April 2008 • VOLUME 32 • © HORSES For LIFE™ Magazine

Breeding with Consequences The problem with playing God is that we truly are not God. We are playing blind with only a tiny part of the information we need to make informed decisions. To truly know all of the consequences of our actions is something that we still are learning as we breed.

Nonetheless we don’t let that stop us and we continue to breed for what we think will make the horse better, and have done so for thousands of years.

At one time we bred to have a horse that was better to pull more weight, to go faster and more recently to jump higher. Some horses were bred to carry riders, others to pull a wagon behind them.

When we look at horses from two thousand years ago, we see a very different horse - a horse so short and with nowhere near the depth of the barrel, that the feet of any Roman statue has the rider dangling his sandalled feet underneath the barrel of the horse. The horses were very upright in neck and head carriage, making them appear taller than perhaps they really were. The neck was thick and strong, the head thick also with bone.

We have literally changed the horse into something very different.

But we need to consider the consequences of our actions when we breed any animal. We have seen the problems that can occur again and again, in many different examples. The only thing that truly seems to protect us, is that Mother Nature has built in her own failsafes to ensure healthy and viable individuals based on hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.

I was shocked when I heard about a presentation at a veterinarian university where the current instructor informed the students that one of the unfortunate facts facing veterinarians today are the problems bred into purebred dogs. How there literally was no breed that did not have inherited problems that was bred into that breed. He went on to list the breed and the accompanying problems that were involved with each breed.

Here are just a few

Afgan Hound – watch for hip dysplasia, juvenile cataracts, PRA and hypothyroidism

Australian Cattle Dog – hip dysplasia, deafness and PRA. Some reports of temperament problems

Basset Hound – hemophilia, disk disease from injury, glaucoma, bleeding disorders, thyroid disorders, hip/elbow dysplasia

Beagles – hypothryoidism, demodectic mange, umbilical hernia, epilepsy, PRA, glaucoma, eyelash growth problems, kertoconjunctivitis, sicca, cherry eye, dwarfism, hip dysplasia, luxated patellar

This is a very brief example list...we could go on for pages and pages. Of course breeders today are trying to breed out these problems - not an easy task. You might notice that nowhere is listed what our breeding has done, emotionally or mentally or intellectually to the animals that we are breeding to look a certain way.

That is even more true for horses. While many live with their dogs twenty four/seven, almost all live in the house with the family. Problems of training, of temperament, do get noticed. That is not always true of an animal that we only see for a few hours every week.

In all our efforts to breed a horse that is faster or a horse that is bay, or white, have we forgotten to breed for a happy or smart horse? And how will we ever know what effect our breeding over the last several thousand years has been in these areas?

The animals bred to look a certain way, the breeders can see the outside but are not seeing the consequences inside. They only see part of the consequences of what they are breeding for. To some extent this is to be expected -- how can we know ALL of the consequences? There is just too much we don’t know or understand.

What has happened to dog breeds is happening to our horses. We are seeing faults bred into our horses all in the name of breeding for certain traits, qualities or physical characteristics. The results being that we sometimes don’t realize what we are breeding for.

This is true of many horse breeds from Quarterhorses to Warmbloods to Arabians where we are literally building in faults into our horses. Consequences that were not foreseen. Too often these kinds of problems happen because we are breeding for a trait that has little or nothing to do with physical activity. Without a testing ground, faults that are bred in are allowed to continue and become part and parcel of the breed - bred into one horse or many and all of their descendants.