Re: RC: Re: Bask???

[CMKSAGEHIL@aol.com]

In a message dated 4/24/00 10:11:15 AM Pacific Daylight Time, TOS@htcomp.net 
writes:

<< just for comparison.
 Raffles had 124 get and I don't know how many grandget, my system is set to
 stop at 1500, and that was only 55 of his get, so can I estimate 3000
 grandget??  He had 798 occurrences in Bob and Selims database (do we need to
 name it?)
 
 Bask has 900 get and someone else will have to count grandget, but he only
 had 47 occurrences in the database.
 
 that would *seem* to have some significance, but without the numbers from a
 'general population' sample, we can't make any conclusions. >>

Becky, you are on the right track here.  There is one factor that will 
amplify *Raffles' numbers, and that is the fact that he is back further in 
pedigrees occurring multiple times, and *Bask is more recent.  However, 
because of the overbreeding of *Bask and the resulting craze to breed "as 
much" of him as possible, *Bask DOES show up in an extremely high percentage 
of modern horses, according to the random samplers.  I have tried for years 
to look more at percentage of pedigree vs. simply the numbers of occurrences 
(to offset the difference in generational position) when evaluating a horse 
as a positive or a negative influence, and looking at that percentage in 
light of the horse's influence on the population at large--and comparing 
"successes" (be it high % Top Tens, career miles, or whatever) to "failures" 
(horses that start out but never "get there").  Being of a field grunt 
mentality rather than a good scientist, I observe a lot of trends but have 
not crunched the numbers.  I've shared my observations with the number 
crunchers who are interested in specifically Arabian ancestory in the 
genetics world, and many think the observations are likely pretty significant 
but have yet to do anything formal with them.  Nonetheless, it is often those 
observations in the field that lead us to formulate the questions that need 
to be asked of the numbers crunchers...

Example of the pedigree percentage "thing"--because *Bask (as just one 
example) was a highly promoted horse, almost everyone has heard of him.  
Therefore you can take a pedigree such as On A High's, in which *Bask occurs 
twice, but far back, and which is well over 90% CMK (with *Bask being the 
only non-CMK element), and you can ask an owner how the horse is bred, and 
they will say "Oh, he's *Bask bred."  So *Bask is given credit he does not 
deserve (or in opposite examples, takes blame he does not deserve) simply 
because he is the "famous" name that people recognize.  I was having a 
discussion of *Bask with a long-time Davenport breeder at the dressage show 
this past weekend, and she makes an excellent point--which is that *Bask 
himself was NOT far from the mainstream of classic Arabian type and quality.  
What HAS gone wrong with *Bask breeding is that 1) he was bred to literally 
any mare that trotted by with her tail in the air and whose owner was willing 
to pay the fee, and 2) what was SELECTED to represent *Bask in subsequent 
generations was the extreme element of what he produced, and not 
representative of *Bask himself at all.  Hence there is a tendency to condemn 
*Bask when in reality one must go to the next generation or two, and evaluate 
THOSE horses which have gone on to be bred a great deal, and see where the 
problem lies.  *Bask obviously had some "ability" (if one wants to call it 
that) to sire the extreme that was desired by the show world of the moment, 
but he also had offspring much closer to the mainstream.  As I go back and 
re-evaluate *Bask pedigrees and come down another generation or two, I find 
(no big surprise here) that the endurance horses who do well with any 
significant *Bask breeding are those who are descended from get who DID 
retain more of the mainstream type.  So--do I personally consider *Bask to be 
a red flag in the pedigree?  Yes, to a certain degree, simply because of how 
he has been used.  But one must look honestly at that red flag and track that 
useage (as really, one must with ANY ancestor) to see what has been done in 
individual cases.  Once again, one has to look at pedigree research in terms 
of preservation of traits (and genes that control those traits) rather than 
simply a study of names in pedigrees.  I see (and Becky, I'm sure you do, 
too) preservation breeding utterly warped by people who don't understand this 
concept, and who are so proud of their "straight" this or "pure" that, and 
sure, the "purity" is there on paper, but the traits (and genes) that made 
the ancestors great have long since been lost from the program!  The same is 
true with "famous" ancestors like *Bask where the names have been retained in 
the pedigrees but the traits that made those ancestors worthy of promotion 
have not been bred on.

Heidi