Memorialized in a Photo... good and bad

[Elaine]

A friend noticed this photo on our website... it is a very famous photo of a stallion we do not use in our pedigree because of what we see below the knee... which we’ve seen passed on in the bloodline. The friend noticed the legs... and commented something like, “Why would they let this photo out in circulation, it shows a serious fault.”

I can’t begin to answer for why the photo is out there... I suspect that it was the best taken, years ago and the owners may not have had others to chose from. Years ago we didn’t have programs like Photoshop to “fix” everything. Also, at the time the photo was taken and first circulated, the owners may never have intended this photo to memorialize the horse. Unfortunately, it does.

Got me to thinking about the photos we advertise of our dogs.

We all know how difficult it is to get a good win photo. And we've all seen photos enhanced... to the point of absurdity... was wondering about your expereinces with advertising and the difficulty of getting what we call "The Money Shot."

[Ann Lanier]

Hi Elaine

I looked at your fantastic horses and what you wrote about this particular stud, Samber. May I ask, anatomically, why his foreleg is like that? Do you mind explaining? Does it start with the angle and length of the pastern and 'go up?' If the pastern were correct, would the cannon bone/foreleg be at the correct angle?

Or is it from the knee down, the angle of the foreleg adversely affects the pastern? Or a combination of both? I can't understand how the knee joint could function properly in this case. Try as I might, I cannot visualize the structural anatomy in a horse that would produce this deformity.

He is a handsome horse, at first glance, but without legs (foundation) is a horse functioning horse? From your comments on your breeding program, do we presume this defect was passed on?

As to unflattering photographs, when I owned the Doberman Quarterly, I would occasionally receive really unfortunate photographs of Dobermans for advertising purposes. I would contact the owners and try to help them understand that such a photograph might historically represent their dog. I would as gently as possible explain why the photograph was unsuitable and encourage them to send a better representation or to wait until they had one.

Photographs which are altered to change conformation are reprehensible, as photos are referenced by breeders and scholars as true representations of that animal and used as guidelines in their quest to produce the best possible specimens for the future of the breed.

Purebred dogs offer the certainty of a dog generally representing that beagle or afghan in the AKC Standard. Purebred dog breeders further refine that certainty by carefully blending genotype and phenotype to produce dogs as close to the Standard as possible. Altering the photographs upon which breeders may rely alters the whole course of a breeding program, negating all the best intentions, the careful study and the integrity of both current breeders and those to come.

Ann Lanier

[Elaine]

Hi Elaine

Photographs which are altered to change conformation are reprehensible, as photos are referenced by breeders and scholars as true representations of that animal and used as guidelines in their quest to produce the best possible specimens for the future of the breed.

Purebred dogs offer the certainty of a dog generally representing that beagle or afghan in the AKC Standard. Purebred dog breeders further refine that certainty by carefully blending genotype and phenotype to produce dogs as close to the Standard as possible. Altering the photographs upon which breeders may rely alters the whole course of a breeding program, negating all the best intentions, the careful study and the integrity of both current breeders and those to come.

Ann Lanier

Boy do I agree with you here.

We all see our individual dogs at home, where we continually catch glimpses of those magic free stacks... moments that make your heart skip a beat. Those are the impressions of our dogs that we want the world to see. The trick is to capture those moments in a photo. Arthur and I call those photos the “Money Shot.”

Photoshop is a wonderful thing, but there is a marked difference between taking out a stray distracting object in the background and correcting a dogs faults. The former enhances the photo, the later deceives people, including the owner of the dog. As an example, I'll attache an original of Ch. Logres Warkant that I took of him at about 6 months... and then I'll attahce the photo after Photo shop took out a tree and moved some bushes.


