The following letter is not meant to be vindictive, I've edited out the names & I'm only posting it here as a warning to others...
To Whom It May Concern:
On October 3, 2003, my husband and I attended the AMHA National Championship Show Sale at the Roundup Inn at Will Rogers Memorial Center. We had discussed introducing some appaloosa bloodlines to our breeding program and were interested in buying either an appaloosa mare or a mare bred to an appaloosa. We toured the sale barn & spoke to several of the owners about the horses they had entered in the sale, their pedigrees, what stallions they were bred to, etc. We came across a beautiful mare that was bred to Desert Storm and offered for sale by what we thought was a reputable, well-known farm. The owner had posted a framed collage’ on her stall, showing photos of her, Lazy H Desert Storm, and the five foals she had previously produced, several by Desert Storm. Under the photo of the mare, it clearly stated “In foal to Lazy H Desert Storm”.
After viewing all the sale horses, we hoped to purchase this mare and at the dinner prior to the sale, I spoke to the owner about her & about our plan to add appaloosa bloodlines to our herd, at which time he confirmed that she was in foal to Desert Storm. He said that he did not intend to PO her, that he had brought her to sell. We purchased ****** *******’* **** ****** and happily took her back to our farm to wait for spring.
On June 12, 2004, she delivered a colt which we believed to be a son of Desert Storm and as such, would be a valuable stallion addition to our breeding program. His name is TX TLC DS Tuff Enuff, AMHA# 153897 & AMHR# 251514T. (The ‘DS’ signifying Desert Storm) We added him to our website for advertisement purposes as an “own son of Lazy H Desert Storm”. He matured very early and so as a two-year-old we bred him and got five of our best mares in foal to him for 2007 foals. We had received several inquiries from other farms wanting to breed their mares to him, but thankfully, we declined until our own Tuff Enuff foals would arrive so we could assess his ability as a sire.
Per AMHA Rule #184A RESPONSIBILITY
1. All stallions bred to five (5) or more mares in a calendar year must be blood typed and/or DNA tested before any resulting foals or foals from future breedings will be considered for registration.
Since we had 5 mares in foal to Tuff Enuff, on Dec.15, 2006, I faxed a “Request for DNA Sampling Form” to the AMHA and received the kit, completed it and checked the “Parentage Qualified” box, just as I always do, and mailed it to the Davis Lab in California. Then I received a letter from ****** ******** of the AMHA dated January 22, 2007, which states, “Please submit the original registration certificate and four current photographs.” The following day, I spoke to ****** about the letter I had received and asked if I could wait until spring clipping to send the photos since it was the middle of winter and all the horses had shaggy, muddy coats. ****** said that it would be fine & they would hold the paperwork until the photos arrived.
On March 26, 2007, we body-clipped Tuff Enuff and mailed the requested photos with the original registration certificate to the AMHA.
In April, I received a phone call from the AMHA telling me that they (the AMHA) had “made a mistake” and had sent me the “wrong letter”. When I asked what they meant by “wrong letter”, I was told that someone had accidentally mailed me a letter saying that the “Parentage Qualification would be held up until photos that met their requirements had been submitted” (the same thing I had been told when I called the AMHA office on 1/23/07). She further stated that the Parentage Qualification had not been denied for photos, it had been denied because the DNA testing had excluded Lazy H Desert Storm as the sire of my stallion, Tuff Enuff. I could hardly believe what I was hearing! She said they would contact **** ******* and see if there was another stallion that he thought maybe could have sired this colt and they’d run the test on that one.
(If the AMHA had sent me the CORRECT letter, I would have been four months farther along in finding out the parentage of my stallion, not in the middle of breeding season using what I consider to be an UNREGISTERED stallion!)
At this time, my husband, Tony, called Mr. ******* & repeated what we had been told by the AMHA to see what he thought had happened. My husband reminded Mr. ******* that the only reason we had bought this mare was to get a Desert Storm foal & he said that Mr. ******* kind of laughed and said that he has an awful lot of horses to take care of and has “just hot wire” dividing the pastures, so, yes, it was possible that a different stallion maybe jumped the fence. He said he’d send in the name of another stallion for the AMHA to test.
