# Arabian stallion - critique please



## tinyliny (Oct 31, 2009)

he is built pretty well. His legs are straight and good hocks. Knee is good. 
pelvic angle is typical of Arabians. His elbows are a little tied into the body, (not as much freedom in the front end). His neck is a tiny bit short and not tied on as high as could be, but that might be an optical illusion because his shoulder is quite upright.
To be honest, he is built well, a sturdy horse, but not fantastic and I wonder why he is still a stud.


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## equiniphile (Aug 16, 2009)

He has okay conformation, but nothing spectacular I would want to breed to. Is he going to be gelded or left a stally?


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## lilruffian (Jun 28, 2010)

Nice looking horse though i agree with the others & he does look like he has a very sharp angle to his shoulder & his neck is set high.
Nice legs though.


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## damnedEvans (Jan 23, 2010)

Thank you all for the answers. Really appreciate because I can't see those details when critiquing a horse, I can see only the big and obvious faults.

As for Rashid being a stallion, I can answer that too.  
He is at a horse shelter now so he won't be breed for sure while being with us. We thought about gelding him but we had some things more urgent that this one on our heads. He is well mannered for a stallion and manageable if you are not a complete beginner. If you wouldn't know that he is a stud you wouldn't guess it even if he's around mares. We took him to some trail rides with the girls and he did just fine. You could think that he has a gelding. He didn't showed us that he's a stallion the whole ride. So for now it's no hurry to geld him. He's not aggressive toward us at all, all he does is from lack of socialization and fear. 

And another thing that we take into consideration is the thing that in my part of world we have 80 - 90 % of the horse population only mixed breeds. So when you have a horse that it's not mixed you keep him intact if he's not ugly like hell. So if we would put him up for adoption we would have more chances of finding him a home if he's still a stallion. With a lot of mixed horses kept as stallions around here Rashid would be great even if he would be bred in the future by his adopters. 

We usually geld all the stallion that came at us but now we have some doubts about this.


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## tinyliny (Oct 31, 2009)

He is not bad, and he is sturdy, so crossed with a mixbreed Arab, you might get a really nice riding horse of 3/4 arab. I can see your logic.


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## damnedEvans (Jan 23, 2010)

tinyliny said:


> He is not bad, and he is sturdy, so crossed with a mixbreed Arab, you might get a really nice riding horse of 3/4 arab. I can see your logic.


Thank you.


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## CJ82Sky (Dec 19, 2008)

id have to say he's not bad by any means but does he come with papers (if i missed that im sorry im reading at work haha).

a non-papered horse even if purebred in this market is the same as (imo) a grade horse. while he is nice and relatively easy to handle, the life of a stallion is hard - bred or not. once they are bred they need to be kept separate - private turnout, it's more stressful on them, and many tend to develop bad habits like weaving and what not. now i know not all do, but it can happen and is relatively common.

that said also if he was adopted, how would you control who he was bred to? while there are a lot of grade horses out there, i wouldn't saa there are 80% or more. i also feel that with so many horses in need, breeding only the best is key to giving the others in need a better chance at homes. if everyone bred horses that were ok and not horrible bc they were purebred we just succeed in diluting the quality of the breed. 

i am not against breeding - i bred my tb mare. she has good bloodlines and i had her and her offspring approved OLD NA (she is main mare book, offspring branded OLD NA). but she and the offspring remain mine and are not to be adopted (obv if i had to sell them for financial reasons i would - hence making sure they are registered even though i don't care personally).

see what i'm getting at? i'd be concerned that a horse already with emotional and some fear/rearing issues that has testosterone will be better off as a gelding as the reduction in hormones will help him and has a good chance of improving his quality of life and being able to be integrated into herd turnout and an overall less stressful existence.

i've been in rescue for many years and never found that adopting out a stud was a good idea unless the cream of the crop bloodlines wise and even then it was a challenge and something we've stayed away from. the biggest concern is the potential for a horse to be bred to everything and anything and end up with a situation like one rescue we pulled from auction who was "never bred" and low and behold had a baby 8 mos later....

im not judging, just asking with the number of unwanted horses in the world today, please think this through completely incl the horse's best interests, quality of life, etc. 

good luck - he seems to have potential as a riding horse for sure.


