Conformation help for Thoroughbred?

Here's a diagram of your horse, not quite like the other one but similar:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29138073@N06/

None of your pics was real good for this; the most level and dead on one was just a silhouette due to his color; I could not pick out the points necessary. So we'll make do with this one. :)

The horse was standing at a slant, so the bottom yellow line represents the true ground level. This is where his two nearest feet are touching the ground.

The top red line is parallel to the true ground level line, so one can see what a level line at his wither height is. Compare this to the orange line labeled Body Slope, which runs from the highest point of his wither to the highest point of his hindquarter. You'll see that this horse is built uphill, and substantially so.

The pink line across his legs runs from the knee joint to the hock joint, and merely shows that his front cannon bones are shorter than the rear cannon bones, as they should be.

The front blue triangle allows you to visualize the internal angles of his shoulder bones. The leftmost line, running from point of wither to point of shoulder, is his shoulder angle, which should be (and is) in th 50 degreeish range. The bottom line, running from point of shoulder to elbow, is his humerous. From this we see both the angle and more importantly the length of the humerous bone. A horse with a short humerous will have a short stride; a horse with a long humerous will be able to extend his shoulder further and have a long stride. The vertical line on the right shows how these two joints align. A vertical alignment is the strongest, putting the least possible stress on the joints.

The back blue triangle allows you to visualize the internal angles of his hindquarter and the internal leg bones. The top side, running from point of hip to point of buttock, corresponds to the pelvis; the rear side corresponds to his femur, and the front side shows the alignment of the joints over each other. This triangle should be approximately equilateral, with the alignment line as close to vertical as possible.

If you compare these triangles to the bones in this pic http://www.infovisual.info/02/072_en.html you'll more easily see what I'm trying to say.

The two unlabeled vertical purple lines show his height, extended across his body. They're simply there to produce the level line across the top.

So, these show that your horse is built uphill, with good structure in both the front and rear ends.

They don't show what I consider the most important thing - the overall balance of the horse from front to rear. If you divide the horse into thirds, poll to point of wither, point of wither to point of hip, point of hip to point of buttock, you can assess his structural balance. He should be about equal thirds.

This horse is a bit unbalanced, with less depth through the hindquarter than is ideal.

All these angles are going to look a little off in this diagram because he is not standing square. He's leaning forward over the wall, his hind leg is back which throws off the hindquarter triangle, and so on, so I've just tried to explain where the lines should go and what they mean.

Hope this helps.

He looks like a reasonably nice horse, with a nice jump on him.

The main thing I see is a lack of muscle. He needs to work that topline more to build muscle there, his neck is also rather thin and could stand to put on some muscle there which can be done. But more importantly, is along his back. He's really lacking any sort of back muscle in those pictures. A little fill in in his back will make his withers look less huge too. Of course, this is fairly typical of OTTBs, unless someone spends the time after their racing career to build that topline.

His shoulder could be better, but not bad for an OTTB. Of course, I with he also

Do you have any recent pictures showing his condition? They don't have to be conformation quality, I'm just interested to see how he looks being consistently worked.

I am sure you could find one through google or ask why get things from here that may not be correct..

I think he is a beautiful strong sound looking horse. If he is well trained you should be very proud of him.

If I am buying a horse, I am more concerned about its training and potential to be trained than every little thing about its conformation.

I have sold a lot of horses that did not have perfect or even near perfect conformation for a lot of money because they were very will trained.

I always want a horse to have decent conformation and correct legs.

Pointy croup- honestly dont know what that will do

Square shoulder--which will limit the amount he can really snap his knees up for dressage and hunter

Small base of neck- which will make his natural head set lower, rather than higher. So good for hunter, not good for dressage or jumping.

Wow- really nice trot. you can see the suspension off the ground. Beautiful! You can see how his head set is lower and not as collected up because of the small base of his neck. Super super nice trot though. Great impulsion.

2nd trot pic-- You can see how his square shoulder is limiting his front leg extention. Not a big deal--but in higher level dressage, he wont do well because of it. Not really collected on the hind end, needs more impulsion. Not as good as the 1st trot photo.

Since you said he's muscled up now I'm sure he looks better, but the way his neck moves into his wither....not crazy about it. His midsection doesn't really match the rest of him either. He's an okay mover, could extend a little more to look better, but he's tight and even with his knees which is a plus.

Overall he's nothing outstanding but nothing horrendous.

Uphill

Huge wither (typical of TB's.)

Thin neck

Just overall too big of a shoulder for his neck there's only so much muscle you can put on a horse unless you put it on steriods or something. Its just how he's built.

He's going along nice for an 18 year old if he's eventing. Keep up the good work and he'll last a long time

EDIT: Right, I knew that. Just testing you. I'm tired okay I should just go to sleep.

if he's an ottb he should & would have pretty good conformation.