Half-breeeeed, that's all I ever heard, Half-breeeeed, how I learned to hate the word

Alright, alright.. back to the story.

And so I got home from WXYZ, (mercifully not a 12 hour drive!), washed the mud off of my boots, and went back to the drawing board.

Time to stop thinking of "good" and "bad" horses in big amorphous groups. I tried "CSH", "from a small breeder", "from a large breeder" - with zero success.  From now on, I would concentrate on evaluating each horse as an individual, and judge each one on its own nutty baggage.

What were my criteria again?
- Horse with potential to be competitive at upper levels (four good feet, etc, etc)
- Modern, leggy - no cocktail weenies (more on this later)
- Flog free temperament - a.k.a "hot"
- Smaller in stature
- Cheap

I was pretty stuck on the fact that the horse have one sexy, impressive "dressage-y" parental unit - most likely the sire.  However... hot dressage-y dam would be perfectly fine too, but what are the chances of that - who would breed a smoking hot elite mare to some backyard unproven stallion?

(Oh wait, I forgot about the whole contingent of insane cremello people, who  for some crazy-assed reason do this, and for even crazier-assed reasons, seem to make a go of it...there is an entire post to rant on about here for sure).

And so, I hit the bulletin boards again.. exactly what were the reportedly good choices in the dam department that might make it to higher levels of dressage, without the price tag associated with full WB....?

The obvious category here that actually does make sense are the Iberian horses.  I have known and ridden a few now, including a PSG stallion who was absolutely georgeous, and I must say I am a fan - the nice ones really are nice.  However, due to the Fabio romance novel factor, even the totally crappy ones with the double jointed paddle knees that look like flagella coming down centreline are more expensive than a similarly talented warmbloods.   So this was out of the question for me.

Curmudgeon, I still don't get it.  The obvious choice is a TBx.  Why do you hate TBs so much, what is your problem? Did you seriously eliminate them from contention all together?

No, no....I did not avoid TB crosses, not at all.

But the problem here is that decent TBxWB’s are generally marketed as hunters – which adds $$$ to their price tag for no particular reason related to athletic ability.  And the ones I saw WERE hunters – all-round flat boring movers, definitely not worthy of the upper price bracket to me.  The other issue is that they tended to be bigger than what I hoped to buy; since everyone wants their hunter to be 17hh so that it can safely clear the massive 3’ fences that the average child or adult amateur owner will be soaring over.

The only breeds I eliminated from contention “just because” were the hard core rainbow farter breeds, and colours or crosses thereof – things like Friesians, Canadian horses, and anything with flowing hair and/or described by a word ending in an “o” (palomino, tobiano, sabino, Art Deco = owner weirdo). I know, I know...some are very nice.  Maybe I missed out on a real gem here due to my fear of nutbars. I was willing to take that risk.

Don't you want to comb me, baby?

So, eliminating all of this – I found 3 breeds that kept cropping up in discussions of good options for warmblood crosses:

Arabs, Morgans, and Saddlebreds.  I am not saying this was right or wrong, but that's where I headed...