BARRELHORSE USA - 2013-12-09 6:23 PM After you watch this pulling contest ... read your comment and see if you still agree with your statement. Watch all of these various teams and you will see the power is in the rear end and the front legs are just used to hold the horse in place while he gathers his rear end again for another big push with his rear end. As the skid gets heavier you will see each hind leg providing the power one low croutching step at a time and his weight is rocking forward to hold the ground gained with his front feet. http://youtu.be/Cbs3oYxw2u0 The big V of muscles on each side in the chest attaching to the inside front legs and the heavy inside gaskin on the rear legs are characteristics of draft horse conformations that are meant for pulling. Both of these sets of muscles will slow a horse down if you are breeding for speed. The short heavy duty pasterns is also a must on a draft horse. I know you will see these two draft horse characteristics in qh's even today.. more so in the thick bodied halter horses. Especially in your northern snow states where draft horses were bred with the little light weight texas cow ponies to give them more size and ability/strength to buck the snow while tending cattle . Old Fred will be on many of these pedigrees ... And please keep in mind ... the pedigrees for qh's prior to 1940-1950 are not to be trusted due to everyone lying about the bloodlines of their horses and AQHA was registering on bulldog type conformations..... because they needed the money ... so they would just about register anything and take your $1 ... The old qh owners gave more flack to Walter Merrick about registering 3bar crossed horses than all the dinks that were registered in the previous 20 years... especially when the 3bar horses were kicking their tails on the track ... lol .. AQHA also hired some gal to make up pedigrees on qh's back in the late 1990's when computers first came on board to use in most businesses. She just destroyed all the facts given about horses by their original owners that said they had no idea of the ancestory of certain great horses ... just that they came from such and such ranch. She made up crap back into the 1800's .... very similar to the nonsense on the XFactor big heart syndrome ... Enjoy looking at the percheron characteristics in the picture of OLD FRED ...

hammer_time - 2013-12-10 2:58 AM

 I like a narrower horse.  
Those Doc bar comments are interesting.  Any horse I've owned with a lot of Doc Bar could really fly.  Including my main horse right now AND he's narrow chested ( in my book).  (And athletic as hell).

http://www.allbreedpedigree.com/rios+doc+holiday