Random Musings

New Gypsy ques­tion: Did you ever won­der this thought, which just danced ran­domly in my head…with so many color breed­ers and silver/pally/buckskin this and odd­ball color that and how there are com­plaints about qual­ity b/c of that — what about the oppo­site?  Will there start to be a lack of good qual­ity straight up lucky/traditional (B&W) Piebalds to be had? Will we start to loose the TRUE basis of the breed, blag­dons & piebalds & the occa­sional skew?

We always talk about Amer­i­cans chang­ing the breed con­for­ma­tion­ally, b/c let’s face it — it’s what Amer­i­cans do best is destroy a breed on it’s foundation…but what about color?  If Amer­i­cans con­tin­u­ally lust after the ‘Amer­i­can’ fas­ci­na­tion with dilutes and color mod­i­fiers, aren’t they chang­ing the breed too?  That is *not* pre­dom­i­nantly what was bred tra­di­tion­ally, in fact well-marked B&W are still highly prized, not to men­tion the loud sabino that flows down through the draft her­itage and well-sought after…

Com­pletely ran­dom thought…

– On an odd side note, as I pon­der this new one…we all know, color should never come first and with many that breed color that is evi­dently VERY true as opposed to oth­ers.  My first girl, Sor­cha, ended up with the Sil­ver gene.  At the time, and still lust after myself, all I wanted was a Black Blag­don.  I could care less 6 years ago if she had any­thing else or this ran­dom ‘carousel’ horse color when I came across her which reminded me of child­hood posters splashed against my wall.  All I knew and cared about is that she looked heavy and prop­erly pro­por­tioned like I had seen that first year in Watson’s fields and at Appleby, what I was after AND **she car­ried homozy­gous BLACK**.  I got a real good les­son from the Gyp­sies there on con­for­ma­tion when I decided I was gonna sell my beloved car, thank good­ness, **before** I even started look­ing at horses here.  I didn’t even buy her for the sil­ver, but that she looked inter­est­ing and could pro­duce a black based foal even though she wasn’t ‘black’ to me. I knew who her father was and that he was ridicu­lously heavy him­self and not overly imported here (like the main studs that were here or being mul­ti­ple embryo bred here).  It was funny years later when color went really bat-house crazy in breed­ers here when I think back that my only ques­tion was ‘yeah, I don’t care about the other thing, but she can only pro­duce black right?’.…

And I still am obsessed with a heavy Proper Black Blag­don to this day.… lol.  You should have seen the mare I wanted to sneak away from good ‘ol Robbie…<snickers> dap­pled and everything…that mare set my mark. Her and the orig­i­nal one by the riverside…in fact, Tom’s Moon­crest daugh­ter reminds me BIG TIME of that mare.  She was either fad­ing black or Bay, but can’t remem­ber off the top of my head right now lol.

As the stu­pid stu­pid stu­pid argu­ment rages YET again and new­bies take up the torch of mis­un­der­stand­ing passed down gen­er­a­tionally by Amer­i­cans again and again…This is a ‘crabby’ Allison’s response to the same old idi­otic argument.

Ok look — this is not that hard a thing peo­ple and for lack of REALLY get­ting in to details:
The term ‘van­ner’ as refer­ring to a cob-type horse of coloured nature OR solids/blagdon owned and bred by Gyp­sies has been around a LONG time…

Here comes the big BUT:
HOWEVER — the Gyp­sies that heav­ily bred these horses DO NOT REFER to their PROPERLY bred (or ‘selec­tively bred’ if you will) equines as ‘van­ners’. The ‘van­ners’ are *YES* indeed those that are the ‘cart’ horses and are the lower grade work horses they use.  They would appear to be more like a draft and heavy har­ness horse.  They would most CERTAINLY not be of a ‘Proper Cob’ type and ***NOT*** their prize horse…this is directly out of the mouths of the breed­ers them­selves and plenty a Gypsy over­seas if you just ask them directly and friendly and not with any ulte­rior motive. Gyp­sies are much smarter than all too many ‘all-knowing’ and enti­tled Amer­i­cans dis­credit them as.

AGAIN, HOWEVER:
Because of the Amer­i­can mar­ket and the pro­pa­ganda cam­paign of DT, they will use the term to those that they need to use the term with in order to sell a horse.  When you are in the UK, though, to call their Proper Cobs a ‘van­ner’ is an insult of cer­tain degrees and some breed­ers let it roll off eas­ier than oth­ers (those that sell more heav­ily to the US for instance, will just ignore it and judge/sum up the per­son for the term they use).

NOW:
Whether you want to call them a van­ner, tin­ker, cob, what­not — it does NOT mat­ter in the end. The true point is — THERE ARE in fact par­tic­u­larly bred equines of a ‘COB’ body style (i.e NOT horse, NOT draft, NOT long in the back and NOT pony) that are dif­fer­ent than those within the breed that are not par­tic­u­larly ‘selec­tively’ bred.  They can be of ANY name called *and* are even cross reg­is­tered as dif­fer­ent names — so there goes the whole stu­pid name thing out the win­dow as indica­tive of ANYTHING superior.

