Connemara breed hypocritical in rejecting Thoroughbred traits at inspections

A British study of Thoroughbred foundation mares suggests that they descend from native Irish mares, including Connemaras and Irish Draught mares, and mares native to the British Isles, more than horses from the Middle East and Asia, as originally thought.

The study was conducted by archaeogeneticists at the University of Cambridge and published in the journal Biology Letters in October 2010.

It says the DNA “showed that Thoroughbreds had closest affinity to Connemara and Irish Draft horses and were distantly related to Arab horses compared with other breeds. This indicates that Thoroughbreds had a cosmopolitan rather than pure-Arabian origin.”

When the study was published, Greger Larson, an evolutionary geneticist at Durham University in the UK, was quoted in Scientific American as arguing that there was not enough data in the study to support robust conclusions about evolutionary descent. He said: “When people claim that a breed is absolutely from one place for prestige reasons, the odds are that they’re wrong.”

On that, we agree completely.

This notion that the Connemara has always been one thing — one big-boned, short prototype — and that the Thoroughbred bloodlines ruined the breed when a Thoroughbred named Little Heaven was allowed “into” the breed in the 1940s in Ireland, is a fantasy — one created by people who want to be lord and master over this little breed group. They have invented inspection criteria with no scientific backing, and at least one of these inspectors on American soil is merely pushing for Connemaras to look exactly like her own herd, a herd that has shown little in the way of accomplishment, if you ask me.

Oddly, or perhaps intentionally, these DNA results have been available since 2010, yet I have not seen a word on this topic in the Connemara world.

Connemara inspectors making rules against horses that look like Thoroughbreds seems no less hypocritical than longtime U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond trying to block civil rights for blacks even though he fathered a child with a black woman at age 22. And no less hypocritical than founding father and U.S. President Thomas Jefferson fighting for civil rights as a leader of the country while owning a total of 600 slaves at his Virginia home over the course of his lifetime.

When news that Thurmond had fathered a daughter with the family’s black maid was revealed to the world in 2003, the Rev. Jesse Jackson — whom I will quote once and only once since I am not a fan — said to The New York Times: “The point that strikes me the most is that he lived 100 years and never acknowledged his daughter. He never let her eat at his table. He fought for laws that kept his daughter segregated and in an inferior position. He never fought to give her first-class status.”

Are we going to be that hypocritical, too? Are we going to have to wait for these completely close-minded, hypocritical inspectors to move on before the scientific evidence is acknowledged and the refined jaw or long leg that inspectors immediately claim is a “Thoroughbred” trait worthy of failing a horse at inspection is attributed properly as a Connemara leg, from whom the Thoroughbred got it in the first place.

I used to have a vet who laughed at Connemara owners’ ability to attribute all the good traits in their half-bred horses to the Connemara bloodlines and all the bad traits to the outside lines. He said, “You’re all alike.”

Not quite.

I am willing and proud to acknowledge the range of horse ancestors that made up the smart, athletic, sure-footed, chatty, gorgeous stallion we had for 31 years, and, with this new evidence, I no longer consider the Thoroughbred DNA in his bloodlines as outside lines added to his genetics. I now know that the Thoroughbred lines were simply Connemara lines called by another name.

I believe Juliet made the point best that the names of things do not matter in “Romeo and Juliet” when she said that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

When we talk about Connemaras and Thoroughbreds, the DNA would suggest we are talking about the same thing.

I saw a quote recently, ironically from an Irishman, that seems most appropriate to end this post. It’s from Edmund Burke, an Irish political philosopher and statesmen, who lived in the 1700s. He said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

How long will Connemara owners sit back and allow inspectors to kick good Connemaras out of the breed based on sham criteria?

How long will Connemara owners do nothing?