> > the organizations that have the most to do with defining the differences > are ones that classify "horse" and "pony" separately for showing > purposes, usually for jumping (but sometimes, as in dressage, for age of > rider allowed). they uniformly use the 14.2 height marker, and > according to them, both the animals you describe are ponies.
I think this has to do with what our focus has been. When we were showing pony hunters over fences, height was very important. In that venue, the 14.3 h Hunter, who is registered as a TWH, is one inch off from being a pony. So (semantics aside) I think we have animals who are ponies by genetics and animals who are ponies by the rule book. In the pony hunter classes, the divisions were definitely height based and it wouldn't matter if I had a DNA report in my right hand, if my "pony" went over 14.2, he couldn't have competed. Our trainer was a slim young woman who later married our grandson. She was certainly light enough to ride a 12.2 h pony. She actually weighed less than 13 year old Gabe who was showing the ponies, but in her last few years of pony riding, people would sometimes approach her and suggest that she might have outgrown her pony. Nancy