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## CJ82Sky (Dec 19, 2008)

tinyliny said:


> He is not bad, and he is sturdy, so crossed with a mixbreed Arab, you might get a really nice riding horse of 3/4 arab. I can see your logic.


i agree however i see hundreds of these (literally) going through auction that need homes and end up at slaughter instead weekly.

i just ask - why make more grade horses and would he have a better quality of life if gelded and then able to be integrated into group turnout, less stressful life, less hormones, etc. all food for thought.

i do not have the answers, just lots of questions.


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## damnedEvans (Jan 23, 2010)

@ CJ82Sky : I completely understand your point of view and I agree with you. If I was from a different country I will think and do exactly like you do. But the difference is that I'm in Romania and the views here are completely different. 

Here a horse is great if he can pull a cart (the majority of people think this). The vast majority of horse owners are from rural areas where a horse is some kind of cheaper tractor. You could understand this mentality if you think of Amish people from America. So they don't need papers or purebred horses to do their job. That's way we have so many mixed horses. And here mixed doesn't mean 1/2, 1/4 Arabian or other breed. A mixed horse is a horse of unknown ancestry that was bred with another horse of unknown ancestry for generations. You couldn't tell if he has a certain breed in it or no. It's exactly like a mustang. 

If someone had a mare he will breed the mare with whatever stallion that it's closer to him. If he thinks that his mare is great quality and she does her job like no other he will choose more carefully and he will choose a stallion that is beautiful or one that is of a certain breed. But this is a rare case. 

The government has a program that allows you to "rent" a stallion from a stud farm for free for the time of a breeding season or more to whoever interested in this. With this program they try to improve the horse quality in the country. So you can take for free a great stud with great bloodlines and use it for a certain time period for free with only one condition: To promote the stallion in your region and to encourage your neighbors to brigs their mares to him. But the sad thing is that people don't like the idea to much so the stallions are left there without any use at all. Some great stallions where wasted like this.

The only horses that have papers here are the ones from stud farms and the ones that are imported. And you need a papered horse only when you want to use it in competitions. If you compete with a horse that has papers you can sell him for a lot of money in the future. 

But if you need a horse like Rashid that you'll use for riding the money that you pay for him are the same even if he is or he is not papered.
Rashid had papers because he is from a stud farm, we know this for sure but one of his ex-owners lost him at poker and the one that gained him at poker donated him to us because he wasn't a kids horse. In the end he came to us without papers, but in this situation you can imagine that papers are not at all important. 

So that's way the situation from Ro is completely different. But I totally understand from where are you coming from. I don't know when our situation will become different. I'm waiting for it but from what I see now our government isn't interested in horses at all. 

Maybe if it was my decision to take I would take it. I don't want him as a stud for one simple reason, it will be easier to geld him and keep him with all our horses in the same pen. But as a stallion we keep him separated and let him with the geldings only under supervision. We try to introduce him to the geldings step by step. 
But our BO (or maybe shelter owner) like to see him a stallion because he's so beautiful and nice and doesn't see the point in gelding him. When he came she was "we will geld him immediately" but now she changed her mind. 

Thank you for the opinion and advice. Really appreciate it.


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## gottatrot (Jan 9, 2011)

When I first saw this thread and looked at the photos I was planning to say something about the horse's quality of life as a stud (like CJ did) and point out how the horse does not conform to the Arabian ideal. I was going to post photos of stallions like Ali Jamaal and point out that people should not be breeding unless their horse was helping improve the breed.
However, after reading your posts I can see this is my American perspective and things are far different in your country. I find myself changing my mind and thinking that if your horse is sound and serviceable and that is valued in your country, perhaps it is OK to leave him as a stud after all.


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## damnedEvans (Jan 23, 2010)

gottatrot said:


> When I first saw this thread and looked at the photos I was planning to say something about the horse's quality of life as a stud (like CJ did) and point out how the horse does not conform to the Arabian ideal. I was going to post photos of stallions like Ali Jamaal and point out that people should not be breeding unless their horse was helping improve the breed.
> However, after reading your posts I can see this is my American perspective and things are far different in your country. I find myself changing my mind and thinking that if your horse is sound and serviceable and that is valued in your country, perhaps it is OK to leave him as a stud after all.