As long as the day is, they are of COB body styles, have par­tic­u­lar con­for­ma­tional invest­ment and until Amer­i­cans accept that, they will con­tinue to mis­breed the bone struc­ture and selected ‘type’ that makes up our beloved breed.

This name crap gets O.L.D.  Get over it. Then we can start focus­ing on the bot­tom line point that there ARE major dif­fer­ences within the breed that need to be dis­cussed and call­ing them by any par­tic­u­lar name or reg­is­ter­ing them in any par­tic­u­lar place does not alter the fact of what they are as they stand in front of you.

Geez louise people.

And a com­ment back addi­tion­ally I added later.…
Thanks xxxx…even more detail and I totally know it as truth Love ya! Your Cob def­i­n­i­tion descrip­tion is the Proper def­i­n­i­tion of a selec­tively bred Gypsy. Cob is a body style, but a ‘Proper Cob’ means some­thing par­tic­u­lar. A van­ner could be used to describe more than just a Gypsy and looks much lankier and more akin to a drum (for instance) than a Proper ‘tight’ Cob of the rounded apple butt, short back, big flat bone, stout nature, large chest you can drive a bus through — basi­cally a brick sh*t-house if you will.

Make no mis­take though, a Proper Heavy Cob of the orig­i­nal style par­tic­u­larly bred, COULD pull a wagon no prob­lem. It’s only the newer gen­er­a­tion that has a fond­ness for the under 14 hands (and some­times even under 13 yet still proper bred, but that is a mat­ter of taste and strays from the ‘multi-function’ of the breed).

No mat­ter how you tress up/dress up/dress down a Gypsy, it still is what it is 6 days a week and twice on Sun­day down at the con­for­ma­tional and struc­tural level. And if they have hair, they WILL grow it whether you want it there or not…it does not ‘mag­i­cally’ appear at a cer­tain age, nor do they ‘mag­i­cally’ grow in to their con­for­ma­tion at that ran­dom fabled age either.

In the tra­di­tion of Celeste and post­ing a ‘sticky’ note: On think­ing that Gyp­sies are over­priced just because they are not under 5k, ‘poor folk can’t afford them’, small breed­ers can’t afford them, ‘small town’ can’t afford them, can’t do any­thing or what­ever new stu­pid com­plaint I’ve seen, heard, heard about, read, etc.…

I have a prob­lem with that (and trust me, I sold my car to buy my first one, so I am no where near rich myself)…but if you can’t afford the prices of a horse…**it doesn’t mean it’s unfairly priced**. That’s bass-ackwards. … That’s like say­ing a dres­sage trained Friesian is over priced b/c we don’t have the money to afford it and that’s not fair. There is no good rea­son this breed should be equal to a grade QH in pricing…this sim­ply is NOT the breed for a per­son that can’t invest in the cost to own (and they should be right around 8k — 12k for untrained Gyp­sies based on breed­ing and con­for­ma­tion and move up from there for genetic traits and train­ing). It’s the same with Andalu­sians & Friesians…why would you think it any dif­fer­ent or unfair just because we can’t afford it? Small town peo­ple then CANNOT own these horses, that’s just the way it goes with ANY high priced breed, even the cheapy ones within…Would you ever com­plain and say it’s unfair that a Thor­ough­bred race­horse from blooded lin­eage is over­priced? The horses are worth what they are, regard­less of whether it is unfair just because we can or can’t afford them.…and then you have to fac­tor in the CARE that goes in to these guys — that takes MONEY money money on top of it all. Some­times they can be left alone in the pas­ture, most times they can­not — it’s extra groom­ing, time, money, sup­plies, prod­ucts, care, proper facility/board/shelter.…the list goes on.  If you can barely afford the pric­ing, how the heck are you going to afford the care??

I am NOT one of those that com­plains or whines about ‘oh I put so much in to the horse a cou­ple of years ago’ — I’m sorry, that’s your fault and the over­in­flated prices that were insane a cou­ple of years back…EVERYTHING lev­els out. Hell, I’d sell my girls for about these prices if the home is right and not give a fly­ing fig what I’ve ‘invested’ in a horse. But to think the prices are not appro­pri­ate at 8k-12k just because it is unaf­ford­able to ‘small town peo­ple’ is ridicu­lous. If you can’t afford the horse as it has set­tled in to it’s appro­pri­ate range (just as the other roman­tic breeds it is akin too) then it’s time to look at another breed or fig­ure out a way to give some­thing up or save up for it …it’s the same thing I did and I know oth­ers that have too. AND I bought high priced years ago to boot, but you won’t hear me com­plain­ing about that. It is what it is.

And don’t even get me started about qual­ity and pric­ing being directly rela­tional 90% of the time IN ALL breeds of the qual­ity of the horse.  Wanna talk Quar­ter Horses? Shit…there’s a huge breed full of major issues right there, among any other breed.