Warmblood By Scot Tolman W
armbloods. That’s where my problem begins: the name. I see
myself as a hot blood kind of person in a cold blood kind of body. So, yes, it makes sense that I should feel mitigated (in a passive voice kind of way) and content with the term, Warmblood, but I’m not. How many of you have had to explain to non-horse people what breed of horses you raise/ride/own/covet? Do you get the same reaction I do? “A what blood?” “Warmblood. Ours are Dutch, but
there are German Warmbloods, French, Polish, etc.”
“Is their blood a different temperature or something?” “No. It’s just a distinction from other types of horses.” “Warmblood. Huh. How big are they? “They’re pretty big.” A flash of recognition passes over the non-horse
person’s face. “Oh! Like the Budweiser horses, right?” I realize in its inception the term was purely meant
to distinguish between the hot bloods, Arabs and Thoroughbreds, and cold bloods, Drafts, but the psychological implications of existing in the middle, not hot or cold, mediocre, may be dooming this equine phenomenon eventually to be labeled by a term that I despise: generic. Yes, it is possible that we are destined to be producing black and white horses with a magnetic bar code. I know the Dutch. If a buyer approaches a Dutch farmer and asks if he or she has a foal with a bar code, he or she very well might not...but next year’s foals will all have bar codes. I’m familiar with the Germans. They’ll spend four or five years berating the Dutch for producing horses with bar codes, then, all of a sudden, they’ll have a new and improved “scanning” system for their horses. The French will rant and rave, but, finally, in appreciation of a good case of wine, they’ll tattoo their horses with bar codes, sing an especially patriotic song, and then start insulting the Germans and the Americans. The Irish will genetically engineer the bar code on the potato first; and then, obviously, the transition to horse application is only a generation away. The Americans will be so label-conscious/European-conscious that they will flock
trans-Atlantic and buy anything with a bar
code...hmmmm...this may be the solution to the decline of the Euro. Why am I so worried about this? I’m
not really; it’s more of an observation. Maybe I’m just being passive aggressive. This could all stem from the fact that if I bred Hanoverians, or Oldenburgs, or Trakehners, life would be ever so much easier—I could probably get to the second or third conversation with the non-horse person before the term, Warmblood, even came up. But, no, I breed Dutch Warmbloods. The word is
right there from the get-go. Of course, this is undoubtedly preferable from the point of view of the person asking me the name of my breed. If I were to pronounce it in Dutch, it would come out something like this: “Koniggrabmyvermbluudpairdennederlanders.” And
I would have spit on the person at least during the first syllable, and probably during the third and sixth. It’s not that I have anything better to suggest; I don’t. But
how about The Ultimate Sport Horse, aka, TUSH. We could have the Dutch TUSH, the German TUSH, the French TUSH... probably not. If the Warmblood conversation were awkward with the non-horse person, imagine the TUSH conversation. Of course, it would be a much more convenient name for my requirement that my horses have bigger butts than mine. Instead of distinguishing by nationality, we could distinguish by size: The Apple-TUSH breed; the Sloping- TUSH breed; the Flat-TUSH. It could work. Seriously, who decided on this term, Warmblood?
So here’s my challenge to you: come up with a better name! The reader who submits the best new name wins a dose of Donatelli frozen semen on me! Email your suggestions to me at
tolmanc@gmail.com, and our beloved editor and I will select the best name and publish it in a future issue.
WT
Scot Tolman has been breeding Dutch Warmbloods for the past 20 years at Shooting Star Farm in Southwestern New Hampshire. Read more of Scot’s writing at
shootingstarfarm.com.
Warmbloods Today 49
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