News: Articles: Why Don't We Think We're Good Enough?

An Amateur Point Of View

Why Don’t We Think We’re Good Enough?
by Russ Vento

Standing on the rail at shows, I am puzzled by what I sometimes hear when people are evaluating the performance of an Arabian horse. In the English division, are they going high enough? Are their heads tucked back enough? It is apparent what the ideal is—the American Saddlebred. In western, it’s are their heads low enough? Are they going slow enough? The ideal there is the Quarter Horse. Looking out at our beautiful Arabians, I find myself asking, What are we thinking?

A great horse is a great horse, and we’re all excited about the brilliance and the beauty of the Saddlebred or the precision and smoothness of the Quarter Horse, or any other breed that is identified with a particular way of going. But we’re not in those breeds; we’re in the Arabian breed. We have our own identity, our own style of movement, our own style of carriage. I think that we need to focus more on accepting and presenting what our horses are capable of doing, instead of changing them to fit another breed’s standards.

Think about it … accept the way an Arabian carries itself as a western horse, an English horse, a hunter horse—whatever discipline it is in. Some people might say that we want more. Let’s present our horses to the best of their characteristics, not say, ‘it needs to be pushed up higher in the bridle,’ ‘it needs to trot higher,’ or ‘it needs to jog slower,’ or ‘it’s too behind the bridle,’ or ‘it doesn’t look like a hunter any more, it looks like a country horse trying to be a hunter.’ In essence, what that is doing is comparing it to another breed, and we’re not another breed. We are our own entity, the Arabian horse.

There are a lot of good reasons to consider this, with the obvious one, its being more true to the Arabian horse. For one thing, if we let our horses be what they are, I think a lot of our soundness issues will go away. For another, the people that are long-term breeders or long-term exhibitors are going to be happier with how the Arabian horse is presented.

I’m not alone in this opinion. At a judging seminar in the spring, I found that not only are other Arabian horsemen thinking along these lines, but owners and trainers in other breeds are looking at the same problem in their own horses. What I heard at the seminar was that the general public in Quarter Horses is not happy about the presentation of their horses, so they are changing that presentation and defining new parameters for how the horses are supposed to look. They are selecting judges that are going to reward those horses for natural movement and the best representation of their breed of horse. To make sure that the judges are clear on their duties, they are asking the officials to use visual tapes and educational aids detailing what is proper for the look or standard of Quarter Horses. Just like every other breed, they are paying for a person’s opinion, and everyone’s opinion is subjective, but they are very determined that their judges follow their parameters and standards for the long-term good of their breed.

The good news is that in the Arabian breed, we haven’t totally ignored the issue. We have made changes of our own; in fact, I have to commend us because we continue to make changes—we keep trying to improve things and refine descriptions. Our western horses have gotten softer and they’re going forward, and in English, we have gotten away from extreme headsets and speed in order to let the horses find their own balance point. They are able to go forward and show at the best gait and speed for each horse.

It is the future that counts. With the new scoring system coming up next year, we have an opportunity to improve the way things are evaluated in our breed with regard to our breeding horses. Like everything, the new system will have some growing pains, so we need to do our best to make it work correctly. It will not work by itself; it will take effort and understanding on all our parts, because as much as we all want something different, change is never easy.

I have a few thoughts to throw out for consideration.

A New Way To Score

More and more, people want a numerical score—not just an opinion, but a score. We’ve seen that in the appreciation for the European style of rating halter horses and the amazing growth of disciplines with that way of judging (I think that’s one reason Trail has gotten so popular). People want more information about how and why their horses are placed, and a numerical evaluation helps them understand how they got the awards they did. In the past, exhibitors could go to the judge and ask, ‘Why didn’t you like my horse?’ And the judge might reply that its tail carriage was bad, or it had a crooked left foreleg. But how big a breeding fault is a wry tail? With a specific score, an exhibitor (or owner or breeder or spectator) can find out. How bad was that left foreleg, on a scale of one to 10 or one to 20? They can look at the component parts of their score and see that their horse might have had a 20 in type, but a 10 in legs, and using a score of one to 20, a 10 in legs is below average. They have a much clearer idea of the whole process. Most importantly, however, this system requires that each horse be judged against a standard, not in comparison to other horses in the ring.

It is all perfectly straightforward, but as with all new things, we’ll have to get used to it. Here’s an example of what can only be worked out and understood over time. As judges, we go to certain areas like Scottsdale where the competition is extremely deep; there are multiple horses with high scores, as there are multiple horses with low scores. But other shows are different. When you go to a smaller class A show, your number of high-quality horses usually is not as strong. A judge who scores a horse as a seven or eight (out of 20) in type or conformation is not likely to get invited back. So I foresee that we will have a period of about three to five years during which we come up with some kind of uniformity in our judging, and also in which people see it and come to accept it—or some people may never show their horses in halter again!

We need to be careful about this because halter is not a performance class. If you get a reining score or a trail score, that’s a performance, and that performance can change from day to day, show to show. A halter horse is who it is; it can be labeled with a numbered score. A seven or eight in legs to one person may not be a huge deal, but to another person, it could be detrimental. And then there is the probability that we will see comments in the magazines such as ‘This horse scored a 20 in type under Judge So-and-So.’

One thing that might help is how we reveal the scores in these early days. We don’t want horses labeled good or bad. Maybe score sheets could be posted, or be available on request, rather than announced. And I think the penalty phase needs to be dropped, period. The penalty phase leaves too much opportunity for people to circumvent the system and mark down horses whose breeding they don’t like, or who belong to people they don’t like, or whatever. It should not be possible to sway the scores for reasons like that. The whole point is to make our competitions more trustworthy and fair for all.

