Archived Posts

Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2002
by Nicole Kinsey


Ok, since I'm the big mouth who went and started this topic, I better be more specific rather than just making flippant comments....

I can't count the times I've seen people describe their sub-15 hand Arabians as "short" or "too short" or apologize for their height. What?? These horses match the standard!

Arabians have a modern "standard" that states "14.1 to 15.1 with individuals over and under." This means that an Arabian that is between 14.1 and 15.1 is not "too short." It's correct for the breed. And, while the "invidivuals over and under" allows horses to be outside of that 14.1 to 15.1 range and still be correct, it does mean that a 16 hand individual is as far from the standard as a 13.3 individual.

Bigger is not always better. The trend for wanting huge Arabians is not what attracted many of us to the breed (ie. me!), nor is necessarily good for the breed. Breeding for one specific characteristic tends to be very bad for a breed, since other characteristics are lost. Many taller Arabians are not as correct as those of shorter stature. Often taller Arabians lack balance. Often all the height of a taller Arabian is in the legs: ie. 16 hand legs with a 14 hand body.

And, when the taller Arabian is balanced -- when the body size matches the height -- that's just too darn big for some of us (ie. me!). At 5'2" I am most comfortable communicating with sub-15 hand horses, that's the size body that fits my legs. Granted, many 15+ hand Arabians don't have any bigger bodies than my sub-15 handers, but why would I want height without substance? And, if they have the substance to go with the taller height, then I don't fit them as well. I have a couple that are 15.1+ and have the matching substance, and they are BIG horses. I realize a lot of people do want BIG horses, and that's fine and dandy, but that doesn't make the shorter Arabians incorrect! They're still correct for the Arabian standard.

Oh, and let's not forget the accurate measurement issue. The vast majority of 15+ hand Arabians, when seen in person, turn out to be sub-15 hands. Often, the further over 15 hands the stated height is, the further that reported height is from the truth. Granted, Arabian owners are not alone in this and it happens in every breed, but the "Arabian measuring stick" seems to be widely used in our breed. My theory is that an "Arabian hand" is slightly less than 4 inches (3.5 maybe?), so the bigger the reported height, the further from reality it is.

One more thing was brought up in this thread that I feel needs addressing: "inbreeding causes lack of height" or however it's worded. Sorry, but inbreeding doesn't cause anything that isn't in the genetic makeup of the parents (at least not to the degree inbreeding is done in horses -- you have to do some serious inbreeding in species like humans to start having wacky traits show up out of "nowhere"). All inbreeding does is make traits more likely to be homozygous. For polygenic traits like height it makes them more likely to be homozygous at multiple loci. So, yes, if a breeding program is inbred to a shorter individual then you might see a tendency towards shorter products of that program. However, if a breeding program is inbreeding towards taller individuals, the results should be taller offspring -- this is seen in WBs where many use Arabians and TBs to lighten and, yes, shorten, the next generation since the years of WB x WB can result in huge individuals.

~Nicole