and He ain't us". So writes Steve Earle and so should understand all who seek to preserve mustangs. The Spanish horse was an incredibly impressive creature when he came to the New World. It only took one thing to make him rise above all other breeds--removing humans from the breeding decisions. A century or two in the wild accomplished that. Modern breeds are not inherently inferior to mustangs. Were they allowed to live wild for a few centuries they would squeeze from their dna all the baggage that horse breeders have put in them. The problem is not in the breed. It is in the breeders.
Of all displays of human hubris none is more ridiculous than the conceit that we can "improve" the mustang. Nothing in human experience suggests that we are capable of doing so.
If "improvement" means to produce livestock that has a particular trait that we desire over all others--we can do that. We can improve hogs by making them longer, larger in the hams, and faster growing. We can do so only because it does not matter to us if hogs that produce these traits also carry traits conducive to arthritis or other crippling diseases, shortened lifespans, and poor temperaments.
We can breed for a better pork chop but we cannot breed for a better mustang. The mustang is a complete package and surely as we tinker with that package we will lose more than we gain. We can improve them by making them bigger. Of course, the taller they get the more they lose their Spanish type. We can improve them by changing their head shape. The catch is whether bigger, smaller, or straighter would be an improvement.
We can muddy up the genetic waters and call it improvement. We can prove that it is improvement by arbitrarily coming up with standards for "exemplars" of the breed. The more horses that we produce that meet those arbitrary standards the more we can declare that we have improved the breed.
One of the best things going for the Spanish horse is that it is consistently rejected by the established horse world. The experts that produced such a surplus of stunningly beautiful and patently crazy Arabians and the experts that continue to breed horses that carry the trait for hypp do not like out horses.
As long as their smug disdain for our horses continues, mustangs can continue to face each day unburdened by the genetic propensity to poor physical and emotional health that human experts have created in ome modern horses.
When we start working to produce horses that look like they can do a fifty mile in a day ride we most assuredly will cease to produce horses that actually can do a fifty mile in a day ride. The established horse world has always had a greater interest in appearance than in ability.
This little pony walking behind me here does not look like the exemplar of his breed. Obviously he is not big enough to be ridden by anything but small children. His neck is too short, as are his legs. Such a horse could never be a powerful, smooth gaited, ground covering horse, with speed and agility, able to carry an adult weighing over 220 pounds.
Except for the fact that he is a powerful, smooth gaited, ground covering horse, with speed and agility, able to carry an adult weighing over 220 pounds. In fact, he is the most athletic horse with whom I have ever shared a round pen.
I have no interest in trying to get the established horse world interested in our horses.
The hope of these horses lies entirely in bringing children and novices into the world of mustangs. The established horse world had its chance but could not see a way to make money off of these horses so they were declared unfit for "real Horse people." They were invited to the banquet but did not come. They had the pipes played for them but did not dance.
And now the invitation has gone out to others--to those who will come to the table and simply accept with grace the gift of the Spanish mustang.
2 comments:
I commented the other day that the quickest way to destroy the mustang is to put them in the show ring. I meant it, too. not that showing a horse is inherently bad, certainly not to say that competeing these horses is necessarily bad, on the contrary, I think of horses like Choctaw Sundance, Rowdy Yates, and a whole slew of others, these horses are champions in and of their own right, they would have been at any rate, simply because they are what they are, highly EVOLVED members of of their species. Shoeless Joe Jackson, Babe Ruth, Roger Staubach..all champion athletes..nobody bred them (I hope!) They had natural talent, they worked hard to achieve. Man is a meddler in things he often should not, consider the pecarious state of our food system, not championship material there, we poison the ground, we put poisons in our food to "Make it Better." In some cases..ok..but even enough Dihydrogen monoxide is deadly.
Let the horse be a horse. Out of forty some odd horses at Mill Swamp, I observe any of a dozen or more who are horses of the caliber of those listed above, intelligent, swift, strong..gentle. But not trained for the same tasks that Rowdy, or Choctaw...but the potential is there...why attempt to breed better? To chase a bigger trophy, or a fancier ribbon..not sufficient reason to mess up millions of years worth of evolution. They are not perfect, even as we, They are what they are, let it be. Red Feather is a champion, he cannot help it, it is in his very blood, a magnificent creature, but with the limitations and strengths that life has given him. Will all the hours and days of training make him better? No. They will make him different, they will make him a construct of Man. And that is ok. I am grateful for the opportunity life has given me to share with him. I would just as soon though, that he had remained a wild horse, leading his band of mares and foals as generations of his ancestors did. Don't mess with mother nature..she will bite you. Seabiscuit, my favorite horse of history, was a stubby little funky looking colt..no apparent talent, until he was shown that he could excel, and he did..no breeding program could ever have intentionally produced such a horse..Ma nature slipped one in on us, one in a million, the other million were rejected cull horses, ignored, abused, wasted, slaughtered.How many of those were untried, how many of htem had the potential of Seabicuit, or Red Feather? More than the Horse World (tm) would like to admit. Nahh. Old Ma Nature's way is better. -
In re-reading this after studying a bit about Frank Hopkins and Hidalgo, I believe in the superiority of the wild horse for most purposes than before. Sure, pulling a beer wagon or three bottom plow does not figure heavily. But the examples of little Joe, who raced from Galveston to Rutland VT, Hidalgo,
who beat the cream of the Arab crop on their own turf, and El Rosio's ancestors who would ride 100 miles one day, then up and ride back the next through the high sonoran deserts of New Mexico on little feed and water simply reinforce this view. I am not so much interested in competitive records, as that path leads us to where the Horse World (tm) is today. however, it does benchmark what these fine 'quines can do. No, give me the wild stock, sturdy and hardy, survivors who have made this planet work for them without destroying it. Come to think of it, the people I value most fit that mold. -Lloyd
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