The Modern Quarter Horse?

[Regina Moore]

I had a lovely day at Canterbury Park today, as part of a vacation and the opportunity to visit a long time email friend. I haven't seen live racing in well over a decade, and it was a wonderful track for getting close to the horses.

Two of the races were for Quarter Horses. My jaw dropped as I watched the horses in the paddock for both races. With a couple of exceptions, they looked nothing like Quarter Horses! Long lean necks, long lean bodies, TB-y hind quarters instead of the big robust rear ends and close coupling that usually mark the breed. If I hadn't known I was watching horses prepare for a Quarter Horse race, it would never have entered my mind that I wasn't watching Thoroughbreds.

I know that Quarter Horses have a lot of TB bloodlines, but I've never seen that many Quarter Horses in one place look nothing at all like Quarter Horses.

Just curious if others that have been around a while have noticed that racing Quarter Horses have been recently bred to look a lot more like Thoroughbreds than they used to.

[Darcy McBride]

I think they lean way on the TB look now. Some relatives of mine had a QH Sprinter from off the track they were going to sell & wanted me to come over and take some pics. When I walked into the paddock, I swore I was looking at a TB! I agree, they sure don't look like they used to!

[Erica Olson]

Not related to QHs - but yay Canterbury Park! That was the very first place I saw live racing. My grandma took me there once when she lived in Minneapolis and we had fun betting on the races. I would run to the paddock and pick the horse, then she would place the bet for me since I was a little kid. We did pretty well if I recall. It was just $2 per race but it was really exciting to me at the time.

[Regina Moore]

but yay Canterbury Park!

Yes, I was quite impressed. Never seen a colorful tote board like that. The paddock area was relatively large and well laid out.

My friend doesn't know hardly anything about horses, and pretty much zilch about racing, almost nothing about betting and odds. She bet $2 on just three of the races while we were there. But she makes a point of getting to the track every summer. She just likes being trackside right at the finish line when the horses run by, and likes watching the horses in the paddock. Always enjoys herself enough to keep coming back. I thought that was kind of cool.

[LA Pepper]

Its not just race horses. For the most part a QH ridden English hunter and jumping is a TB too. Thank goodness the reiners still like a shorter stocky horse or the breed will disappear. All thanks to the registry which is happy to take as much registration money they can get and scr-w the breed. Witnessed also by their reversal on registering pinto colored horses. Refused for years until they realized they lost all that Paint breed registry money. Someone needs to start a 'Classic QH' registry and a 'Classic QH Racing circuit' that allows only the smallest % of Tb blood, using only Tb stallions approved for the registry. Just my opinion.

[Ali Hedgestone]

This is a big problem with Appys too. A lot of the show Appys are 50% TB.

[Chris Everett]

Most racing horses have some degree of tb bloodlines in them. Paints are not patched as a regular paint is, more of a slap of literal paint here and there. Same with Appys. Not very spoty. I suppose it depends on the type of works the horses have. A bodybuilder isn't going to run as fast as a marathoner, not to mention the body styles.

[Leigh Ann Anderson]

This is a big problem with Appys too. A lot of the show Appys are 50% TB.

This interests me. I had an App mare who was 1/4 TB (she was a 1980 foal). She looked like a short TB-- dark bay, no spots, no roman nose, no mottled skin. Her only stereotypical App traits were the hard, striped hooves, sparse mane and tail and ridiculously stubborn temperament. I looked into breeding her and spoke with several farms and many of the more old school horsemen/women were really interested in her because she was the 1950's throwback type they remembered. I believe the quote one gave me was Apps were supposed to look like TB's with a bigger belly. The newer breeders were looking to produce a stockier type horse and weren't as interested in my mare (of course physically the stockier horse wasn't a good fit for my mare, so that may be one of the reasons). I ended up not breeding her because her front legs were a mess and due to her lack of color, her foal could only be registered if it was colored.