Forum posts portray Connemara society as polarized over Little Heaven

“If you want to see a bunch of Connemara breeders almost come to blows, start a discussion about whether Little Heaven and Texas Hope were good or bad for the breed.”

That is a post on a forum thread on “The Chronicle of the Horse” in response to someone making an honest attempt to find out more about Little Heaven.

The next poster wrote: “As soon as I read her post I drew a breath and said, “Oh, Lord.”

This is how the American Connemara Pony Society is portrayed publicly.

Would I be wrong to conclude that people think we’re hot-headed, polarized idiots who can’t have a civil discussion about this topic?

On the same forum thread, an owner of two Connemara/Thoroughbreds with Little Heaven genes then posted: “There is a LOT of prejudice against him (Little Heaven), and one Conn inspector was reported to have said she would never pass a bat (pretty sure that’s bay) stallion because it indicated LH blood!”

Whether the inspector said it or not, what does that statement say about how people perceive our inspection process? To me, it says people think it has tainted inspectors.

If we think we’re limiting the collateral damage from this controversy by not discussing it, we’re not. How has that strategy worked for athletes who used steroids or politicians caught in sex scandals?

If the breed thinks this issue is dead because the board has made its “final” decision, again, that kind of thinking is akin to thinking there’s no tornado because everything’s gotten quiet.

The horses that are pretty, athletic, smart, nice and willing are going to be the ones that win. If inspectors want to attribute the pretty genes to Thoroughbreds and throw those genes out, those inspectors will continue to go against the wishes of anyone trying to breed a horse that can win in open competition against increasingly well-trained and well-bred opponents. This is about marketplace dynamics, not the needs of inspectors who are desperately trying to keep thicker bloodlines relevant.

And it is flawed thinking to attribute some genes to the Thoroughbreds anyway, as suggested by the 2010 UK study that said a large percentage of Thoroughbreds are the offspring of Connemaras, meaning the pretty genes may have come from Connemaras.

But science apparently was the last thing anyone thought about when coming up with the Connemara breed standards. Based on my research on this website, we now know that thicker legs are detrimental to horse movement, yet the Connemara breed requires a minimum circumference; that breed standards themselves are rooted in the folly of the rich, who had nothing better to do in the 1800s; that peer pressure often influences people’s decisions in any group, meaning they will vote for or against something not based on their conscience but merely to please their friends; that many Thoroughbreds descend from Connemaras; and, as one evolutionary geneticist from the UK so eloquently put it: “When people claim that a breed is absolutely from one place for prestige reasons, the odds are that they’re wrong.”

Let’s have a civil, science-based, evolved conversation about the Thoroughbred genes and bring this discussion in-house. Let’s welcome the Little Heaven and Texas Hope genes (they’re already there; you can’t wash them out, try as one inspector might) and craft a positive message about how much these horses have brought to the Connemara world, as opposed to letting forums control the discussion and paint those genes and the whole breed as controversial.

The Connemara society is full of smart people, as is Congress. And, yet, no one in either group is willing to budge on certain issues. Let’s not operate at Congress’ level. Let’s show the world that reasonable people who have differing opinions are not all wearing blinkers.

We can have a civil discussion and reach a conclusion that brings progress and moves us forward in an inclusive manner.

The alternative, I suppose, is to wind up with two breeds. If that were to happen, which breed segment would survive? I know where I’d place my money.