God bless Dr. Deb Bennett

I just finished reading Deb Bennett's newest article in Equus for the third time. The magazine has been publishing a series of her articles on conformation analysis recently. The most recent one is very illuminating and puts some science into what I have been trying to express about what may possibly be the theme of this blog. This month's article is entitled "A sense of proportion". Here are the highlights:

"A horse's overall size and the stoutness of his legs govern his whole working life"

"Bigger horse = less substance"

"Bone density is related to weight, not breed"

"The smaller the horse, the greater the chance that bone density will be normal"

"I advise you to select a horse for riding use that weighs less than 1,300 pounds. This conforms with scientific results and the laws of biomechanics, yet still provides a very wide range of choices"

From:

"A sense of proportion" ; Deb Bennett, PhD. Equus Issue 388 January 2010 p. 42-49.

In view of this information, I would suggest that the Irish Draught preservationists abandon their lament about the loss of bone in the breed. The real culprits are the increase in height and weight, the ill-conceived notion of changing the purebred ID into a warmblood/sport horse, and the rapidly diminishing traditional type with it's equally rapidly dying traditional bloodlines.