A pleasure?

Today I'm going off-topic, waaaay off-topic.

On Monday, October 11, I went with a couple of friends to the All American Quarter Horse Congress, the world's largest single-breed show held at the Ohio Expo Center in Columbus. This event features lots of high-dollar horseflesh and vendors galore.

We go there for the vendors. Most of them run "Congress" specials that budget-minded horse owners like my friends and me are happy to take advantage of. Vendors sell everything from horse trailers to feed and supplements to grooming supplies to saddles to show clothes. If you're looking for the ultimate in silver, sequins, and fringe, this is your happy place.

We don't go to watch the horses.

There's a lot to admire about the American Quarter Horse as a breed. By phenotype, they're powerfully built with willing dispositions and sensible minds. By individual, there's a whole lot more variety in conformation, disposition, and mental capacity. I've met few I've actually liked.

Way back in the early 1980s, two showmen rode their exhausted horses into the show ring. They won. The judges' favor launched what I consider a truly deplorable trend in western riding, specifically the western pleasure class.

Recent years have seen a general distaste for the "peanut rolling" animals that take the trophies despite rules by breed authorities to disqualify such animals. Rules regarding dismissal for "broken-legged" gaits, heads held below the withers, etc. are largely ignored in favor of the travesty of horsemanship demonstrated in this video. Scroll to the 19:30 mark. This is what the western pleasure folks call cantering or loping. This is what almost anyone else calls a lope or canter.

Can you see the difference? In the first video, taken at a Congress show, the lope (i.e., canter) shows a horse that moves as though every joint and muscle hurts. It's excruciatingly slow and painful to watch. In the second video, the horse moves at a canter (i.e., lope) without its natural gait having been mechanically trained into the "slow-legged" abomination that master farrier Tom Stovall once described as the gait of an "ossified pachyderm." I call it "dead horse walking."

One would think that after nearly four decades, this "trend" would have faded away. It's neither a pleasure to watch nor a pleasure to ride. The power of the AQHA is that its trends trickle down to other breeds. One sees the same awkward, broken gaits in western pleasure classes held by the Appaloosa Horse Club, the American Paint Horse Association, etc.

But it's not all bad. Those Quarter Horses are being ridden on loose (i.e., slack) reins once they're in the show ring. Regardless of the severity of the bits in their mouths, there's no pressure being applied except for small, nuanced cues. Compare that to the American Saddlebred version of western pleasure. Saddlebreds naturally move differently than Quarter Horses, due differences in their conformation. Both breeds walk, trot, and canter, but how they move at the walk, trot, and canter is different. Some breeds tend toward flatter, more lateral strides dictated by the ratio of fast-twitch to slow-twitch muscles, bone length, neck placement, etc. Others have higher, rounded, more "animated" strides due to those same attributes. In the same type of class--western pleasure--the Saddlebreds move with more natural gaits, yet their forward impulsion is held back by tight reins that force a rigid headset. None of those horses gets relief from the bit.

When it comes to literature, the definition of "pleasure" differs, too. What some see as desirable and worthy of copying, others deride as contrived, sloppy, overwritten, or even painful to read. This relates to almost everything we experience, from food to work to play. One person might enjoy the hottest of hot sauces, another cringes when his tongue tingles. A gardening enthusiast may enjoy digging in the dirt, but loathe sewing; a sibling or friend might love to sew and abhor gardening; and both might vastly enjoy opera.

Leading authorities and influencers have their personal preferences, just like those judges in the show ring. What they reward gets repeated and copied by those seeking the same recognition of excellence. This explains both why codified standards are necessary to uphold minimum expectations of quality and why they're inconsistently applied. It justifies variation: what one judge or reader prefers, another deems inadequate. What one editor prefers, another judges as a disservice to the author and/or readers.

Like horsemanship, literature has not one right and true definition of excellence or quality. Excellence and quality within literature include many of the same attributes, but preferences among readers vary with enough similarity such that general trends form and hold strong among genres, just like within horse shows. When you read, what pleases you? That determines your standard of excellence.

Perhaps I didn't go so far off-topic after all.

Every word counts.

#henhousepublishing #hollybargobooks #writing