Are you holding to your comitment to geld?

[nootka]

George, I will say I have disagreed or taken issue with some things you've said, too, but I read your posts closely, as well.

I think you have a lot to offer all of us, and have very much agreed with, or appreciated what you've had to say either way, agree or disagree.

I think it is important to give all their due.

I have NO problem if someone decides not to geld their horse, IF that horse is of a good quality as in sound and healthy with no heritable defects. However, if they decide to keep them intact and not breed them, I don't always understand it, but at least if they're not breeding something less than superior, I don't have a problem at all.

What I do have a problem with is the large amount of very low quality stallions and colts kept intact and breeding when I wish people would understand that they're hurting everyone by doing so. I honestly don't think most of them realize it, and still others really don't care, but it bothers me because there's so much nicer available.

I was talking with someone today and telling her that I don't think people realize that sometimes we don't "get" a foal every year, we have to sacrifice for a year or two more in order to save up or have the space to try again, then so be it. Not every horse was meant to reproduce and I wish that more people realized the value in a good gelding.

I think they do take longer to sell, but then, as was mentioned, we don't have to breed every mare every year.

All I hope is that people are more informed as to correct conformation and proportion. Those two things are the big ones. There are even some stallions here at Worlds that bother me...not for the fact that I don't like the type, but for the fact that I think they are not what our breed needs at this time. Then again, not everyone will be honest, either, and that's another kettle of fish.

Liz M.

 

[George]

I agree with Liz and everyone else 100% about breeding poor quality stallions and mares; it shouldn't be done and a responsible breeder wouldn't do it.

I had never known there was such a thing as a dwarf horse until I started reading this forum and seeing the pictures. It is a sad sight to see! When people have asked for a crutique of their horse and the mention of dwarf charateristics comes up I have gotten to the point of where I can see in the photos what is being mentioned. There may or may not really be the chance for producing a drawf baby but why take the chance.

I come from a family of midgets (that's what small people were called when I lived with my ancestors who were midgets). My great-great grandfather was not too much over three feet tall and my great-great grandmother was right around six feet tall (she liked shorter men

: ). They had eight kids together. Five of the kids were midgets and the other three were average height (six foot or close to being). One of the normal height was my great grandfather.

My family lived with two of the midget siblings for about a year. I was three at the time but I remember like yesterdaytheir struggles with walking and doing what average height people were able to do with no problem. I will say that my Aunt Mattie could outcook and normal height person though.

Only one of the midget siblings married and none of them had kids because they didn't want to take the chance that their kids would be midgets too. The five sibling midgets spent their lives frustrated with being unable to do what normal height people took for granted. In the depression the five midget siblings formed a traveling sideshow and that was how they made their living. They also made specialty clothing for farmers that made them quite a bit of money.

One of my aunts wrote a book for the family and her students (she was a teacher). I only have a few pages of that book but this is what she wrote about her frustrations with being born a midget, She titled her book, "Castle On The Hill, The Little Folks" (My family comes from Castle Hill, Maine.

"My readers may think this heading wrong, but if the reader should be a boy or girl they will agree with me, since they too live in a world of grown-ups. They have to climb into a chair to look into the glass if they care to see how they look, but most of the time they don't care, and even their little crib is so arranged that they have to be lifted in and out when their active little bodies won't go any longer. Their mother sees their little head go nid-nodding and she knows just the place where she wants him so she picks him up and so goes it. Everything seems to be a misfit for little folks."

"Little folks should have wee wee houses, wee beds, wee tables, chairs and everything else that goes with the wee wee bodies, but then we live in a topsy-turvy land. So we will just have to make the most of everything and fit in some way. By using broomsticks to balance our clothes on and catch them on hooks that are over our heads, or call on the big folks to hang our clothes for us and use the foot stool or chair to climb on to get into bed. And the dresser glass, if we can't tip it to see ourselves we'll climb up on it."

"Stoves, trains and such are made for big folks and we trust in some way that the stove won't burn our arms as we try to lift a cover on or off, and the tea kettle won't slip over on us as we pour out water, and when we want to go away on the trasin we will wait until we get to the station and trust in some way that the conductor may be so good and kind that he'll just pick us up and put us at least on the first step of his big terrible train that runs into the big-big cities where wee-wee fo;ks and midgets should never have to go for it is so easy to get smothered or lost in the crowd."