On May, 1, 2007, we received a copy of a letter from the AMHA to **** ******* stating that the second stallion submitted had also been excluded as the sire.
Then on May 11, 2007, I received a copy of an email Mr. ******* had sent to ****** ******** listing five more stallions that could have bred **** ****** and could be the sire of my stallion. That’s a total of seven stallions that may or may not have bred this mare that he sold at an AMHA National Championship Sale listed as “In Foal to Lazy H Desert Storm”.
Needless to say, I called the AMHA extremely upset that this could even happen! What sort of breeder allows this and how could the AMHA allow this type of recordkeeping??
Per AMHA Rule #191 PASTURE BREEDING
Only one stallion may run with a mare or group of mares in a pasture, and they must be enclosed by permanent fencing maintained in such manner that no other stallion can cover a mare in said group.
To say I was way past furious during this phone conversation is an understatement. Here it was May, the middle of breeding season, and I had:
1. Foals on the ground sired by my “Mystery Stallion”
2. I had already bred some of my mares back to him before I found out about the problem
3. I had 4 outside mares at my facility just waiting for them to cycle to be bred to him
4. I had been advertising him on my website for two years as an own son of Desert Storm
5. One stallion less to cover my mares, unless I didn’t care about pedigree
When I asked what the AMHA was going to do about this, I was told “There’s nothing we can do. Mr. ******* has not broken any rules.” I said, “This can’t be possible!! He turned in a false Stallion Report, evidently more than one, (seven that I know of were just guesses!) so what do you mean, you’re not going to do anything about this?!” The response was, “He turned in his stallion reports on time, so he hasn’t broken any rules.”
(This is where it really gets interesting.)
When ****** said that, I said, “Wait just a minute!! I know you’ll remember when I sent in all my foal registration applications in the summer of 2005, they were all declined because the AMHA said I had failed to turn in my 2004 Stallion Reports. Bob Kane was president at that time, and I had many (& loud) conversations with him, ******, *****, ****** and some others about the fact that I faxed my Stallion Reports to the AMHA and the AMHR within minutes of each other, but the AMHA claimed that they never received them. I even sent in copies of my telephone bill proving that the faxes were sent on the dates & at the times I claimed. Bob Kane told me that the bill only proved that I sent a fax, not what my fax contained. (In other words, he called me a liar, to say the least!) I told Bob Kane that I had been breeding horses professionally for over thirty years, dealing with the ApHa, AQHA, APHA, AMHA & AMHR and I had never, in all those years, been late filing even one stud report or ever had any of my stallion reports questioned for accuracy. But, even with all the proof I furnished the AMHA, I was told that either my entire colt crop had to be DNA’d or they would not be eligible for registry. (We had sold an unusually high number of mares in 2004, so thank goodness our colt crop was smaller than usual.) I was told by Bob Kane that it didn’t matter whether I had 5 foals, 50 foals, or 500 foals, ALL my foals born that year had to be DNA’d in order for them to be registered.
(I was under the impression that anytime there's a question about the stallion reports, DNA on the resulting foals would be required to prove that the stud reports were correct.) THAT IS NOT THE CASE. The DNA of the foals are NOT compared to the listed Sire or Dam. The DNA we pay $40+ for proves nothing and is used for nothing. Forcing us to DNA our horses is nothing more than an income-generating punishment imposed by the AMHA.
With this past situation in mind, I asked ****** again, “Are you telling me that even though there were SEVEN STALLIONS that maybe impregnated this mare, you see no need to have all his foals DNA’d before letting them be registered?” She answered, “No, because the stallion reports were turned in on time.” I said, “But they’re not correct, are you telling me that we can just make up a bunch of names and fill in the stallion report and as long as it’s in on time, there won’t be any fines or punishment even if they’re all wrong?” She said, “As long as the stallion report is turned in on time.”
I ranted and raved a while longer and she told me she was actually doing me a favor and trying to help me on her own and against orders trying to find out who the sire of my stallion was. That she had been told by Mike Want to return my stallion’s registration papers to me “as is” & “un-parentage qualified” and that would be the end of it. Meaning that the false parentage on his registration certificate, the registration certificates of his foals and the AMHA Studbook would all go uncorrected.
