Blood

IS HENRY WELL BRED, PUREBLOODED AND REFINED?

Ponies can be described in many terms, some of which can be used in polite company. Henry is frequently infuriating, but he has enormous charm and a real sympathy for beginners. It is only for those who he thinks are getting a bit cocky, that he is such a pain. He is a much loved member of the family. So what is the relevance to Henry of all this "well bred" and "pure blooded" and "refined" nonsense.

Henry is clearly well bred, his father and mother got together, and did what males and females tend to do in the situation, and 11 months later Henry appeared. He was bred, and it must have been done pretty well to succeed at all, given the problems Thoroughbreds seem to have getting each other pregnant these days. It would add to the fun and games in the House of Lords if video evidence was required to show how well you had been bred.

Henry is of course pure blooded. All the blood in Henry is his own. Having done some biology, I know that Henry's conception didn't involve blood, or sharing needles would get you pregnant. It involved egg and sperm. Henry is the product of the genes of his mum and dad, and they are the product of the genes of their parents and so on back into the mists of time.
Which characteristics you inherit are governed by the science of genetics. Some characteristics are only carried in the female line, as mitochondrial DNA comes from the egg, which only comes from the mother. So the traditional Arab approach of considering the female line, the important one, is backed by science, even if the reasons only became apparent a few thousand years after the tradition.

What is the attraction of "pure blood", which appears to mean using a very restricted genetic pool and excluding outsiders from the game. Forming a clique is natural enough, but imposing a closed gene pool on people or animals is plain dangerous. I have seen an Arab horse web site, and the phrase is in common use on dog breeding sites as well, which says "His pedigree, a judicious blending of the “new” Egyptian imports to the United States, was a reflection of that old horseman’s adage, “Let the sire of the sire be the grandsire of the dam.”
Translated, this phrase reads "The father's father, should be the mother's grandfather." Or to put it bluntly "You should sleep with your brother's daughter" or for a bit of variety, "your sister's daughter." In The UK and the USA and Egypt and most of the world this is a criminal offence, Christianity and Islam both condemn it as incest, so why should I force my animals to do something all rational people find disgusting and immoral?

Pure blooded, pedigree or incestuous, take your pick.

Breed societies have produced animals that are beautiful, or strong, or fancy coloured or fast depending on the ancestry. If you breed your most beautiful mare and stallion, and at the same time your ugliest mare and stallion, the odds are that the beautiful pair will produce a beautiful foal.....in your eyes, and the ugly pair, an ugly foal. And the more you breed from your concept of beauty, and weed out what you see as ugly, the more likely your herd is to produce what you want.
Why have the breed societies added the concept of "pure blood" and "well bred" and "good families" and "closed stud books"? Why are we looking at a society with a few "aristocrats" worthy of respect because they can trace their family tree through specific books, and the common herd, who can't.

Is this the revenge of the British establishment for the battle of Yorktown when the Declaration of Independence became effective? Did they decide then, "we have lost a skirmish and an army or two, but we will send a fifth column of horses and dogs and persuade these damn colonials that breeding really does matter, and after a bit, we'll be in charge again." I'm gathering evidence, and even if it doesn't make convincing history, it would make a really magic TV series.

This process of closed bloodlines, inbreeding and linebreeding apparently gives refinement, but there is one element missing. What you throw away. You refine, by throwing away the coarse stuff, the common bits. To give a table refined legs, you carve away everything you can, and there is a risk you go too far, and have irretreivably weakened the table, so you throw it away. When refining bloodlines you aren't throwing away shavings and the occasional table, you are throwing away animals.

And these well bred, pureblooded refined, fine coated, wispy maned, high tailed, spindle legged, high stepping and excitable animal can only show these characteristics next to a Henry. Their owners need people like me to keep the tough, stocky, warmhearted and trustworthy commoners so their "refined" animals stand out from the common herd. But funnily enough those of us who love the tough little native ponies, the working cobs and all the cross breeds, we don't need the fancy breeds because we love what we have, not the contrast with what someone else has got.