Originally Posted 02/10/2013

It has only taken the Germans 45 years to come up with the perfect dressage pony….the German Riding Pony. A combination of English Thoroughbred, Welsh and Arabian, the breed has been infused with warmblood stallions along the way. For us, learning the ins and outs of this breed has been a casual undertaking over the last 10 or so years, often in the background of day-to-day life; school, work, riding, home purchase etc.

Learning blood lines of a breed that has, up until about the last 5 years or so, been considered exotic in the USA has been nothing short of a scavenger hunt. Thanks to the internet and recent instant translation capabilities (thank you Google Chrome) our efforts have accelerated exponentially. In addition, the breed has taken a foot hold here in the United States; more and more German Riding ponies are being imported and bred.

Through our research, we have found some of the more notable stallion lines are:

FS Don’t Worry - the 'Donnerhall' of ponies available in the US via frozen from Superior Equine Sires.

Champion de Luxe - a strong sire with the ever-popular bucksin coat, also available via SES.

Dorink B - a strong sire whose impact has yet to be felt here in the USA. You'll find him in many pedigrees of high-profile ponies.

Dressman - another influential sire who is often found in the second or third generation of many successful dressage ponies.

Power Boy RP 112 - the cornerstone stallion of many dressage pony breeding programs. Power Boy RP 112 is most known as the sire of the famous competition pony Power and Paint. He is an example of the early success of the Welsh, Arabian and Thoroughbred combination.

These are merely a few of the many foundation sires of the modern German Riding pony and the landscape seems to shift and change with each new foal crop.

It is also worth mentioning that the Dutch have developed their own pony breeding program, one that is just as wonderful as the German Riding pony, albeit smaller (perception or reality?). Their standards are extremely high and enforcement of the breed appears to be very tight.

Here in American, we are still rather new to breeding ponies for dressage, and we as Connaught Green Farms are very excited to be a part of it!