TYPING YOUR PINTO

Marcie Fessler, TX, MarcieFace@aol.com, wrote, "I've got a horse at home that is 25% Arabian, 75% Saddlebred, out of a Pleasure type mare. I'm hoping she'll be 5-gaited, so I'm probably going to have to type her Saddle, but she'll be shown unstretched at halter as an NSH, with a halter, not a bridle. If she's good enough quality, she'll do well anyway.

I think Pintos need to be typed according to their phenotype too, not just their genotype.

Sandra Hugus wrote:

Yeah, that is always the thorn on the rose. Phenotype vs genotype, and creating individuals that breed reasonably true... Complex even when dealing with PUREBREDS, much less partbreds, where YOU KNOW you are going to be doing the (hopefully beautiful) blend.

Ancient History time:

Way back when, probably before JESUS was born, even. the PtHA was all just one amorphous mass, an unformed GLOB. Anything with spots could be registered (baring draft, pony, or appy blood) and WAS.

Nobody much was using purebred ANYTHING, either as breeders, or as exhibitors, and nearly every breeding was Pinto to Pinto, frequently unknown x unknown pedigree. Then slowly, dry land (in the form of outcrosses) began to appear.

And LO! The officials saw that it was GOOD, and began to set up policies to ENCOURAGE the great unwashed to SEE THE BIG PICTURE.

In this unenlightened time, a registrar (John Liston? from Ohio?) came to be the judge at the Iowa State Fair's Pinto classes. He was a BIG WIG, a BMOC, a GURU, and he wanted to lead the unwashed to the riverside to be baptized, but they weren't buying it.

The Iowa PtHA club had fought tooth and nail to be included in the program at the FAIR. Pinto was still a dirty word, thought of as one of them thair Indjun Ponies, (presumably that should have been buried alive in the grave of their masters, under the philosophy that "the only good Injun was a dead one"). Having such an authority as the judge was one of the selling points, and everyone was out evangelizing like crazy to gain Pintos some respect.

We were not "THERE" yet, so our halter classes were held in a warm up ring outside the race horse barns, across from where the helicopter rides were being offered (right over our headS -- I DARE you to hear what the announcer was saying). No spectators much anyway, no bleachers... etc. Definitely living on the wrong side of the tracks.

Pretty good numbers of entries, though, as all were trying to build stuff up. We (the foolish unwashed) believed we were going to get to show off in front of the audience in the coliseum and be housed in the big barn where the horsey set would WALK BY. (We actually were within a mile of it, off in the farthest corner away from other horses! Our performance classes, the paltry few we were allowed, WERE in the big arena, (with our separate judge.)

So John (IF I haven't misthought the name) lined up all the halter entries in two parallel lines, Stock horses (QH/TB) in one line, Pleasure (ASHBA, Morgan TWHBA, Arab, etc.) in the other.

He was showing the Pinto owners what divided classes would look like, how they would benefit from the division.

Then (and here is where he infuriated the entire Iowa Pinto world), he looked at ONLY the first horse in each line. He decided if the stock animal that was the best of group, so to speak, was a better example of his type than the pleasure animal was of his. IF IT WAS, then that WHOLE ROW got the ribbons. No matter how good the rest of the ones were behind that horse in comparison to the ones in the other row.

Well, the powers that be in Iowa Pinto were pretty much all stock breeders at this time, so when the stock mares went up for their 1-6, they were happy. (Heck, that is what generally happened, anyway. If a lowly Pleasure type was shown, it might be good for a 5th or 6th place, PROVIDED it was Nationals' quality!)

When he got to the stallions class, however, he had BOWMANS TOMMIE (future International Champion Pleasure/Saddle Type stallion at Halter, sired by a purebred ASHBA sans papers in order, trim, typey, black and white...) first and Jay Dee, a future PtHA Champion and Horse of the Year award winner, second. That whole row got the stallion awards, and Iowa PtHA went after John big time (shoot the messenger when the news is bad).

