Theory about pairings.

Now I'm not saying this is applicable for her entire programme because I think due to the horses she owns, she equally has to do them justice in selecting pairings so she has to stick to some of 'normal agenda' with alot of them.

Now prefacing this post in the interest of being fair to both sides, not everyone sees Katie's influence in the AQHA world as positive. Now I'm not referring to the arm chair experts, but we have all seen some breeders etc express more negative vibes towards her. It's not nice but it's a fact of life not everyone will love you.

TL:DR - Some of Katie's 'strange' breeding choices are her actually trying to play the long game to improve perception of some classes.

Now my theory has been the last couple of years, Katie has thrown a few curve balls in the breeding programme.

Alot of people do comment on how she seems to cross huntseat breeding with more western bred horses and how it seems pretty strange because the two stereotypically have very different disciplines which generally have a different overall 'type' and in theory, you have a *risk* of a baby that doesn't fit well into either.

I'm not crazy good with getting my thoughts out of my head and into text to please bear with me.

Is this an attempt to try to influence the show pen, particularly in classes like the western pleasure, which alot of people have criticism about.

My theory and for clarity - Katie has never outright expressed criticism for the current state of WP. On the podcast she was on recently, she did seem to give off the vibe she was abit 'meh' about it but equally I don't think she can denounce it, because she owns alot of horses that were very successful in that class and by speaking negatively about it, she's kind of dismissing her own stocks achievements.

Now enough rambling - my theory is that these hunt seat/western crosses are possibly an attempt to influence these classes more positively and move them away from the current standard - yes she is only one breeder, but if she can get a couple of these crosses doing well, like anything, people are more likely to try to follow suite.

Part of my theory is that these slightly larger, more athletic horses are going to still have alot of standard western characteristics however they also theoretically end up with the more floaty, free flowing movement from the hunt seat side.

Yes they are probably not going to be able to perform the lope in the same way but alot of people do speak negatively about the way the lope is currently shown - so why not let the lope be a little faster but less choppy and have a more overall positive perception of the class.

It's kind of a fail safe in the sense if they take more of the hunt seat genetic lottery, they can go in that direction and visa versa. A small change of producing a foal that doesn't fit anywhere really but nothing to say that horse won't go on to be the perfect personal horse for some one who never intends to show.

If you read this far then thankyou, I could be chatting absolute waffle at this point but it's a theory that popped into my head a while ago and I just felt a need to let it out 😂😂