I said, “Are you telling me that THE PRESIDENT OF THE AMHA knows that the bloodlines shown on this AMHA Registration Certificate and in the pedigree in the AMHA Studbook of TX TLC DS Tuff Enuff are incorrect, and that he told you to send it back to me AS IS without correcting it?? She said, “Yes, it’s done all the time.” I made her repeat that again, maybe a couple of times, because I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I said, “Are you telling me that if someone asks to have a horse parentage qualified & the test proves that the Sire or Dam is NOT the Sire or Dam listed on the registration certificate, the certificate may or may not get corrected? She said, “It’s done all the time”. “All the AMHA is required to do is notify the ‘requestor’ that the horse in question failed to meet the parentage qualifying requirements & return the registration certificate – they, (the AMHA), do not have to search until they find out who IS the parent.”
I said, “Let me get this straight – are you telling me that the President of the AMHA, as your supervisor, gave the order to send my certificate back to me with the incorrect bloodlines on it? That I can just keep breeding this stallion to mares and as long as I don’t push the Parentage Qualified thing all of his foals will be registered with Lazy H Desert Storm listed as the Grandsire and Lazy H Dark Storm listed as the GreatGrandsire?” She said, ‘Yes, it’s done all the time.’ “Then what you’re telling me is that anybody who buys a bred mare, from any farm or from any sale, it’s really just a crap-shoot as to who the mare is bred to? Unless the foal is parentage qualified at birth, the papers are actually worthless?” I don’t have to tell you the answer to that one. Note: “By it’s done all the time”, she was not referring to **** *******, she was referring to the fact that LOTS of Parentage Qualifying requests from a lot of different breeders are denied.
There are God-knows-how-many registration certificates out there that the AMHA KNOWS are incorrect and the pedigree will never be corrected if the owner simply chooses to leave it “as is” because just as in my case, the horse shown on the certificate is pretty famous and the correct one is unknown.
Per AMHA Rule #140 FALSE CERTIFICATES
No person, firm, or corporation shall issue, sell, exchange, give away, or receive, or offer to do any thereof any false or fraudulent certificate, representing the same to be a genuine official certificate issued by the Association.
How can the AMHA enforce this rule, or ANY rule, when they knowingly & purposely issue hundreds of fraudulent registration certificates every year?
The following is a hypothetical situation, but IT IS POSSIBLE & ACCEPTABLE according to the current business practices of the American Miniature Horse Association:
Let say that I go and purchase Boones Little Buckaroo and put him in my barn. I own 50 mares and 6 or 7 stallions that run in with the 50 mares. At the end of the year, I turn in a stud report that showing all 50 mares were pasture bred to Buckaroo all year long. If I had the resulting 50 foals DNA’d when I registered them, but NOT PARENTAGE QUALIFIED, I could sell each one as a son or daughter of Buckaroo. As long as the new owners don’t request them to be Parentage Qualified, they will remain, on paper at least, progeny of Buckaroo.
When those “Buckaroo babies” mature and produce babies, if THOSE foals are parentage qualified, that will only prove that the dam is the dam and the sire is the sire. IT WILL NOT SHOW THAT THERE IS ACTUALLY NO BUCKAROO BLOOD IN THESE HORSES!
(When Flying W Farms Legionaire died, we immediately sent in his papers to be marked deceased, because it's the right thing to do. Now I'm wondering how many stallion reports for dead stallions are turned in each year? As long as there's no parentage qualification requested for the foals, who's to know?)
As for the AMHA rule #191 Pasture Breeding, it looks like AT LEAST SEVEN STALLIONS were running in the pasture with Miss Tuffet!!
The way I see this is that the AMHA registration certificates and the AMHA pedigrees are not worth the paper they’re printed on.
Below, I’m listing two other cases where the AMHA used the DNA typing as an income-generating, “punishment” when members don’t behave to suit them:
1) I have a friend in Houston who accidentally put the wrong month on one stud report and all her colts were denied registration until each one had been DNA’d.
