Shoulder Up

Television is going to be the ruin of us all. It communicates to us too clearly, too blatantly, too rapidly. It teaches us horrible horrible habits, and encourages us to overlook subtlety.

Compared to a toy commercial on Nickelodeon, horse conformation is about as subtle as you can get. You have to analyze, think, apply... and horse conformation is not blatant. It takes training and time to recognize specific traits, and picture from the image of a stationary horse how they will likely look in motion.

I have to remind myself of these things because the difference between these guys' shoulders:




















And these guys' shoulders:





















just doesn't scream at me.

But I believe the difference is there. All of these guys have reasonably sloped shoulders with a good length to them. I believe that the first two, however, have steeper shoulders than the second two. I'm still struggling to be sure of this.

The first set of horses are English Pleasure champions, and I think the few degrees difference between their shoulder angles and the other horse's shoulder angles affect this discipline. The slightly steeper shoulder encourages a higher knee action that is especially noticeable when the horse is moving at a strong trot. And now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the second set of horses could be taught to lift their knees just as high (in other words, their conformation does not prohibit it), but a long smooth stride would come to this second set much more naturally.

So you'd choose something like dressage or hunter for the second pair. Because when teaching a horse how to move his body is already so difficult, why not just use them as their body suggests?

Now, if I could train my eye to distinguish between a horse that would have a good hunter trot, and a horse that would have a good dressage trot (from a standing snapshot), I'd consider myself quite the pro. *Sighhhh*... maybe in a decade or so.