>I am not certain that THAT
should be the first utterance from someone
>looking at a horse, nor the
FIRST consideration. "A" consideration, but not
>"THE"
consideration.
> Some say, measured from approx. 3
inches from the base of the knee is the
>area that typcially describes
whether an endurance horse has "good bone."
> But,
what about the "quality" of the bone and tendons/ligaments. That
>should be, in my estimation, an even more important consideration.
> Bearing weight efficiently, without a
degradation to the horse and its
I think I can pretty accurately
claim first place in having tried pretty hard to come up wth some sort of
"rule" when it comes to cannon bone circumference, etc etc etc in a successful
endurance horse. I have data from close to a thousand distance horses
now and the only "rule" is that you can't make hard and fast rules about
legs.
I *can* tell you that the average
horse that starts Tevis has an average cannon midway between knee and fetlock
of 7.5", but there was no difference in that measurement between horses that
finished and those that were pulled for lameness. Other factors than
strictly cannon circumference seemed to be better lameness predictors than
that, such as total body mass.
Anyway, the bottom line of alot
of research was that, as others have already said very well, you have to look
at cannon circumference along wth the rest of the horse. A 17 hand horse
with a 7" cannon probably wouldn't be my first choice, but then a 14 hand
horse with 8" cannons isn't a guaranteed winner, either. Look at the
whole horse. And good luck.
Susan
G