Irish cob, with a problem or 2

Justapaddy I think the insinuation is that everything irish is dodgy! Having an approved panel of vets is obviously more dodgy than just letting any vet at all do it - riiiight. As for passport swapping people are dellusional if they think its happening in Ireland to prey on the innocent uk buyers. I have heard stories before from the UK where people ended up with english horses that were in fact marked as loss of use for insurance then sold on.

I have to wonder if our feral badly treated horses are so useless and nervous - why the hell are you lot buying them from us?! The English seem to fall over themselves to buy an 'Irish Cob' in the last few years - I hate to break it to you lads its not a breed or a fancy dan horse its just a cob shaped heinz 47 from ireland. It cracks me up to see english websites advertising 'genuine irish cobs' for sale at ridiculously high prices - you are being done over by your own dealers lads! and you think we are the ones who are as thick as the ditches we jump over. The dealers buy these cheap over here and then sell them at inflated prices in the UK - I really wonder sometimes!

Bad riding, bad handling, bad rearing, bad breeding and Horse cruelty happens all over and its a tragic thing (spindle farm anyone? ) its not related to geographical location. Its something we all should be trying to work against but when you are adopting the approach of blame the irish well thats not going to fix anything is it?

Its mental really its a bit like me watching 'snatch' and assuming that most country english people are inbred pikeys who live in a caravan with their ma and keep wild dogs (or is it dags?). I'd imagine you would be offended yes? Yet its okay for you to brand me, my friends and family as little more than uneducated horse beaters.

To be honest when I see some of the racist replies on here I am tempted to type the phrase 'bite me' but have to stop myself before the next rumours are that our humans are as feral as our horses
 
I think we are losing a little proportionality here folks!

The point was about proportions. There is very little breeding of horses by ordinary farmers in the UK. I understand that there is a huge amount of breeding of horses by ordinary farmers in Ireland. Please correct me if I am wrong but that information came from Irish people themselves.

Many of those horses are bought in the rough or at livestock markets by people who deal at the lower end of the market . People looking for cheap horses.

That group of people are always going to contain a higher proportion of dodgy dealers than the producers of higher class horses. There is a higher proportion of such breeding and dealing in Ireland than there is in the UK, so there will be proportionally more bad practice.

That statement is not racist if it is true. I have heard it from Irishmen themselves. Please correct it is wrong.

It is proportions we are talking about here, we are not criticising any individual Irish horse producer so please stop taking personal offence!
 
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CPtyres, there are so many types of navicular changes. Ty's heels are graduly collapsing (as a result of the start of navicular apparently) and being barefoot would be the worse thing for him!

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Probably not. If you took him barefoot with the right diet, the right amount of work, plenty of movement in his turnout and some dry turnout for part of the day in the winter his heels would almost certainly rebuild and his navicular changes would reverse.

If you want to see photos of collapsed heels recovering, PM me and I will send you them. We have so many examples of flat soles concaving up and collapsed heels rebuilding themselves that it would be difficult to know where to start other than with one of my own horses.

Your farrier says he can't go barefoot? Yes, so did mine 8 months before he did his first affiliated horse trials with no shoes on (jumps at 1m10).
 
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I think we are losing a little proportionality here folks!

The point was about proportions. There is very little breeding of horses by ordinary farmers in the UK. I understand that there is a huge amount of breeding of horses by ordinary farmers in Ireland. Please correct me if I am wrong but that information came from Irish people themselves.

Many of those horses are bought in the rough or at livestock markets by people who deal at the lower end of the market . People looking for cheap horses.

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Yes, there are many horses bought from small farmers/breeders in Ireland. In fact that makes up the majority of the breeders in Ireland. However that is not to say that they are in any way inferior to large studs. Many of these small breeders are amazing horsemen and have been raised with horses all their lives. I know plenty of top producers and international competitors who have their regulars that they return to each year to buy foals or youngstock. Again, it is down to who you know and where to look. I have been shopping to Holland for dressage horses and would never have done so if I didn't have a close personal friend over there who was able to point me in the right direction.

A huge amount of top Irish bred competition horses are sourced this way - and obviously it didn't do them any harm. In relation to broken and riding horses - look at Vere Phillips - his business is buying and selling Irish horses and he can be seen at Dublin Horse Show every year trying horse after horse.

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It is proportions we are talking about here, we are not criticising any individual Irish horse producer so please stop taking personal offence!

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Unfortunately it is (evidently) difficult to not take offense to some of the very sweeping and unfounded comments made on this thread. As you say it's about proportions - if I and others on here, had not stood up and made our case, then those statements would have remained unchallenged which I think is extremely disappointing both for equistrianism and for the integrity of this forum.
 
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