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> Rushcreek Leeann is a perfect example of what I meant that you needn't
restrict yourself to looking at horses that have succeeded in endurance.
Rushcreek Leeann doesn't appear in the AERC's database as ever having
entered a single ride, yet she still seems to have the ability to
produce quality endurance foals.

I meant to comment more on this concept earlier, and just haven't had
time.

Kat is 100% correct about this.  The key to an endurance breeding
program is identifying ancestors who possess the traits needed by
endurance horses.  There ARE other pursuits that require the same
traits, and there ARE breeders who have been breeding for these traits
even though they don't hang out their shingle and announce to the world
"We are breeding endurance horses."  Both Hyannis and Rushcreek fall
into that category, as do most of the NW breeders that I listed in my
previous posts.  Part of breeding good endurance horses is first
recognizing those necessary traits, and then going after them.

The Bedouins never did AERC rides.  And yet what they did (and what they
bred for, to be able to accomplish what they did) established a breed
ideally suited to the sport.  The "next generation" that is key to the
breeding of endurance horses are those who bred for cavalry remounts. 
This was the pre-WWII focus that I've talked about but probably have
not explained why WWII is a crucial point.  The European countries
pretty much changed their focus at that point--the US breeders did not
change that focus until a little bit later.  A few specific studs
(Crabbet comes to mind) continued to use the same sorts of selection
criteria, whereas most of the other countries began to focus instead on
racing (not too far from the focus, but not quite the same focus,
either).  In the 50s, we began to get the divergent path of the show
ring vs those who wanted to breed riding horses--and despite the
comments about the Poles and others continuing to test for racing, the
truth of the matter is that money talks, and there were major US
breeders who got caught up in a trend and sought the extreme rather
than the typical.  At that point, the breed really began to follow two
very divergent paths.

Enter the ranching phase in the US.  Those breeders in this country who
continued on the path of the generalist horse that had the traits
prized by the Bedouins were those who utilized those traits for ranch
mounts.  We've talked about Hyannis and Rushcreek in this context, and
their names and stories are well-known in the endurance world.  But
others who maintained the ranch emphasis included the Van Vleets,
Kellogg, Hearst, and a whole host of small breeders scsttered
throughout the country.  My own introduction to the breed was from just
such a small ranch-based program--in the late 50s and on through the
60s, the Ravndals operated their small program here in Lemhi County,
and Jerry rode their foundation stallion all over the county just
because that was what he loved to do.  He rode range with various
ranchers, he roped at brandings, he packed his deer in every fall, the
pair of them had horses at the local fair and in the local parades, and
in general, their horses were a constant and visible part of the life in
our ranching community.  Many of us got our first taste of riding such
horses by riding the partbred offspring of their stallions out of our
ranch mares that we bred to upgrade our ranch stock, seeing how their
horses outperformed the horses that we were riding.  For a few of us,
it was the springboard into being breeders and continuing the
tradition.  My father made a very astute comment once as we rode range
together, I on my foundation stallion and he on one of the partbreds by
him--he said, "Boy, better horses sure make this range a lot smaller!" 
It was a natural extension from that into CTR and endurance.

I started doing CTR in 1971 and endurance in 1973.  I had a passion for
pedigrees even back then, and it was already clear that the publicly
promoted aspect of the breed was going in a direction that was not
suited to either endurance or ranch work, and I did not care to ride
the sorts of horses I was seeing bred, even back then.  That was the
real impetus for me to become a breeder, given my background--I wanted
a nucleus of horses to ride myself.  And endurance seemed like the
logical proving ground.  I started studying pedigrees of horses that
succeeded (and pedigrees of horses that did not--that is also essential
to the understanding of what sort of breeding one wants to seek) and
began selecting breeding stock--not on a very large scale at first.  I
had no clue that I had a "CMK" program until 1991.  But those were the
horses that just naturally selected themselves.  About half of the
horses that I had were "straight" CMK--the other half were
predominantly CMK with lines to pre-WWII Polish horses, including
Dickinson imports and Patton Polish imports.  I did not set out to have
a program of any specific sort of pedigrees--only those pedigrees that
were consistent with the sorts of traits I wanted to breed.  It is no
coincidence that those ranching programs I mentioned selected the same
sort of stock--they were after the same traits, and those were the
horses that had them.

In truth, my goal as a breeder is to breed horses that possess those
traits, not just to "breed for endurance."  And that is true of most of
the other current breeders I listed, as well as of outfits like Hyannis
and Rushcreek.  Those same horses do excel in areas such as cutting,
general ranch work, dressage, jumping, and other such disciplines.  I
had this driven home to me in the early 90s when I attended an Arabian
cutting event in Texas and began looking both at horses and at
pedigrees.  The same subset of pedigrees was there excelling in cutting
that I had been identifying for two decades excelling in endurance.  And
they were NOT the pedigrees that one sees in the "mainstream" of
American breeding.

I would caution peoople about attempting to breed based upon the
pedigree of one winner here or there.  As kat has also pointed out,
most Arabians descend at least in part from the same subset of
ancestors.  But even those in very altered programs do sometimes throw
back to old traits.  The right "roll of the dice" happens and those
genes that are rare in the pedigree happen to align just right--and you
get a cull from the show string that does well in endurance.  But those
horses do NOT tend to breed true for what we want on the trail.  So
when they do excel, ride them with pride, but don't be disappointed if
you try to breed them and you get horses all over the map.  Their genes
are all over the map, and so it should be no surprise that they
reproduce that way.  Sadly, people try to set up breeding programs
without doing their homework, and when they get a wide array of foals,
they walk away in disgust and frustration, saying, "Pedigrees don't
mean anything."  Well, yeah, they do--if you had looked more closely at
the pedigrees, you could have accurately predicited that these horses
would not breed consistently.  You just chose the wrong breeding stock.

Bottom line--kat is right that one can't just look at endurance in
putting together an endurance breeding program.  One has to look at
horses that consistently excel in all using endeavors that utilize the
same traits.  And one does have to make sure that the string of
ancestors maintains those traits right up to modern times and to the
individuals that you are using.

Heidi


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