through it yesterday while waiting for the truck to get some work done. I remembered the sense of horror that I usually have when flipping through this publication. There were several full page ads bragging about such-and-such multiple World Champion stallion. These poor horses look like those freakish men you see on the covers of bodybuilding magazines. (sorry, I'm not a fan of THAT MUCH MUSCLE) I really felt sick looking at the pictures of these horses.

I just do not understand WHO can look at pictures like those and think that the horses look GOOD?? And who can do that to a horse and think that it's ok?? I see plenty of other ads in this magazine that feature "stocky" stock horses with muscle, but they look nothing like these poor... "freaks" (??) I see in other ads. I just don't understand it and I don't think I ever will. I've been told that Bo would do well in Halter and I plan to enter a few classes with him, just for the heck of it. But I will never, NEVER subject a horse to looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Does that mean that I'll never, never have a World Champion Halter horse? I guess it does, but I don't care. I'm not surprised at all when I think back of how I've heard that many top halter horses succumb to things like laminitis at an early age.

Perhaps no one cares what I think, but since this is my blog I'll say that I like my horses to have muscle, but I like them to be FIT and ATHLETIC. The purpose behind a "stock horse" is to work "stock". So for those breeds, I want a horse that looks like he could run cattle all day. I can't see how these overly muscle-bound Halter champs could even get out of their own way. Maybe they can, but could one of those extreme human body builders compete with a marathon runner in a race? I don't think so.

It's things like this that make me even more thankful that I'm now getting involved with a more "natural" breed. I hope the day will never come that a Spanish Mustang is expected to look like a body builder to be competitive. I can't see that ever happening... but maybe the people involved in the early days of Quarter Horses and Paints thought the same thing...