In the covered arena, during the Indian Costume class (one of our FOUR allowed, and the one Fair officials were happiest with, as it has LOTS OF CROWD APPEAL, and Pintos were the Indians' horse of choice, so therefore acceptable in that role), John got a spear planted just inches from his feet, that did not penetrate the hard arena soil and flopped over, hitting him in the face, as a culmination of that angry chief's one minute individual workout, got sprayed with a water hose when "Chief Rain in the Face" finished his rain dance successfully, and got a dove turned loose by an Indian maiden who was offering peace. (John ever afterward would SWEAR that the thing pooped on him the rest of the day as he tried to fill in his judge's cards). I wish I had his verbatim account of that show. It was hysterical the way he told it.

The Iowans pretty much missed the point of the lesson. The purpose of having divided types is not to accommodate a breeder's creations that resemble a different type more than they resemble their majority bloodline. There are good and valid reasons for blending bloodlines. Whenever that blending happens, sometimes the pieces get recombined in the offspring, sometimes dipping WAY BACK to grab a trait, and presenting it, sometimes to the surprise of, sometimes to the dismay of, and sometimes to the delight of, the owner in the present.

But typing by majority bloodline is NOT hard wired into the system as far as I know. (Not from lack of trying to get it through). It is a guideline. Even Brownie Davis ran her lesser action registered ASHBA's in the pleasure division, frequently having grand champion in Pleasure AND Saddle at the same time.

But that is not the purpose or intent of having the divisions. That harkens back to "and the earth was without form" days. IF the judges could be counted on to KNOW and USE the descriptions for the different divisions, I doubt she would have shown in the pleasure division at all, as the Morgan and Arab horses who belonged there would have beaten her, so she would have had no incentive to do so. But, in reality, VERY FEW judges at that time even KNEW what the four types are designed to represent.

As a steward, I used to field that question from judges A LOT, especially in the early days. (That and how to judge jumping/dressage were the biggies.)

I haven't done that for years, so I don't know how the great debate fares now, or how the judges are doing with the four divisions when the shows offer all of them, and they fill.

I once had a filly named Pandemonium Indeea that harkened back to her stock type ancestor, even though she was 41% Arabian, with TWHBA, ASHBA, Morgan and Hambletonian Trotter all thrown about in the mix somewhere (see why Pinto needed bloodline guidance??? The dam was a black and white, so anything goes. She was the fifth horse I'd ever bred... one of the "learner" models.) This filly had a rear end an elephant would have been proud of. I, however, was NOT. So, of course, she did VERY WELL at halter.

I was actively trying to sell her. Once some Paint breeders stopped by to look at her. (Their blood was as unformed in that day as ours. One APHA OFFICIAL wanted to register her dam APHA at a show in MO once. I told him her lines. "Just call her 'unknown'," he advised. I did not. They were NOT unknown. They were not shiney, but I had to take the lumps for that, as I had unknowingly crossed type by using the best bred, built, and winningest Pinto available to me at the time... a registered Moroccan, to cross on my nondescript, but vaguely QH type unk x unk Pinto mare..)

Indeea was in a huge field with the nacient Ara/Pintos I was just starting to switch to. A storm was brewing. For the one and only time that I ever saw, the filly ran in the bunch of partbred Arabs with HER TAIL CRANKED OVER HER BACK, just as they were doing.

The visitors were coming in the drive and stopped to watch. "Gee, I didn't think she was an A-RAB when I saw her in the ring," one of them pronounced.

"I show her as a Pleasure/Saddle type," I reminded them.

They then proceeded to tell me a list of the lighter-muscled STOCK types showing and winning as pleasure types in the Iowa shows, as if this were news to me.

"I know. But that is not what the divisions are FOR."

Eventually I found her an excellent home, as a hunter-jumper and harness mare, but it sure wasn't THAT day! She hung around clear until she was broke and could do something useful. She was still alive, the last I heard, and at the age of 21, was winning as a PONY hunter/jumper (at over 15.1 hands???) still going over the fences, out east. The gal had bought her for $800 at an auction; her son had beat the $10,000 horses on her, and now she wanted another one just like her, but younger. Nope, never was, not even among her children, as she was a crossed type who dipped into the way beyond, and did not breed true for what she looked. (Inconsistent was the right word to apply to her as a brood mare.)

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