Don’t get me wrong, I know the temptation to “fix’ things. But there are some dogs who’s photos have been re-touched so often to perfect the legacy of the animal that the photos in circulation don’t remotely resemble the living dog anymore. I think that people who change the structure of the dog (to shorten a back, level a croup, adjust the underline of a neck or whatever else they do), are fooling themselves as much as the public. Ultimately this is about breeding better animals in each successive generation. To do that we have to – at the very least – accurately assess the breeding stock. A given animal will reproduce himself, both his faults and his virtues. People sometime don’t have the luxury of seeing a dog in person. They are breeding to (or purchasing the offspring of), a dog they love from a photo, without realizing that the photo is re-touched. And then they are disappointed, wondering why the offspring have all these faults. I always joke, the skilled over-active photo-retoucher should come with each breeding, to follow the offspring around through life too.

For me there is a “Red Flag” if only one or two photos exist of a purportedly Great Dog, especially if there is a photographer closely associated with the people who own the dog. You gotta ask yourself, “Was this just a lucky shot? If the dog truly looked like this, why only one shot of him. I mean, they own the dog, they own a camera... what, in all his life these guys only ever got one photo?” Come on.

I know it’s not easy to get “The Money Shot” but there should be more than one or two over the life of a good dog. IF you could only ever take one or two good photos of the dog, then maybe the “Money Shot Photo” was a freak of timing and luck and doesn’t truly represent the dog.

Our rule of thumb, it make take a couple hundreds tries to get a truly good photo, but if you’ve taken into the triple digits and none of the photos are usable, than you’ve just got to consider that it’s the dog and not the photographer.

Personally, I like to see the dog in person. If that is not possible, I like to see lots of photos, especially informal photos, where the dog has stacked himself. Christine Hertling once sent me a photo of her beautiful red boy Pheonix standing over himself, looking up at her. It was a candid, unstacked moment that showed his front assembly beautifully... and accurately.

I even like to see the “bad” photos, which often show more about the real dog than that one lucky shot.

[Elaine]

and the photo after Arthur's leg, the tree and the bushes were eitehr removed or moved. We did not re-touch Warkant.

[Elaine]

Hi Elaine

I looked at your fantastic horses and what you wrote about this particular stud, Samber. May I ask, anatomically, why his foreleg is like that? Do you mind explaining? Does it start with the angle and length of the pastern and 'go up?' If the pastern were correct, would the cannon bone/foreleg be at the correct angle?

Or is it from the knee down, the angle of the foreleg adversely affects the pastern? Or a combination of both? I can't understand how the knee joint could function properly in this case. Try as I might, I cannot visualize the structural anatomy in a horse that would produce this deformity.

He is a handsome horse, at first glance, but without legs (foundation) is a horse functioning horse? From your comments on your breeding program, do we presume this defect was passed on?

Ann Lanier
About the stallion in the photo... I think you have excellent perception. As you know, there is no perfect horse, anymore than there is a perfect dog. I am not comfortable going into too much detail here because we do not own any of this bloodline. I will say that Samber has a very famous descendant here in the USA... who is one of the top producers around for good amateur horses (and a few, out of hundreds and hundreds, who have done well at the upper levels). We have seen this famous descendent and about thirty of this bloodline, and observed short upright pasterns, club feet and other variations of the defects you see in the photo (which may be coming through the dam line of the stallion in the photo).

The pasterns act as shock absorbers... if they are too short, the horse tends to hit the ground hard (will break down over time) and will lack desired elasticity. Our goals was to breed an FEI level horse (a Team horse) so we chose to avoid the bloodline, at least in the first three generations.

In fairness, very few people could ride an FEI level Dressage horse and fewer still give a rat’s ass about producing a Team Horse. The market in this country is for a well-rounded amateur horse... horses who can do a bit of everything, with good minds ... horses to take us amateurs here and there and bring us home safely. The Samber bloodline suits hundreds of happy Pinto owners to a “T.”

Moreover, the best Pinto Showjumper in the world Utah Van Erpekom has Samber in his background. www.utah-van-erpekom.co.uk No question that there is talent in the bloodline and when skillfully blended it can be of great value. I just don’t want to foot the bill for a generation or two of “skillful blending” so we avoid the bloodline up close.