Denny Emerson urges American Connemara Pony Society to choose new strategy

Legendary U.S. equestrian Denny Emerson, 76, posted advice to struggling breed societies, particularly Connemara and Morgan groups, on his Facebook page Sept. 29, 2017, suggesting time is of the essence to preserve the breeds.

The American Connemara Pony Society reposted his remarks and said they were similar to Emerson’s talk at the ACPS annual meeting earlier in September.

Emerson’s post said: “If I were on the board of a breed organization, and I saw declining numbers, I would be thinking night and day about strategies to reverse these tides. If I were breeding, I would be looking for local riders to get my horses out in public. And so on.

“Because sitting and wishing does nothing, and something, almost anything, is better than nothing.”

The ACPS has been faced with dwindling horses and members for a long time, but it continues to put up roadblocks to attracting new blood, even as it pines for the days when Connemaras were popular and winning on a national stage.

The decline can be traced to the early 2000s when the society chose to implement Connemara inspections and a path of bigotry and eugenics, wanting to get rid of refined horses, particularly if they were sleek and black. These horses reminded one specific inspector of Little Heaven, a thoroughbred stallion allowed into the Connemara breed by Ireland in the 1940s and credited with making Connemaras performance horses. This inspector admitted to me in writing that any horse meeting the black, sleek, refined description was not the right type to be a Connemara.

Her favorite breed type has always been a white, rugged, short-legged pony, and her own herd was full of this type for decades. Note that her Connemaras were often beaten by the refined Connemaras, mostly Little Heaven offspring, and she was livid, blaming the judges for not understanding what (her version of) a good Connemara was.

This inspector convinced her circle within the breed society to create an inspection program that gave Connemaras a 12-minute glance, with no performance required, to allow biased inspectors to give a “premium label” to white rugged Connemaras. Refined Connemaras were failed. The premium label was a perfect marketing tool for unathletic “rugged” Connemaras, and it meant that white clods with cankles were the “it” Connemara, according to the ACPS.

Not surprisingly, the inspectors’ scoring sheet starts with a “rugged” criterion.

The inspection program is the main focus of the ACPS now. It’s the only program that matters to the society and where ACPS money is invested. Meanwhile, in 2017, the society started asking life members to contribute money to the society again and forget that they paid a large fee for that membership long ago.

Unfortunately for the breed, a sleek, black, refined Connemara, particularly one descending from Little Heaven, is far more likely to be athletic and do well in open competition than a white, short-legged, rugged Connemara.

The performance Connemaras are what parents want for their children. No one wants a Connemara that won’t get out of park.

The ACPS for nearly two decades has forced members to breed horses nobody wants.

Shoppers are buying other breeds.

Connemara breeders have cut back on breeding or left the Connemara world completely.

Officials who instituted the inspections will bury the ACPS before admitting that they were bigots and wrong to institute their eugenics program.

Those who care about Connemaras, rather than revenge, need to step up and say inspections need to go away and programs need to be created that will draw new Connemara enthusiasts and encourage Connemaras to be trained and entered into competitions.

Because, as a legendary horseman who lives in the real world said Sept. 29: “Sitting and wishing does nothing, and something, almost anything, is better than nothing.”