After reading your essays and thinking about things I went back to the Bloodhorse website and lo and behold jumping off the page was the fact that the top three finishers in the Ladies' Sprint were all rated 'D' by True Nicks.  I know people that won't even look at a breeding unless it gets an 'A' rating (needless to say they don't listen to anyone with a different opinion).

--Nyessa Blubaugh

Dear Ellen,

I have read, with extreme interest, your essays on unsoundness.  You are absolutely on track!  I currently do not own horses, but in the past I have owned and bred AQHA horses.  What I have witnessed in the AQHA with the sire Impressive and his contamination of the breed with HYPP, is a speeded up version of the increasing unsoundness found in thoroughbreds.  Just looking at the old race records of horses, shows that, what once was a tough,  hard as nails breed, who could routinely race 50-60 starts, and sometimes 150-200 starts, has seriously deteriorated.  All one has to do is look at the old Fair Play/Man O War line from 80-90 years ago to see what comparative decrepits we have today bred.

We have also noted, besides offset knees as your DVM noted recently in your article on your site, an increase in laminitis, and tendon problems, which most likely is associated with inherited collagen disorders. 

Perhaps, in addition to taking our blinders off (like your essays work to do), we need to invest some resources into genetic scrutiny of our breed as a whole.

We have genetic material from old lines available, Man O War, Lexington, Bend Or, etc.  We could use these to screen for genetic changes in collagen, and skeletal development.  That is how the HYPP gene from Impressive was found. We need to look at these ancient samples, now while they can still be found. 

However, we would also need the resolve to work at eliminating those deleterious genes from the collective pool, something which the AQHA is sadly failing to do.

--Name Withheld By Request