"Have you ever read the story of the mother cat who mothered a tiny rabbit with her baby kittens, and how they tried to bite her ears off because they were too long, and pull her tail to make it like theirs, and cuff her left and right because she wouldn't eat a mouse instead of a cabbage leaf, and were so ashamed of her that when the mother cats had a party to show off their kittens, they hid her in a basket?"

"Well, I sometimes feel that we have in some way been slipped into the wrong house or entered a foreign land, and I know it would upset everything for the natives if we had things made to git us. Now children, imagine how it would seem if father and mother should wake up tomorrow morning and find their bed a trundle bed, their who;e house rearranged and made over, and especially those treasures, the kitchen range and sink. How mother's poor back would ache as she bent way over while working about the house."

"Oh children lets not change anything and make it hard for the big folks. It is better that we as little folks put up with this than that they should come down, so let us sit on the floor if we want to and climb up as best we can. It won't always be so."

"You will grow up some day and dear old Mother Goose will be forgotten. Tommy Tucker won't have to sing for his supper anymore, but what about us midgets?"

"You just won't mind, will you, dear little boy and girl, if there does come a tear as we tell you that we'll never grow up while we stay here in this topsy-turvy land? Now that is settled, nobody need know how much it hurts to be a midget or a misfit, or how long the time seems for to wait until our good good and kind father calls us home. He knows how eary we get just rtying to fit in , and how we mean never to complain when we go to the shoe shop and the shoes don't fit, at the dry goods store where we can't see over the counter, or at the ice cream stands where we have to sit on the three legged stool and our feet won't reach the floor to steady us if it goes to tipping, but we will just say thank you, we'll we'll take an ice cream cone and stand to eat it or go out and sit on the step."

"If we have the happy heart of a little child it will come out right. The ice cream will taste so sweet and creamy, and the whole world will look just as though it was smiling all over to see how we enjoy our good time, but oh, if our hearts are grownup and our little bodies are not, the ice cream will tatste as bitter as gall."

"The world will seem to be frowning and poking fun at us and if we don't look sharp that grown-up heart will break, and will break over things that shouldn't be so, but are so."

That is it, it was a sad event for my realtives to be midgets. Times have changed but still it has to be hard for small people to live in a big person's world. A horse can't talk but I have to think they feel frustration if they are born a dwarf and they can't run, buck and play the way a normal sized horse can.

I saw my first dwarf horse a few weeks back and it was a sad sight. When I saw the dwarf horse, I remembered my midget ancestors and how the one who wrote this book looked at her world from her body. So I do hope that anyone who is thinking about breeding a horse that shows signs of dwarfism will stop to think about what it must be like to be trapped in a small body while wanting to do what those with big bodies are able to do. I'm not saying to geld the stallion or spay the mare, but please don't risk producing a dwarf by breeding them.

 

[nootka]

Kudos, George. I feel very happy that you as a "newer" Miniature Horse owner, or even anyone who has been in it a while can learn, really, but that you have learned to look for these things and have a good opinion on it.

I feel that in many cases, you CAN see where it comes from, and if the breeders of these little horses were honest and wanted to help the breed, they would post photos of sire and dam of a dwarf, so we could look for where it came from. This is the only way I can think of to head off the problem, as at this point there is no genetic testing to use.

I have done a lot of informal observing, and am in no way an expert, but it is a hobby of mine to see if I can see characteristics, and to form an opinion on such. Might seem odd to some, but I saw my first dwarf miniature many many years before I ever owned a Miniature horse.

Back then, few were ashamed of them, so I was allowed to see the parents more often than not, and I could see the proportion issues right there. I love horses, have all my life and have enjoyed them in an artistic form which includes sculpture and drawing. As we all know, this requires study of proportion, which holds true for all sizes. As George made the comparison, we can see when proportions are off in humans, as well as any other animal that we look at for a long time.

I suppose one victory is good, but there are many out there who are flirting with disaster and I do think it's sad to purposely breed these little ones with that risk. Even if the horse you love so much is going to have a foal, do you think it has something really worthwhile to add to the breed? It better have the best conformation to start with, and be free from proportion defects as well as genetic ones, as well as have a sound temperament (this last is lower on my list because I find that it's rare to find a truly "bad" horse).

Thanks, George, for having an open mind. Keep learning...it is your best tool no matter where you go in life as you know.

Liz M.