Conformation

After reading this post by SprinklerBandit, I've become a little obsessed with conformation.  I tried to take some pictures of Walker and compare them to SprinklerBandit's thoroughbred, but this was an inherently flawed plan since Walker is not a thoroughbred.  Walker is pretty fat by my standards, but as a general rule, quarter horses are just not as slim and trim as other breeds.  I personally love looking at ads for jumpers online and laughing at how much slimmer they are than my boy.  Don't get me wrong.  I love that Walker is chubby, and in fact, it is due to this characteristic that we continuously won ribbons in Halter Gelding in the summer.  Judges like their quarter horses with a little meat on their bones apparently.

So I looked through a few pictures I had of him to try and compare his progression, but unfortunately pictures really don't do him justice in that way.  The quality of most of them just don't show off the parts of him that I want to compare.

The first picture is one I found of him online.  It was taken before he came to me, and although I don't know how old he is, I would imagine he was around 4 - 6 at the time.  The second picture was taken this past August.  He definitely seems a little thicker in the belly, but generally the same.  He's all shined up here because I had just washed him, so the sun really gleams off him.  I also love how perturbed he is with me in this.


I also went and found this photo from the American Quarter Horse Association.  Apparently it is a painting that was done in order to show the "perfect" quarter horse.  Comparing it to Walker is difficult since you can't really see all the muscles in the same way, but it's clear that Walker is still a little more overweight than "ideal".  I read online that quarter horses bred for halter classes have a tendency to be a little thicker than their performance counterparts, and so perhaps this is why Walker has got such a belly.  I was actually worried that he was losing weight until I started looking at pictures like these.

As a final comparison, I found this photo of Zips Chocolate Chip (one of the horses that is in Walker's pedigree and a pretty famous quarter horse, around here anyway).  In  my opinion, he seems slightly comparable to Walker, although I think that it would help if I had a good shot of Walker with his head carried level (unlike the one in August).

Finally, for my own amusement, I tried to take a more recent conformation shot when I was at the barn the other day.  Walker obliged, since he didn't want to come in from the fields, but he has a weary eye on me just in cases I try something smart!  I'm posting this photo not as an accurate conformation shot, but as a laugh.  Walker has put on his winter coat (he started putting it on in August actually) and he looks so shaggy here.  Considering the dreary backdrop of dying grass and hard ground, he almost looks like one of those backyard ponies that you see sometimes, instead of a horse who is very well-looked after!  Also, notice that he is not wearing a tail bag.  I then had to go through the field looking for it.  Bad pony!

Don't worry, love, you look better in person

Today we put an extra 500 bales of hay in the barn.  My barn owner always gets 5000 bales of hay per year for the horses, but she always does the last load at the end of November to give us a chance to make a dent in the first load.  At my barn, the barn owner gives us a discount if we help put the hay in, so it's usually a pretty fun affair, with a whole bunch of people around and hay EVERYWHERE.  My barn owner was running around like a maniac trying to rake up the loose hay which was getting all in her brand new footing in the arena.  All the kids tacked up their horses to ride afterwards, and I drug out all my riding gear, planning to do the same.  But then there ended up being 5 - 6 kids trying to ride, and they decided that the outdoor arena was still frozen.  Our indoor arena can barely hold 4 at a time, and because I was running late as it was, I decided Walker wouldn't mind a few more hours outside in the sunshine with his friends.  I'll ride him tomorrow to make up for it.  

I took this photo of one of the horses the other day in the field.  This is Ash, the horse that my friend H rides in our lesson.  He has boundary issues.  When you go in the field, he comes right up to you, and after I took this photo, he even put his nose in my hair before I got angry and shooed him away.  He's a pretty fun guy to ride, or so I'm told, although he is a little stiff in one direction (aren't they all?).  However, he has some serious tacking up issues.  He pins his ears against his head the minute the saddle touches his back, and H tacks him up with a crop in her hand because he always bares his teeth like he's about to bite.  He's fine in every other way - he just absolutely hates to be tacked up.  I'm assuming that he must have had problems in the past with a rough kid maybe.  It's unfortunate because he's really like a big dog - he loves being scratched behind the ears and being brushed. 

Now back to my dreaded papers. :S