2) I have a friend in the Denton area whose 27”, 4 year old stallion died while she was out of town. Her husband had already buried the horse when she got home, but thank goodness that even through her grief, she had the presence of mind to have him dug up so she could pull enough mane hairs to have him DNA’d. The following year, she sent in all her registration applications for the foals and they were all rejected by the AMHA. When she contacted them to ask why, she was told that she had failed to bring the stallion permanent. She asked, “How CAN I bring him permanent when HE’s DEAD?!?!” She was told that the foals would not be registered with the AMHA because if he had lived he might have oversized. Since he was dead, there was no way to prove he WOULDN’T have oversized!! My friend said, “He was 27 inches tall when he died at four years old – do you think he might grow seven inches IN ONE YEAR?!?!” This argument went back and forth for days, and they finally told her that if she DNA’d all her babies for that year, they would register them, which they did.
Now my question is: Why was my case and the two cases above “solved” by us having to pay to have our entire foal crops DNA’d but the fact that a mare was sold at the AMHA WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP SHOW SALE that seven stallions had a chance to cover goes totally unpunished? Is it a matter of the NUMBER of horses we own? If I own 100 to 300 horses, can I just dream up a bunch of names & dates for the stud report & worry about it later IF someone is stupid enough to request Parentage Qualification? After all, that would just be too many to dream of having to DNA, right?
My point in mentioning those two cases is to ask this: “WHY are we all paying all this money to have every single one of our horses DNA’d? What is the AMHA DOING with all these lab results?? How many freaking years are all the horses going to be DNA’d before parentage qualifying is routinely performed? Are we just waiting for all the “big guys” to get their paperwork straight so we don’t upset them??
I’ve always been all for the DNA tests, but I truly thought there was going to be an end result that would benefit all of us. I clearly remember when you could go to any local horse auction and there would be someone with a briefcase full of registration papers from “killer-horses” that had gone to the rendering plants and all you had to do is say “I have a bay mare with a star, 8 to 10 years old.” You’d hand him a couple of twenties or whatever the going rate was, and poof, you suddenly had a registered mare to run through the ring.
In my opinion, the AMHA has not even caught up to those standards, much less progressed beyond them…
Oops, nearly forgot to mention: I got a call from the AMHA & it seems the sire of my stallion IS one of the seven that Mr. ******* said to try. Well, whaddayaknow. I was told that per the current AMHA President Mike Want, I can “leave the papers ‘as is’ and keep the Desert Storm bloodlines (Un-Parentage Qualified) OR I can send them back in and they will Parentage Qualify my stallion with the correct bloodlines. It’s up to me.
Let me see, famous bloodlines vs. worthless bloodlines, already bought the darned mare, waited six months for the baby, paid for double-registrations, got three years of training, feed, vets, farriers, some foals on the ground, more mares in foal, folks wanting to breed to him… Eenie, meenie, miney, moe….
Leslie Cunningham
Post Script: I just received some of the new, improved registration certificates from the AMHR ~ if you flip one over and read the back, one statement by this association certainly stands out:
#1 Any Registry record found to be inaccurate may be expunged or altered as deemed appropriate by the Director of Operations or the Board of Directors.
Hummmmm…Seems the AMHR works hard to have CORRECT pedigrees….
Now please tell me again why it’s so much better to have your horses registered with the AMHA rather than the AMHR?
The bottom line is, when you receive your "EQUINE GENETIC MARKER REPORT" and it lists the Sire's name & the Dam's name just above the DNA Results of the horse submitted, and it LOOKS like the DNA has been compared to the Sire & Dam, it HAS NOT.
UNLESS EVERY HORSE ON YOUR HORSES PEDIGREE HAS BEEN "PARENTAGE QUALIFIED", IT MIGHT AS WELL BE LISTED AS "UNKNOWN" "UNKNOWN" BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT YOU HAVE.
PS: The only offer of compensation the seller ever made to us was to buy the mare back. My feelings are that the MARE isn't the problem, the FOAL is. In my opinion, the very LEAST he should have offered would be to buy the resulting foal (now a 3 year old stallion) back for at least the cost of the mare & to also reimburse us for the 3 years of expenses. This entire situation is due to his negligence and poor recordkeeping. (Keep in mind that we would still be losing 3 years of our time & work and five of our best mares have foals with bloodlines we don't want.)
