Category: Horse Breeds

ARABIAN HORSE HEIGHT: 14–15.3 hands ORIGIN OF ARABIN HORSE: Middle East, especially Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Jordan SPECIAL QUALITIES: Great beauty, tremendous endurance, high tail carriage, and unflagging spirit BEST SUITED FOR: Endurance, pleasure, and showing Among the most beautiful of all horses, the Arabian is also one of the oldest pure breeds in the world. It is the most widespread breed on earth and the most influential, having been used to improve almost every other breed at some time in history. There are Arabian breed associations in nearly every country, and Arabians can be found working, competing, and participating in just about any type of horse-related activity. They are the breed of choice for endurance competitions. But vehement arguments and misunderstandings arise over the details of the breed’s history. In the International Encyclopedia of Horse Breeds, Bonnie Hendricks reports that every book she consulted claims the breed originated in Saudi Arabia. When she consulted Arabian Horse experts in Saudi Arabia,

DUTCH WARMBLOOD HEIGHT: 15.2–17 hands, average is about 16.1 ORIGIN OF DUTCH WARMBLOOD: Holland SPECIAL QUALITIES OF DUTCH WARMBLOOD: World-famous for their athletic ability BEST SUITED FOR: Jumping, dressage, and driving Although most North Americans think of Holland as primarily a country of tulips and windmills, the Dutch tradition of breeding excellent horses goes back for centuries. In the case of the Frisian, the breed has been kept pure for more than two hundred years. Dutch Warm blood breeders, however, have a different purpose and a different technique. One of their primary goals since World War II has been to produce the best sport horse in the world. Like all sport horse breeds, Dutch Warmblood are evolving. Breeders maintain three “breeding directions.” The most popular by far, and the most famous, are the riding horses, which include jumpers and dressage horses. The breed also includes the higher-headed, higher-moving harness horse or Tuigpaard, which is quite rare in North America,

CANADIAN HORSE HEIGHT: 16 hands and taller CANADIAN HORSE ORIGIN: Canada, especially Ontario SPECIAL QUALITIES: An evolving breed of large, solid horses that are structurally correct and have fluid movement, excellent jumping talent, and a natural ability to work with their human partners BEST SUITED FOR: Jumping, dressage, eventing, foxhunting, and driving Canadian horse has its own distinct history. An English lieutenant stationed in Ontario wrote in his journal in 1893 that the horses “which were produced from the farmers here were remarkable for their ability to jump timber fences.” Quite a few of these horses were sold to people in the United States for various uses. Then came World War I, during which vast numbers of horses from Canada were sent to the war in Europe. About this time, the Canadian Racing Association imported sixteen English Thoroughbred stallions, which they made available to local farmers for the production of crossbreeds. The blood of those crossbreed horses influences the pedigrees of many of the foundation lines of today’s Canadian Horse.