The reality is that I didn't asked if I should geld him or not. If he was mine I would have asked it but he is not mine so I can't decide his fate. I asked for critique just because it's a great way for me to learn things. When I saw him I said to myself that I don't see to many faults there but this is because my eye is not trained very well. As I said I can see only the big conformational flaws like (post legged, long back, downhill etc). For me he seemed to be a great horse conformational wise. That's why I asked for help here. With your opinions I can train my eye and I can understand more things than by myself. 

I want to explain and answer to all the questions that everyone have but I don't want to transform the thread into a "geld or not to geld" kind of thread. 

I educated myself to see the things in your perspective, I think in your way, I often think what "the people from HF would think" because I know that in my country the way of seeing and treating horses isn't ideal. So I really know and I really understand why he is not stud quality, why his quality of life will be better as a gelding and why is not a great thing to put him for adoption as a stud. But because I can't change the things and because I can't take decision for others I try to explain our ways of thinking to you. Just to see that the things are very different over here. It's not a great thing but maybe the things will be ok in the future. I try to educate myself for this reason but I can't change things only by myself. Only a small percent of horse people see the things in a more modern way and they can't change the things so easily.

P.S. And btw, you can post those pictures and you can critique Rashid as hard as you want because I really want to learn. It will be helpful to me.


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## CJ82Sky (Dec 19, 2008)

damnedEvans said:


> @ CJ82Sky : I completely understand your point of view and I agree with you. If I was from a different country I will think and do exactly like you do. But the difference is that I'm in Romania and the views here are completely different.
> 
> Here a horse is great if he can pull a cart (the majority of people think this). The vast majority of horse owners are from rural areas where a horse is some kind of cheaper tractor. You could understand this mentality if you think of Amish people from America. So they don't need papers or purebred horses to do their job. That's way we have so many mixed horses. And here mixed doesn't mean 1/2, 1/4 Arabian or other breed. A mixed horse is a horse of unknown ancestry that was bred with another horse of unknown ancestry for generations. You couldn't tell if he has a certain breed in it or no. It's exactly like a mustang.
> 
> ...


VERY well said. i know nothing of the horse market in your country and while i DO believe good breeding is good breeding principles regardless of where in the world you are - i also understand markets vary. heck i work in online marketing. if my UK program ran as well as my FR and US programs... let's just say i'd be a lot happier. anyway point being, thank you for the clarification and information on this - it makes a huge difference to be able to see/learn about different markets.

best of luck to you!


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## CJ82Sky (Dec 19, 2008)

rather than quote all your replies, OP, 
*cheers* to learning, listening, discussing and sharing YOUR point of view and country as well.

this is officially my new fave thread lol.


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## gottatrot (Jan 9, 2011)

http://www.ponycity.com/stallions/desi/index.html


Photo Gallery of *Ecaho - Ferlita Arabians

OK, to critique for fun (now that we've established he's going to remain a stud). 

First, the negatives:
The stallion has a steep croup for an Arab. If you look at the photo/link I posted of some nice Arabian stallions you will see a much flatter angle. Also his shoulder is quite steep. If you check out the angle of his hip and shoulder you will see that they don't match each other. 
His neck is thick and ties in low, and he could use a cleaner throatlatch.

The positives:
He has great bone, a nice short back, and a nice trot. Also he has a cute head. The canter looks silly but I've seen Arabs do the "bunny hop" when excited yet can learn to canter much better under saddle. 
It is hard to tell about his feet but if they are good when trimmed I would think he would be a horse that could work hard and remain sound.


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## Elana (Jan 28, 2011)

I like that he is a bit more solid than most Arabians I have seen. He looks a bit over at the knee and his pasterns are short and steep. His hind legs are "bow legged" with the toes pointing straight ahead insted of slightly out. The hind leg is a spiral and in order for the leg to wrk well, the toes need to point out a bit. 

He is a bit long in the back, his croup is a bit steep and I am not in love with his coupling. I would like to see a smoother transition over his rump. He looks a bit weak in the jaw and I wonder if he is parrot mouthed. His neck is set a bit high (common with Arabians). 

I know you said not to comment on his feet.. but I am going to. Any horse that must be sedated to have his feet worked on is in serious trouble. Those feet put huge strain on his legs. 

