Tuesday, July 17, 2007

And the Oscar for most blatant attempt to market a severely flawed animal for breeding goes to...

Here's the ad:

"Misty was a rescue because she has a crooked nose when she was born.She is 5 yrs old.She is broke to ride.She could possibly be bred to a red/white paint but not sure.She gets along great with other horses unless it is feeding time.She would make a excellent horse for someone that just wants one to give attention to or as a field companion for another horse or even breeding.Both her parents were registered but i never got her papers since she had a birth defect.Her birth defect is not genetic either."
OK, let's evaluate these statements. "She could possibly be bred to a red/white paint but not sure." Um, so your fences suck or you deliberately bred this poor thing, even though you know she is (a) not registered or registerable (b) seriously deformed and (c) has bad conformation even if you don't look at her poor nose?
"Both her parents were registered but i never got her papers since she had a birth defect.Her birth defect is not genetic either." Let's think about that. Why would a breeder withhold the breeder's certificate unless he was afraid her birth defect was genetic and he did not want his farm associated with it? And exactly which vet determined this definitely was not genetic? Breeders, feel free to chime in - have you ever seen anything like this pop out of one of your mares??? I honestly don't know. I just know I wouldn't want to roll the dice to see if it might have a baby with a nose like that!
Besides the nose, this mare is not breeding quality anyway. She has a terrible short croup, the back is just funky, almost thinking about being a roached back, and she has a short ewe neck. They claim she is an unregistered Hanoverian but I have to say, I find that difficult to believe. (Hano experts, care to chime in?) Her tail set looks like that of an Arab, but there are other parts of her that look like a stock breed, like her neck. She looks to me like a low end Quarab. This entire ad just screams "we don't know WTF to do with her, but we definitely want some money for her, so we bred her!"
Can I mention that gray is one of the colors you are LEAST likely to get spots out of? I know this, and I have never bred a Paint or Pinto in my life. I am picturing this unfortunately gray creature giving birth to an equally unfortunate small red creature next spring. I just hope it can breathe.
The longer I do this blog, the scarier the pictures that are sent to me. I hope this mare lucks out and gets a good companion horse home, but I know there will never be as many of those as there are horses who need them.