A good solid built , well muscled, round boned (cannons) rounded or wide oval barreled (rib-caged) straight conformation, good head-set and level-headed with a good work ethic horse, is hard to beat.
We had a Skipper W bred mare from OK that was like that. Just barely 14 hands but stocky, strong legs, lots of foot, and fast. Some fool made her mouth into cast iron, but she knew more about stock than we did so really there was little need for "guidance" from us. She was doing more at 16 yrs than some of the big butt, little foot horses were at 5 or 7. Good horse.
Is there still the move within AQHA to go back to the traditional form? They were trying to go that way the last year or two we raised foals.
Funny what happened to the Apps, isnt it? I have used some that were fat 1/4 horses with spots, which are not all bad, but the best one we had around was a runt. If you were color blind and he had a sack on his head, you would have thought he was one of the real Arabs. Looked like a rat, was so short a fellow with long legs could clear him, but dang if he couldn't near climb trees. He loved to run the dogs, if you hunted off of him you were in for a ride because he would slide down the lime stone, jump into and swim the river, and dang near run the logs after coons or squirrels. He was a good horse to, but in a different way.
My big "American Horses" were a joy to use and if I had it to do over again I wouldn't want anything else (unless its that pretty sorrel long-ear someone posted a pic of :)) , but they couldn't keep up with that spotted rat in the woods.