With the behavioral issues mentioned in the OP I can see how this horse ended up in a rescue. IMO horses that rear (no matter when) are dangerous.


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## gottatrot (Jan 9, 2011)

After reading Elana's comments I looked at his back again and it is definitely long. I did not measure it out before, and it was an illusion that it was short. 
I do have to disagree about the toeing out comment though. For this breed the ideal is to have straight legs, neither toed in or out. Some stock type breeds allow for a horse to be slightly cow-hocked as it appears to provide some advantage in speed and cow-horse events. I am fairly sure that is not the "ideal" in halter classes though but instead is just something experts allow when selecting performance horses. For Arabians the toes should be pointing straight ahead on all four legs.


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## Elana (Jan 28, 2011)

gottatrot said:


> After reading Elana's comments I looked at his back again and it is definitely long. I did not measure it out before, and it was an illusion that it was short.
> I do have to disagree about the toeing out comment though. For this breed the ideal is to have straight legs, neither toed in or out. Some stock type breeds allow for a horse to be slightly cow-hocked as it appears to provide some advantage in speed and cow-horse events. I am fairly sure that is not the "ideal" in halter classes though but instead is just something experts allow when selecting performance horses. For Arabians the toes should be pointing straight ahead on all four legs.


Maybe for halter horses.. but read Deb Benett's books. She bases her conformation analysis on mechanics based physics. The hind leg of the horse is a spiral. A toes directly pointed ahead is actually a crooked leg (Hocks are too wide). This put stress on outside of the hock and the inside of the stifle and is not sound construction. 

OTOH if you want to do halter horse, the toes pointing ahead is what they look for. 

I was never into halter horses. I wanted a horse the could work with effiecient movement and long lived soundness.


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## gottatrot (Jan 9, 2011)

Elana,

I wonder if the toes pointing out = correct movement is more applicable to horses with heavier muscling especially in the gaskin area i.e. stock horses. Of course, when we look at conformation we hope what we see is an indicator of how the horse moves but I have seen horses with "good" leg conformation that are bad movers and horses with "bad" leg conformation that are beautiful in motion. There are just a lot of parts to move in a leg I guess, and any of them can go wrong or else correct for other parts.

Whether a horse is in motion or not though, it always makes good sense that if weight is distributed in a straight line through the middle of the joints it causes less wear and tear over time. If a horse that appears to stand toed-out lands with the pressure distributed evenly, then I would say his conformation is fine. You can't really say that though without seeing the horse in motion.

If a beautiful halter horse has beautiful movement, then I say he is a nice looking horse. Of course even what constitutes good movement varies between breeds and disciplines.


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## damnedEvans (Jan 23, 2010)

@ gottatrot: Thank you for the critique. Now I can see what it's wrong with him. Definitely he doesn't look like Ecaho. I'm wondering now if Arabians aren't a lot different from each other depending on their lines. I know that conformational flaws will remain the same, that's not the point. But I've seen stallions that were different from Ecaho for example. When I think of Arabian I'm imagining a horse like a Straight Egyptian Arabian. But I've seen some arabians that weren't so refined, they were more solid. 

We first thought that Rashid would be a Shagya Arabian because he came from a place where they had a lot of Shagyas. But he the head to refined to be a Shagya. But if he were a Shagya Arabian that would explain his solid construction because Shagyas are more solid. 

And about his canter, it is possible to be like that because he was really excited. When I took those pictures he was in the pen with another gelding that was introduced to him for the first time. Rashid was very nice with the gelding but the gelding was more dominant and tried to chase and bite him all the time. 

@ Elana: Thank you for the critique, really appreciate it. From what I've seen I don't think that he's parrot mouthed but I'll check it next time just to be sure. 

I think that he must be sedated now just because he wasn't used to the farrier to much in the past. I don't know how he was treated but he is very fearful with the people. I have problems sometimes to put the blanket on him. He isn't aggressive but he doesn't stand still and he looks to be very frightened. I must blanket him very slowly while giving him carrots every time he stands still and relaxed. So this takes me like 10 minutes. So I think that he is just not used to being handled.

