The versatile Quarter Horse

In that case, I'll clone a few of yours pretty please :D They sound lush! Any downsides to the breed (like poor feet or whatever?)

(Yes, I ask too many questions ;))
 
Well, Coquette's sire, Nimble Knight, lived to be 30 and was never lame a day in his life. A few halter class bloodlines tend to be known for bad feet, but every Quarter Horse I've known has been totally sound.
 
Not all Quarter Horses are made to be cow horses though - I know one who is actually terrified of cattle and runs away from them at high speed! :D:rolleyes:

Her mum fell in love with her in California, and brought her over when she moved back to England. Despite the fear of cows her Quarter Horse is just brilliant - super laid back and good natured. I'd certainly consider a Quarter Horse if I was to buy my own, although I suspect they're rather expensive to get hold of over here.
 
Keket said:
Well, Coquette's sire, Nimble Knight, lived to be 30 and was never lame a day in his life. A few halter class bloodlines tend to be known for bad feet, but every Quarter Horse I've known has been totally sound.
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What she said! My Quarter Horse Kalypso had fantastic feet...except that her old owners decided they knew how to do the feet trimming themselves and ended up getting her feet unbalanced. Once fixed, though...they were great.
 
Keket said:
Well, Coquette's sire, Nimble Knight, lived to be 30 and was never lame a day in his life. A few halter class bloodlines tend to be known for bad feet, but every Quarter Horse I've known has been totally sound.
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They do breed some halter class Quarter Horses for small feet, but all of ours are ranch or cow bred Quarter Horses with big solid feet and thick walls.
 
evilgiraffe said:
Not all Quarter Horses are made to be cow horses though - I know one who is actually terrified of cattle and runs away from them at high speed! :D:rolleyes:

Her mum fell in love with her in California, and brought her over when she moved back to England. Despite the fear of cows her Quarter Horse is just brilliant - super laid back and good natured. I'd certainly consider a Quarter Horse if I was to buy my own, although I suspect they're rather expensive to get hold of over here.
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Which is funny, 'cause right now you can find Quarter Horses for $400 or $500 or even less...and decent ones, too! :eek: Of course, the big time western pleasure and gaming horses are still big money!
 
Pretty much. Of course, one that inexpensive won't be highly trained or anything. But 30-60 days professional training on them, and ready to be "finished"...yeah, save for the shipping! I've found quite a few already looking for my own! Even $1000-$1200 is really cheap and you can get some really fantastic ones (that's like, what, 500-600 pounds for you guys ;) )
 
Well, indeed. Looking for a half-decent horse you can easily pay £3000 or more, so a proper ready-to-go Quarter Horse for less than half that in DOLLARS is pretty impressive!
 
We have some super Quarter Horses and part-bred Quarter Horses at the yard, although they are bred for polo and polocrosse rather than Western. Virtually all of them are Western-trained, though, so they neck-rein, and are ridden on the lightest of contacts (rein contact means go faster...that can be a hard thing to get for a newbie, especially a newbie being carted off across the polo pitch squeaking in terror, with everyone else shouting "drop your reins !" !!).

Joking aside, I rather like Quarter Horses in general. I think they have very pretty heads. Is there any Arab in the breed?
 
evilgiraffe said:
Well, indeed. Looking for a half-decent horse you can easily pay £3000 or more, so a proper ready-to-go Quarter Horse for less than half that in DOLLARS is pretty impressive!
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Well just look at the Criollos! I've seen them sell for £5000! For less then that you could get a nicely trained Quarter Horse and ship it overseas. ;)

Nope, no Arab to my knowledge. The breed goes back to the Spanish horses but that was hundreds of years ago.
 
If you buy a well bred QH in the UK you're looking at £5000 upwards for a youngster and £8000 upwards for a horse that's been backed and being ridden - that's what I was quoted at a top QH stud the other day, but these are from champion stallions I suppose.

Just a thing to think about for anyone looking to import a QH - watch out for HYPP, personally I would stay away from anything from Impressive lines. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HYPP
 
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I must be one of the lucky ones, to have a talented and trainable QH born and bred in the UK and not sold to me at the prices mentioned earlier!! But yes, you're right - those do appear to be the going rates for part-trained QHs with good prospects over here...

To answer Keket's question - we've just started competing this year in AQHA and All Breed show novice amateur classes in Trail, Pleasure and Horsemanship; my gelding is just getting a lead change together so Western Riding and/or reining may be options for next year, he's a solid all-around prospect. Outside of the show pen we hack out lots, he's very cowy and, when left to his own devices, will try to climb into a field with cows and when bored in the paddocks, has been seen to cut horses/geese/chickens to keep himself amused! We've also taken part in several long distance pleasure rides. He's definitely my good hair day horse, love him to bits :D
 
Laura83 said:
If you buy a well bred QH in the UK you're looking at £5000 upwards for a youngster and £8000 upwards for a horse that's been backed and being ridden - that's what I was quoted at a top QH stud the other day, but these are from champion stallions I suppose.
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Hence why I said you could buy a horse overseas and import it for less. And there's tons of good QH that don't have HYPP or Impressive bloodlines. Most ads will say "HYPP N/N" which means they don't carry it. It's really not hard to avoid.
 
Actually, there are plenty of Quarter Horses with Impressive breeding that are NOT positive for HYPP. All you have to do is make sure they are N/N.

You can get high-bred Quarter Horses for well over $10,000 here...I wouldn't personally touch one of those because I don't intend to do any high level showing ever! haha :)

(ETA cross-posted with keket)
 
My old boy was half quarter horse, he spent most of his life as a polo pony ( at 16hh:rolleyes:) then I bought him, I did trailblazers with him and he really excelled at SJ.

I know someone that has just bought her QH over here from the states, a palomino mare and she is stunning:)
 
Well bred, well trained quarterhorses are very expensive in New Zealand, too. I like the QH breed, and I've had a few rides on some lovely, responsive QHs. It's not only the QH that is versatile though, I've met some rather clever Appaloosas too! ;)
 
Cochise said:
Well bred, well trained quarterhorses are very expensive in New Zealand, too. I like the QH breed, and I've had a few rides on some lovely, responsive QHs. It's not only the QH that is versatile though, I've met some rather clever Appaloosas too! ;)
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Especially one named Cheeky :D
 
Well bred & trained QH can be very expensive here too.

Am I imagining things here Keket or isn't it here in Canada that Impressive line is not allowed to be bred to? Thought I read it in a provincial newspaper a few years back.

For years though, here in North America, the QH was the king of the most versatile breed.

I'll dig up photos of my boy. His name was Midnight Special, we bought him as a retired barrel racer; he was only 10yrs old.

When I got my grubby little hands on him, I retrained him as a pleasure/trail horse and then later on as a dressage horse.

Here's one the first summer we started training him for dressage. This was at the end of the session & we were cooling down. Sorry the photo is so dark.

Ridingsummer21986maybe.jpg
 
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