Another challenge will be making sure that the judges are on the same page. When all of this was brought up in the seminar, the obvious question was, who’s going to decide, among the judges, what they’re really looking for? As judges, we are entitled to our own opinions, keeping in mind the standards as a guideline. All AHA can do is come up with the standard for the breed, create teaching aids like video tapes and panel discussions to educate us as judges, and ask our opinions.

As I said, I personally think that the system is great, but I think that it needs to be used, and we need to let the judges take a year or two to learn how to use it. Taking a little time to let the system work and the public understand it would not be a bad idea at all. Maybe then we can all agree on the standard for the ideal Arabian breeding horse.

Let’s Be Specific: The Divisions And Disciplines

Let’s start at the beginning, with what ought to be obvious. An Arabian performance horse—I don’t care what division it is in—needs to be judged on an Arabian scale. A Half-Arabian performance horse needs to be judged on a Half-Arabian scale, not against a Quarter Horse or a Saddlebred or a Thoroughbred. We need to develop our own style, and as judges and breeders, breed for an Arabian type that represents that division or discipline. And whether a horse is in the amateur division or the youth or whatever, it needs to represent our breed as a whole to the best of its ability. That means they have to look like Arabians.

For Half-Arabian performance horses, in my opinion, the Arabian characteristics are more important than ever. For instance, in the Half-Arabian western division, I think it was great to get a little slower jog, but we have to remember that the horses represent the Arabian breed. Many Half-Arabian western horses now look more like Quarter Horses.

Let me use a personal example to explain what I’m saying. Bob and I have been fortunate enough to breed winning horses in most major divisions. Most people don’t know that we even bred a western horse. We bought a World Champion Quarter Horse mare and bred her to Hucklebey Berry, the multi-decorated English horse. We wanted the softness of his motion, and the neck and head of an Arabian, but we also wanted the Quarter Horse’s stocky body. We took the best of both worlds, but our main goal was a horse that still looked like an Arabian—and that horse was rewarded both at Scottsdale and the U.S. Nationals.

Some of our divisions may present more challenges than others. In the hunter industry, there are two different types of judges. I call them ‘high-headed’ judges and ‘true hunter’ judges. An Arabian can be a true hunter—but are they judging that true hunter off Thoroughbred standards or off the Arabian-style hunter? An Arabian’s carriage is a little higher and rounder. We reward these horses for type, and curvy-shaped necks and things like that, so many Arabians are not going to have a flat, straight-forward neck like a Thoroughbred. A race horse’s neck is forward and out in front of it so that it can go in a more horizontal plane, because that is the aerodynamic of speed. Those horses have been bred for generations to do that. Our hunter horses are not bred to be straight-necked, long, forward-moving horses. They’re bred to have Arabian type, higher carriage and curves, as well as shorter backs (they have one fewer vertebra than other breeds), which means that their coupling is tighter. Their movement is going to be different. This does not mean that they aren’t true hunters; they are just not Thoroughbred hunters.

Those are just examples. Every division and discipline will have its own Arabian interpretation.

That All-Important Arabian Look

One reason for being very rigorous in deciding our judging preferences is that as time goes on, we are going to see more of the same style of horses. We’re breeding better horses today than we ever have, but the use of transported semen, frozen semen and embryo transfer has drastically reduced the number and variety of bloodlines being used. Right now many horses are so related that we’re seeing definite styles in the show ring, and before long, especially in the halter division, we’re going to be seeing multiple full siblings in the ring together because we are doing so many embryo transfers. In addition to the full siblings, there will be half-siblings because so many good mares are being bred to different stallions for multiple embryo transfers. I’m not trashing this development, or in any way putting it down—I’m just saying that we need to agree on explicit ideals, since we are going to have a smaller range of differences.

We need to do the same thing for performance classes. What defines how we score? In English, do we reward a horse for that high, front-end motion? How does that motion work? Is it an open leg? A tight leg? With the western horses, is that short stride more ground-covering? How does the horse’s collection reflect with that type of movement?

One Arabian characteristic that I think needs to be rewarded is fluidity of movement. And we have to remember that movement is also carriage; carriage is one Arabian trait that carries over in all disciplines. Judging also should cover the natural appearance of the horse—its eyes, its mouth, and its tail-carriage. We have to include all of those things. A horse can trot as high as it wants, but if it has its ears back and is chomping at the bridle, it’s not happy.

In our breeding classes, I think the attraction of the European show ring is that the horses are rewarded on how they represent Arabian type, how their carriage represents an Arabian. In our country, so much depends on the stand-up, and how that horse looks stood in the middle of the arena, and its intensity level. We are now at a place where we want to reward them for being animated. Animation is okay if it’s in a show-off type of way. We want them to snort and blow, and flag their tails. Those are all part of being an Arabian. These are all things that are going to benefit the halter arena because they mean that it is no longer going to be about the stand-up. The horses be able to go on and perform because we’ll be breeding better and more conformationally-sound animals.

In A Nutshell

In my opinion, we need to start realizing as breeders and handlers that we’re looking at the whole horse—from the bottom of the feet to the tip of the ears to the tip of the tail. That will benefit this breed. The same comes into play in performance: It’s not all about the highest-trotting horse, or about a front end or a back end; it’s about the whole picture of that horse that represents our breed, and that goes for all of our divisions. If we can look at it that way, we will all become better breeders.

For anyone who would like to email questions, topics, or comments, I can be reached at info@battagliafarms.com. I’d love to hear from you.

Russell Vento Jr. has been involved in the Arabian industry for 25 years, and since 1989 has been a partner in Battaglia Farms. He was honored twice with APAHA Amateur Horseman Awards. To date, he has owned or shown 30 U.S., Canadian and National Show Horse national champions, and he now enjoys watching his daughter Skyler win on many of the horses with whom he was successful. He has been a Large R USAE/AHA judge since 1996.