_________________
Leslie
TLC MINIATURE HORSE FARM
Tony & Leslie Cunningham
Paris, Texas
903-784-3363
To Whom It May Concern:
On October 3, 2003, my husband and I attended the AMHA National Championship Show Sale at the Roundup Inn at Will Rogers Memorial Center. We had discussed introducing some appaloosa bloodlines to our breeding program and were interested in buying either an appaloosa mare or a mare bred to an appaloosa. We toured the sale barn & spoke to several of the owners about the horses they had entered in the sale, their pedigrees, what stallions they were bred to, etc. We came across a beautiful mare that was bred to Desert Storm and offered for sale by what we thought was a reputable, well-known farm. The owner had posted a framed collage’ on her stall, showing photos of her, Lazy H Desert Storm, and the five foals she had previously produced, several by Desert Storm. Under the photo of the mare, it clearly stated “In foal to Lazy H Desert Storm”.
After viewing all the sale horses, we hoped to purchase this mare and at the dinner prior to the sale, I spoke to the owner about her & about our plan to add appaloosa bloodlines to our herd, at which time he confirmed that she was in foal to Desert Storm. He said that he did not intend to PO her, that he had brought her to sell. We purchased ****** *******’* **** ****** and happily took her back to our farm to wait for spring.
On June 12, 2004, she delivered a colt which we believed to be a son of Desert Storm and as such, would be a valuable stallion addition to our breeding program. His name is TX TLC DS Tuff Enuff, AMHA# 153897 & AMHR# 251514T. (The ‘DS’ signifying Desert Storm) We added him to our website for advertisement purposes as an “own son of Lazy H Desert Storm”. He matured very early and so as a two-year-old we bred him and got five of our best mares in foal to him for 2007 foals. We had received several inquiries from other farms wanting to breed their mares to him, but thankfully, we declined until our own Tuff Enuff foals would arrive so we could assess his ability as a sire.
Per AMHA Rule #184A RESPONSIBILITY
1. All stallions bred to five (5) or more mares in a calendar year must be blood typed and/or DNA tested before any resulting foals or foals from future breedings will be considered for registration.
Since we had 5 mares in foal to Tuff Enuff, on Dec.15, 2006, I faxed a “Request for DNA Sampling Form” to the AMHA and received the kit, completed it and checked the “Parentage Qualified” box, just as I always do, and mailed it to the Davis Lab in California. Then I received a letter from ****** ******** of the AMHA dated January 22, 2007, which states, “Please submit the original registration certificate and four current photographs.” The following day, I spoke to ****** about the letter I had received and asked if I could wait until spring clipping to send the photos since it was the middle of winter and all the horses had shaggy, muddy coats. ****** said that it would be fine & they would hold the paperwork until the photos arrived.
On March 26, 2007, we body-clipped Tuff Enuff and mailed the requested photos with the original registration certificate to the AMHA.
In April, I received a phone call from the AMHA telling me that they (the AMHA) had “made a mistake” and had sent me the “wrong letter”. When I asked what they meant by “wrong letter”, I was told that someone had accidentally mailed me a letter saying that the “Parentage Qualification would be held up until photos that met their requirements had been submitted” (the same thing I had been told when I called the AMHA office on 1/23/07). She further stated that the Parentage Qualification had not been denied for photos, it had been denied because the DNA testing had excluded Lazy H Desert Storm as the sire of my stallion, Tuff Enuff. I could hardly believe what I was hearing! She said they would contact **** ******* and see if there was another stallion that he thought maybe could have sired this colt and they’d run the test on that one.
(If the AMHA had sent me the CORRECT letter, I would have been four months farther along in finding out the parentage of my stallion, not in the middle of breeding season using what I consider to be an UNREGISTERED stallion!)
At this time, my husband, Tony, called Mr. ******* & repeated what we had been told by the AMHA to see what he thought had happened. My husband reminded Mr. ******* that the only reason we had bought this mare was to get a Desert Storm foal & he said that Mr. ******* kind of laughed and said that he has an awful lot of horses to take care of and has “just hot wire” dividing the pastures, so, yes, it was possible that a different stallion maybe jumped the fence. He said he’d send in the name of another stallion for the AMHA to test.
