Connemara inspectors’ herds are full of Thoroughbred bloodlines, too

Allbreedpedigree.com is a beautiful thing, isn’t it?

For four decades, I’ve listened to one Connemara breeder/inspector rant about how the Thoroughbred lines that Ireland “allowed into the breed” in the 1940s have ruined the breed.

Low and behold, it took me 10 minutes today on Allbreedpedigree.com to determine that this inspector’s very longtime “pure” stallions are loaded with Thoroughbred and Arabian bloodlines.

I already knew that another breeder/inspector’s herd was inundated with Thoroughbred bloodlines (and the horses look like small Thoroughbreds), even though she has always backed inspections that would fail refined horses. Somehow her ponies get passed at inspections — perhaps a professional courtesy among inspectors.

Let’s ignore for a second a 2010 UK study that showed the Thoroughbreds descended from Connemaras, so there’s no such thing as “allowing the Thoroughbred blood into the breed.”

What Allbreedpedigree.com shows is that all these inspectors who repeatedly fail horses that “remind then of Thoroughbreds” are hypocrites. I’ve been trying to think through what message they’re sending, but perhaps there are many:

“Do as I say, not as I do.”

“It’s OK for me to breed horses with Thoroughbred genes but not you.”

“I want to preserve these bloodlines in my herd, but you can’t have them.”

“I want to force you to do something with your herd that I won’t do with mine — whitewash it of Thoroughbred genes.”

“I want to change this breed into something it’s not because I believe it should be something else.”

“I’m seething at the breeders whose horses beat mine, and I’m targeting the offspring of those horses, even though my own horses carry the same genes.”

I think the last message is the closest to the truth.

This is a witch hunt against the offspring of those horses that beat this influential inspector’s horses, pure and simple. The question is: When will the society recognize it for what it really is and stop it?

Witch hunts are hard to end. If you look at history, mob mentality tends to take hold and allow people to do stupid things long after the logic has been exposed as flawed.

Is there a difference between a witch hunt that fails Thoroughbred-looking Connemaras at inspections, which ensures that they are dumped, and a witch hunt that simply burns horses at the stake?

In both scenarios, the horses likely end up at the renderer’s before their time.

These are great Connemaras, people. End the witch hunt now. These horses deserve their rightful place in the Connemara society, and evolved societies don’t have witch hunts.