When you go in his stall to put the lead on and take him out he goes in a corner without turning his; back at you or being aggressive but when you approach him he tries his best to avoid you and avoid to be touched. If you approach him rapidly and force him he will rear but if you take him slowly while talking with him he will stand still after 2, 3 times of avoiding you. He reared the first time he came to us when we didn't know how to approach him. He didn't reared from then but the intention to rear exists. 

In the pen he's the same, he is not hard to catch but he lets you approach him at 1 meter and then he looks at you with a lot of caution in his eyes and then he tries to avoid your hand for a couple of times. 
I think that he can be trained to accept the farrier without being sedated but we must do his feet asap and we don't have time for this. But we will work on it.

Thank you all for the advice.


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## Elana (Jan 28, 2011)

I had a horse that I bought that had run wild for 3 years on 160 acres. Hay tossed over the fence and water was all the human contact he had. He was very much like your Arab. 

I got him very tame very fast as the ONLY time he could eat was with me there. When I left, the food left with me. At first he did not know what grain was but figured that out very fast. If he wanted to eat I held the bucket. With hay, the only time he could eat was when I stood next to him. I took the hay with me when I left the stall. 

It took a LOT of time for about a week (because, as you know, you want to keep hay going into a horse a little at a time to help mimic normal digestion and eating). I will say that within a week he was nickiering for me and was no longer in the back of the stall. 

Because he was solidly halter broke, I could work with the farrier to teach him about feet handling. He got that figured out very fast too. 

I will add he was not an Arabian and even tho he was scared and wild at first he had 'the look' and that is why I bought him. I figured this was how it would be and it was. 

He became a very good, reliable horse. Eventually I sold him to a lady who was recovering from cancer and was in early remission (he needed to be reliable for her).


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## MacabreMikolaj (May 9, 2009)

You're completely correct damnedEvans, there is a WIDE variety of Arabian looks. Your boy is very much of the Crabbet look, a style of horse that's virtually unheard of these days. I love Crabbet lines and it's difficult to find the pure ones, but the line produces much sportier, athletic and less refined animals.

He's the spitting image of *Raffles in my opinion, I think he's VERY handsome and he has a few minor faults but all in all, I don't think he's unfortunate as a stallion. I wish we had more like him around here!

Some photos so you can appreciate that good old Crabbet breeding! (which I wouldn't be a BIT surprised your boy has):










Raseyn (same sire as Raffles)









Gaysar (Raseyn grandson)









Ferseyn (son of Raseyn)









Here's an example of a modern rare pure Crabbet horse as a 2 year old - you can see the difference in the substance and bone!


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## gottatrot (Jan 9, 2011)

True, Ecaho is a more lightly built Arabian as are some Egyptian breds, and you can find more stocky examples in other lines beside Crabbet as well such as Russian (Muscat) and Polish (Bask). I used Ecaho because the photos seemed to illustrate well some of the conformation points that contrasted with your stallion (such as the sloping shoulder). 

As Macabre said, I wouldn't think your stallion's behaviors have much to do with him being a stud. Both of my Arabians were not handled much until after age 10 so behaved quite similarly to your stud, even though they are mares. I would only relate his behaviors to not being gelded if he were behaving in a dominant way instead of a fearful way. I'm sure with some work you will be able to handle him better. I've also had to sedate horses for a time or two with the farrier just to get their feet comfortable. You don't necessarily have enough time to train a new horse to accept being handled before you need to trim their feet.


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## damnedEvans (Jan 23, 2010)

@ Elana: Your advice is very good and I'm sure that it will be of great success. But unfortunately I can't apply it because I'm a volunteer there and I can go everyday to be as his feeding times there. And I can't put someone to do it because I don't have a person in mind that will do that. But thank you, it will be a great advice to keep in mind.

@ MacabreMikolaj: Thank you. The photos are great, I like that kind of Arabian too. I'm not an expert in recognizing Arabian types for sure but maybe Rashid is like the others stallions from where we took him. They seems to be similar. 

I will put some photos with some stallions from the place that Rashid lived for a couple of years. This was his home before being lost at poker. 
*Those horses were in a neglect situation and the authorities took some measures for them. *


















































@ gottatrot: Thank you. I understood your point and the reason you had posted those photos with Ecaho. They were very helpful. thank you.


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