On May, 1, 2007, we received a copy of a letter from the AMHA to **** ******* stating that the second stallion submitted had also been excluded as the sire.
Then on May 11, 2007, I received a copy of an email Mr. ******* had sent to ****** ******** listing five more stallions that could have bred **** ****** and could be the sire of my stallion. That’s a total of seven stallions that may or may not have bred this mare that he sold at an AMHA National Championship Sale listed as “In Foal to Lazy H Desert Storm”.
Needless to say, I called the AMHA extremely upset that this could even happen! What sort of breeder allows this and how could the AMHA allow this type of recordkeeping??
Per AMHA Rule #191 PASTURE BREEDING
Only one stallion may run with a mare or group of mares in a pasture, and they must be enclosed by permanent fencing maintained in such manner that no other stallion can cover a mare in said group.
To say I was way past furious during this phone conversation is an understatement. Here it was May, the middle of breeding season, and I had:
1. Foals on the ground sired by my “Mystery Stallion”
2. I had already bred some of my mares back to him before I found out about the problem
3. I had 4 outside mares at my facility just waiting for them to cycle to be bred to him
4. I had been advertising him on my website for two years as an own son of Desert Storm
5. One stallion less to cover my mares, unless I didn’t care about pedigree
When I asked what the AMHA was going to do about this, I was told “There’s nothing we can do. Mr. ******* has not broken any rules.” I said, “This can’t be possible!! He turned in a false Stallion Report, evidently more than one, (seven that I know of were just guesses!) so what do you mean, you’re not going to do anything about this?!” The response was, “He turned in his stallion reports on time, so he hasn’t broken any rules.”
(This is where it really gets interesting.)
When ****** said that, I said, “Wait just a minute!! I know you’ll remember when I sent in all my foal registration applications in the summer of 2005, they were all declined because the AMHA said I had failed to turn in my 2004 Stallion Reports. Bob Kane was president at that time, and I had many (& loud) conversations with him, ******, *****, ****** and some others about the fact that I faxed my Stallion Reports to the AMHA and the AMHR within minutes of each other, but the AMHA claimed that they never received them. I even sent in copies of my telephone bill proving that the faxes were sent on the dates & at the times I claimed. Bob Kane told me that the bill only proved that I sent a fax, not what my fax contained. (In other words, he called me a liar, to say the least!) I told Bob Kane that I had been breeding horses professionally for over thirty years, dealing with the ApHa, AQHA, APHA, AMHA & AMHR and I had never, in all those years, been late filing even one stud report or ever had any of my stallion reports questioned for accuracy. But, even with all the proof I furnished the AMHA, I was told that either my entire colt crop had to be DNA’d or they would not be eligible for registry. (We had sold an unusually high number of mares in 2004, so thank goodness our colt crop was smaller than usual.) I was told by Bob Kane that it didn’t matter whether I had 5 foals, 50 foals, or 500 foals, ALL my foals born that year had to be DNA’d in order for them to be registered.
(I was under the impression that anytime there's a question about the stallion reports, DNA on the resulting foals would be required to prove that the stud reports were correct.) THAT IS NOT THE CASE. The DNA of the foals are NOT compared to the listed Sire or Dam. The DNA we pay $40+ for proves nothing and is used for nothing. Forcing us to DNA our horses is nothing more than an income-generating punishment imposed by the AMHA.
With this past situation in mind, I asked ****** again, “Are you telling me that even though there were SEVEN STALLIONS that maybe impregnated this mare, you see no need to have all his foals DNA’d before letting them be registered?” She answered, “No, because the stallion reports were turned in on time.” I said, “But they’re not correct, are you telling me that we can just make up a bunch of names and fill in the stallion report and as long as it’s in on time, there won’t be any fines or punishment even if they’re all wrong?” She said, “As long as the stallion report is turned in on time.”
I ranted and raved a while longer and she told me she was actually doing me a favor and trying to help me on her own and against orders trying to find out who the sire of my stallion was. That she had been told by Mike Want to return my stallion’s registration papers to me “as is” & “un-parentage qualified” and that would be the end of it. Meaning that the false parentage on his registration certificate, the registration certificates of his foals and the AMHA Studbook would all go uncorrected.
