today at books a million i was browsing and came back to the coffee area to find my husband reading one of those ENcyclopedia of the Horse or Horse Encyclopedia books, you know the kind, there are millions I think, all of them so bland and generic. But he was reading the part about icelandics and going wow, hmm, gosh why didnt they mention any of this in that horse illustrated article, all it had was the same old same ol junk they all say but this one... and he let me look at it and I was amazed. It talked about how some horses were bred in certain areas for meat, for racing, for show, for draft. It named studs that are allowed to roam free and breed for draft. And that these are where the very heavy cannon bone icelandics are generally from, actually named the geographic areas. actually named studs used to breed for draft cannon bone density, for race, for meat. Then it said they only come in certain colors, didnt even name SD which was interesting and said "chestnut with flaxen mane very rarely have manes and tails as dark as the body color it is always much lighter". stuff like that that i have NEVER heard. About gait it seemed to stress the four gaits as the three usual and PACE and THEN said "some have an extra gait, the tolt, which is what they call a rack in the US." verrrrrry interesting!! I almost wanted to contact the book and find out who wrote the article because it very obviously came from a different source than the ones who have been contributing to icelandic articles for the last ten years at least. oh! It said they are never over 14.2 hh. NEVER. it said. usually 12.2 to 14 it said. and for a pic it had a horse looked exactly like Tivar, who donny has started calling "Digger" since he has made a new hole about four feet deep by his water trough. DOnny said "if I was nasi I would be nervous if my paddock mate started digging a hole that big, its almost a nasi size hole." and i was think maybe teev is a HOLER graduate ar ar. anyway. I couldnt buy the book it was forty bucks. but it was refreshing. it seemed to have originated with input from breeders in iceland and not people here where for some reason some sort of erroneous info culture started and took hold i think.... Janice
-- yipie tie yie yo
