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Heidi,
Don't forget to add in the UAE factor as well.  They like their horses 
tall and skinny on the whole and it's been interesting to see what's 
happened to horse-buying for endurance in Egypt.   First thing to go 
were the purebred halter show Arabs.  Most of them were starting with 
no riding base whatsoever and hadn't been bred for working anatomy 
anyway....and, of course, when they blew in with their 120 km races 
with cash prizes, no one had the patience to work a horse up to the 
distance properly.  Lost a lot of nice horses that year and the next. 
Then, people were buying balady Arabs, the mix-breeds for endurance.  
But most of the mixes have been either TB/Arab to use at the track or 
European heavyweight/Arab for jumping.  The track Arabs did better but 
still the delay of gratification issue was the killer.

Looking at Rio's pictures makes me feel really good.  I have three sons 
of my two mares now, and not one tops 15'.  They are all small and 
square, but not nearly so muscled as Rio since they mostly do easy 
going trail work.  Even here in the real land of the Arab, there is 
this thing that somehow bigger is better. Not in my book.

Maryanne
Cairo, Egypt
On Saturday, Apr 26, 2003, at 02:10 Africa/Cairo, Heidi Smith wrote:

> > This was true of the original Arab horse, and the ideal of Arabs
> > until....when?  How come people started wanting 16 hand Arabs?  I know
> there
> > are some absolutely splendid tall Arabs, both in endurance and other
> > disciplines, but WHY?  Is bigger equated with better, as in 
> > hamburgers,
> > cars, boats, whatever?  Maybe it's because we became taller people,
> through
> > better health care and better nutrition.
>
> Seems to me to be a psychological thing.  Although Susan G's Tevis 
> study
> deals with weight rather than height, it pretty clearly demonstrates 
> that
> making the horse bigger is not an advantage.  As we seem so wont to do 
> in
> our culture, we've taken a lovely, balanced thing--the Arabian 
> horse--and
> "improved" upon it so that it fits some mental image that we have, 
> which in
> turn has decreased its athleticism.  It is no surprise that the 
> majority of
> the athletic ones are still in what was traditionally considered to be 
> an
> optimal range, despite the fact that so many being bred are so much 
> taller.
> (And I guess one would have to define "splendid"--while the large 
> horses may
> "fill the eye" so to speak, I've seen very few that even begin to 
> capture
> the balance and grace of their more average-sized counterparts.)
>
> Heidi
>
>
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