[Herdygirl]

Just thought I would open a bit of a debate regarding the condition of show ponies.  Welsh sec A and B in particular. 
I was at a local show today and I always have a particular interest in the above ponies even though these days I have an Arab and a Welsh cross cob.  Although years ago I had the a's and b's and bred and showed and judged them.
Is it me or are the breed standards not being adhered to these days?
For instance nearly all the ponies in the ring today were bloody fat!  not fit at all, is it the norm these days to have fat ponies? When I judged, overweight ponies were not even considered.
 
What do you think?

[mowhaugh]

I think there are so many fat ponies being shown nowadays, that it is just about impossible for judges.  Of course in an ideal world, you would want a fit pony that was a great example of its breed, but if the best examples of the breed in front of the judge are also overweight, I am not sure what they are to do.  I think lots of people would be of the opinion that weight is fixable (so long as the pony doesn't die or become ill due to a weight related condition in the mean time, which is increasingly more likely) whereas other faults e.g. back at the knee, are not.
My mares were out on the hill at lambing time and I didn't have much time to check them properly other than making sure they were upright, legs attached etc. etc.  At the beginning of May, I was horrified by how fat they had become - with the warm winter we had way more grass on the hill than usual, and they are an absolute disgrace.  They have been on a very strict regime since then and are improving, but are still huge.  At the Highland Show on Thursday, my OH commented that he didn't know what I was stressing about as at least 50% of the ponies were bigger than ours.  I think many people genuinely have no idea what a fit/fat pony looks or feels like, and certainly with repeated exposure to overweight examples of a breed, it is very easy to get an incorrect image in your head of what a particular type of pony should look like weight wise.
Having said that, there were also many beautiful fit ponies with good conformation and type, so it is not all doom and gloom.

[claire]

too many fat ponies/horses everywhere you look.. and if you make an effort to work them fit and thin.. you can be reported to the SSPCA who seem recently to have a policy of prosecuting people for all the wrong reasons.
my welsh cob is exercised a lot, can't particularly feel any ribs just now but I hope to do so.. her field companion is to my mind obese and is what a judge seems to look for in a sec.D......

[honeyend]

I think a fat pony has more chance of getting long term health problems than a thin one, like EMS an laminitis. Thin ponies even one that are skeletal as long as they have no worm damage usually recover, most forest bred or more bred ponies look a bit thin when they are out but unless they are overfed go on to make tough hardy ponies. I have attached if it works a picture of a pony off the hills in Wales last spring and then the same pony two months later.
 I was looking at a 1976 copy of Pony annual and the ponies in the show ring looked workmanlike, capable of doing a days work.

[Micki]

I haven't done any showing for a few years but when i did i had my girl fit and on the slim side, in other words how she should be and not fat. We were marked down a few times for it as she wasn't show ring condition (i wanted her to be able to cope with work).
I saw recently a welsh D that had massive pads of fat everywhere and it won the class. It's time the showing world woke up to the dangers of fat horses.

[Herdygirl]

I agree Miki, it's time the judges started to get real.  Lets face it the showing community will soon cotton on if their ponies don't win any more.

[ZaktheLad]

I am taking my cob to his first show in 2 years on Sunday.  To get back in to the swing of things we are only doing two in-hand classes - Best condition and Best Show Horse.  I am interested in what entries will be in the condition class as the judges should be looking for something that is not overweight etc.  Will this happen - I will let you know!   I highly suspect that a lot of the entries will be very overweight with crested necks and apple bums.  It takes a lot of work to keep horses and ponies fit and not fat this time of year.  Many people just turn their horses out in the field 24/7 over the summer and many get very little exercise.  I am riding my lad about 6 days a week for between 1.5 to 2.5 hours each time to keep him at a level where I can feel his ribs but not see them. 

The people next to us have 3 horses and one pony out in their field.  The girls who owns them rarely rides them and the little pony that was a purchased for the grandchild has been ridden about 4 times in 2 years.  They are all left in the field eating 24/7.  When I commented once on never seeing the girl out riding the excuse was that she now has a car and other things on at the moment!  Why then go and purchase 3 x TB horses at the Brightwells sale and do nothing with them?  Why decide to put one in foal and then do nothing at all with that foal?  Why purchase an 11hh pony only for it to sit in the field doing nothing except getting fat and at severe risk of laminitis?  Crazy in my opinion. 

I will let you know how my show goes on Sunday - looking forward to it already.

Have to also say that I think overweight animals does not only happen in the horse show tings but also in the sheep and cattle classes at many shows - it seems the rule is the fatter the better in many instances.  Fat is very often confused for condition and show condition should not mean fat! 

[Hellybee]

I think it's slowly filtering through n the welsh world, but I don't know about what things are like in other circles. X

[ellied]

I was told in Highland yeld mare classes even the unriddens are being placed for muscle/fitness over fat in more shows this season.  A couple of people I know are lungeing and longreining their non-breeding broodmares for showing in yeld classes.

For info, yeld mare classes for our breed are often split into those entered in ridden classes and those not entered under saddle, which are usually unbroken mares, often breeding mares having a year out.  The split originated because of difficulties judges expressed in placing the lean fit ridden ponies and the unridden field kept ones in a single class and it helped increase entries as both had a level playing field.

My OAPs of 20 and 19 are way too fat this year but nothing I can do about it as I had a winter situation with other ponies that did need ad lib hay and they clearly didn't.  If they were going to develop laminitis they'd have done it before this age, Aidan retired when I gave up riding but has managed a couple of minor loans to local friends before now being too stiff to be worked.  Briagh has always been a broodmare but has enlarged teats and tends to summer mastitis so I'd love another foal off her but am concerned about the potential work in supporting a newborn til it got latched on the oversized udder, could be a couple of days and that's hard even with a sick mare/foal let alone a healthy one!  5yo maiden mare in the same field isn't overweight at all, just about right, thankfully.  But now the other 2 are sold I can be meaner to the 3 of them on forage over winter and supplement the young mare with a feed if she needs it.

[Marches Farmer]

Look at photographs of winners in decades past to see what they should look like.  The fad for fat extends to farm livestock as well.