We had three mares foal last spring, so we now have three yearlings (a gelding and two fillies) of our own, plus two other yearlings that board with us. We also own a 2-year-old gelding (named Ionto) we bred, and we have two three-year-old fillies (named Sparrow and Amani) we bred, both of whom will begin real work in a month.

These six youngsters are by four stallions, four stallions of different breeds who are in very different stages of their breeding careers. Those stallions’ careers are indicative of the challenge in the sporthorse-breeding world of certifying stallions for breeding.

In the Thoroughbred racing world, this decision is very straightforward and relatively simple: Fast colts get to breed, and if they produce more fast horses, they become highly desirable, valuable and influential. If they don’t produce, well, people stop sending their mares—and some become sporthorse sires. We have a 12-year-old gelding by Class Secret (a son of Secretariat) who produced some good steeplechasers and a lot of good show hunters and jumpers before he died.

Full siblings Sparrow and Ionto are by the Thoroughbred Reputed Testamony, whom Denny Emerson owned and stood. “Rep” was a stakes winner who failed to produce precocious speedsters and wasn’t a fashionable racehorse sire before Denny bought him. He too has now produced numerous successful event horses and show hunters, but he died a couple of years ago too.

Class Secret and Reputed Testamony are examples of the challenge sporthorse stallion owners face: They have to market the stallions based on pedigree, performance, test scores or color to get mares, because by the time their get are old enough to show their ability to pass on performance characteristics, they’ll likely be dead. We picked Secret and Rep because we knew them, because we knew the people who owned them, and because we knew what exceptional individuals they were, both physically and mentally.

Amani is by Formula One, Denny’s Irish Sporthorse stallion. Denny has promoted and marketed “Farley” more aggressively and cleverly than he did Rep, and Amani is from his second crop. “Farley,” who’s now competing at preliminary level in eventing, has definitely thrown a bunch of fantastic-looking and -moving individuals—and Amani is one. I tell people that Amani is the horse you could spend your life breeding for, and I can’t wait to ride her. But it will be another year or three before we see if Farley’s foals will perform as well as they look, and by then he’ll be 11.

Our yearling filly, Bella, is by the very successful pinto show hunter Palladio. We’ve never seen him in person (he stands in Washington), although his owner sends a very long video of him that allows you to get to know him pretty well. We chose him because of his obvious jumping ability, his clearly workmanlike temperament, and (honestly) because of his color. We hoped for a pinto foal, which Bella is, because we thought it would be more marketable. Now we’re likely to keep her since her dam, our wonderful Thoroughbred mare Lizzie, colicked and died two weeks after Bella was born.

OK, so Rep and Secret are gone, and Farley and Palladio look likely to be successful stallions since they’re competing well and throwing get that are attractive and look athletic. The sire of our other two yearlings, though, epitomizes the frustration of dealing with breed associations that require approval.

Panzyr was a California-bred warmblood stallion, with mostly Hanoverian blood but eligible for the Oldenburg registry. As a 2-year-old he jumped out of his own paddock and into the mares’ field to breed a maiden Hanoverian mare (by Pik Solo). And then he jumped out of the mares’ field and back into his own paddock. Later that summer, while turned out with the mares that were all supposed to be pregnant (to learn his manners around mares), one of them slipped her foal and came into season, and Panzyr also obligingly bred her. The results of those two matings are the yearlings we now have.

I first met Panzyr late in his 2-year-old year. He was tied to a trailer in my driveway, and I had no idea he was a stallion as I rode and led horses past him. That’s how relaxed and mature he was. Then, last summer, when he was 3, we had him in training for almost four months, preparing him for an Oldenburg inspection in August. He was already started under saddle, and I concentrated on getting him fit on our hills, on basic flatwork and basic work over fences. We also practiced with him in hand and on free-jumping. He did it all fantastically. In fact, he never really felt like a baby, never gave me that feeling of riding a flat-bottomed barge down a rushing river that most babies do for awhile. And his jumping—holy cow, could he leave the ground and use his neck and his back. His whole attitude was of a willing, generous and athletically blessed horse.

When Panzyr’s owner (who also bred him) had taken him to a pre-inspection at 2, the inspectors had told her that he had a common head and was too old-fashioned looking. So our focus was to try to make his performance so outstanding that they couldn’t turn him down. Well, unfortunately, that didn’t happen. We weren’t there, but his owner said he just wasn’t himself, that he wasn’t moving with his usual gusto and that he jumped almost like he didn’t care. He didn’t pass, and, devastated, his owner gelded him that week, as there isn’t a second chance in warmblood inspections.

We were as devastated as she was, because we considered Panzyr the type of stallion vital to the U.S. market—a horse with top-notch athletic ability and a top-notch brain. And in one day, because a couple of guys from Germany said so, he was lost to the genetic pool. To us, it raised a question we’d (along with others) pondered for years: How should breeding stallions be selected, chosen or certified?

Should type or pedigree be most important? Recall that as a 2-year-old Panzyr had been called old-fashioned. That’s because the breed association inspectors are pushing for stallions of a more Thoroughbred-looking type and who have the exaggerated knee movement that’s become so (erroneously) popular in dressage today. They’re trying to push away from the kind, big warmbloods that people could ride (and enjoy), to more fiery types that most Americans, frankly, can’t ride.

Shouldn’t performance and temperament count more? Performance certainly counts most in Thoroughbred and Quarter Horse racing. But the big problem with relying primarily on performance in sporthorse breeding is the time lag I mentioned above. If a stallion is 10 (or older) before he can reach a performance standard, that’s seven years down the breeding drain. But surely something could be done for a horse like Panzyr, to allow him to prove himself in the ring and offer contingent approval until then?

Yes, breed association leaders will argue that without approval qualifications, anybody with a colt (of whatever breed we’re talking about) could stand a stallion and potentially dilute (or pollute) the gene pool. They fear stallions would become like mares—where everyone who has one that goes lame or won’t perform thinks it would be a great idea to breed them.

Still, I really don’t think that a few European dudes should be allowed to select stallions for the American market, for our base of Thoroughbred mares and for our riders who (especially in the dressage and hunter/jumper worlds) are primarily amateur women of limited experience and ability? Shouldn’t American breeders and trainers be approving the stallions to stand here?

(If you want to see photos of Sparrow, Amani or Panzyr, go to my blog of July 20, 2009.)