"What we have here is a palomino Trakehner"

My sincere apologies to all the talented equine photographers out there, but this is the best shot I could get of Cowboy, now that he's a month old and living with him mom in a very large paddock. Plus, he's very friendly, which means that whenever I tried to take a snapshot of him I ended up with a close-up of his muzzle stuck in the viewfinder. But as you can see by even this photo, he's not exactly taking after his sire, who is-- conformationally speaking-- your typical working American Quarter horse. At just 4 weeks old, Cowboy's back is at my chest, and I'm nearly 5'9". So I'm thinking he's going to be a bit taller than his dad, who was barely 15.2. Plus, Cowboy is definitely built uphill, which is again taking after his dam's warmblood side. And he struts around his pen like a sport horse. So much for our desire to produce just an all-around riding horse. Though things can certainly change over time as he develops, it appears that what we have here, as my sister says, "is a palomino Trakehner."

Now, Cowboy really isn't technically a Trakehner. His granddam was. His dam is half-Trakehner, sired by a Dutch Warmblood (and branded as an Oldenburg). How's that for being confusing? Believe me, raising warmblood sport horses and managing their registration possibilities can be a dizzying process! But Cowboy does look the part of his warmblood ancestors. And that's okay. He'll still be a lovely, useful horse. However, he's a living example of what can happen when you breed two horses of dissimilar conformation together: you get a foal that's representative of either one or the other parent, and often you get neither. You get a throwback to some great-grandsire lurking in the genetic gene pool. Rarely do you get a foal that is an optimal blending of the two disparate parents. Which is why it's best to keep in mind that old horseman's saying: "Always breed type to type." I'm guessing that means that next time around we should either breed April to an actual warmblood. Yet no one in our family presently wants another warmblood. Or my mom (who loves doing the "foal thing") could get herself an AQHA broodmare. As for me? I'll just stay on the sidelines. With my gelding.

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