I said, “Are you telling me that THE PRESIDENT OF THE AMHA knows that the bloodlines shown on this AMHA Registration Certificate and in the pedigree in the AMHA Studbook of TX TLC DS Tuff Enuff are incorrect, and that he told you to send it back to me AS IS without correcting it?? She said, “Yes, it’s done all the time.” I made her repeat that again, maybe a couple of times, because I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I said, “Are you telling me that if someone asks to have a horse parentage qualified & the test proves that the Sire or Dam is NOT the Sire or Dam listed on the registration certificate, the certificate may or may not get corrected? She said, “It’s done all the time”. “All the AMHA is required to do is notify the ‘requestor’ that the horse in question failed to meet the parentage qualifying requirements & return the registration certificate – they, (the AMHA), do not have to search until they find out who IS the parent.”
I said, “Let me get this straight – are you telling me that the President of the AMHA, as your supervisor, gave the order to send my certificate back to me with the incorrect bloodlines on it? That I can just keep breeding this stallion to mares and as long as I don’t push the Parentage Qualified thing all of his foals will be registered with Lazy H Desert Storm listed as the Grandsire and Lazy H Dark Storm listed as the GreatGrandsire?” She said, ‘Yes, it’s done all the time.’ “Then what you’re telling me is that anybody who buys a bred mare, from any farm or from any sale, it’s really just a crap-shoot as to who the mare is bred to? Unless the foal is parentage qualified at birth, the papers are actually worthless?” I don’t have to tell you the answer to that one. Note: “By it’s done all the time”, she was not referring to **** *******, she was referring to the fact that LOTS of Parentage Qualifying requests from a lot of different breeders are denied.
There are God-knows-how-many registration certificates out there that the AMHA KNOWS are incorrect and the pedigree will never be corrected if the owner simply chooses to leave it “as is” because just as in my case, the horse shown on the certificate is pretty famous and the correct one is unknown.
Per AMHA Rule #140 FALSE CERTIFICATES
No person, firm, or corporation shall issue, sell, exchange, give away, or receive, or offer to do any thereof any false or fraudulent certificate, representing the same to be a genuine official certificate issued by the Association.
How can the AMHA enforce this rule, or ANY rule, when they knowingly & purposely issue hundreds of fraudulent registration certificates every year?
The following is a hypothetical situation, but IT IS POSSIBLE & ACCEPTABLE according to the current business practices of the American Miniature Horse Association:
Let say that I go and purchase Boones Little Buckaroo and put him in my barn. I own 50 mares and 6 or 7 stallions that run in with the 50 mares. At the end of the year, I turn in a stud report that showing all 50 mares were pasture bred to Buckaroo all year long. If I had the resulting 50 foals DNA’d when I registered them, but NOT PARENTAGE QUALIFIED, I could sell each one as a son or daughter of Buckaroo. As long as the new owners don’t request them to be Parentage Qualified, they will remain, on paper at least, progeny of Buckaroo.
When those “Buckaroo babies” mature and produce babies, if THOSE foals are parentage qualified, that will only prove that the dam is the dam and the sire is the sire. IT WILL NOT SHOW THAT THERE IS ACTUALLY NO BUCKAROO BLOOD IN THESE HORSES!
(When Flying W Farms Legionaire died, we immediately sent in his papers to be marked deceased, because it's the right thing to do. Now I'm wondering how many stallion reports for dead stallions are turned in each year? As long as there's no parentage qualification requested for the foals, who's to know?)
As for the AMHA rule #191 Pasture Breeding, it looks like AT LEAST SEVEN STALLIONS were running in the pasture with Miss Tuffet!!
The way I see this is that the AMHA registration certificates and the AMHA pedigrees are not worth the paper they’re printed on.
Below, I’m listing two other cases where the AMHA used the DNA typing as an income-generating, “punishment” when members don’t behave to suit them:
1) I have a friend in Houston who accidentally put the wrong month on one stud report and all her colts were denied registration until each one had been DNA’d.
2) I have a friend in the Denton area whose 27”, 4 year old stallion died while she was out of town. Her husband had already buried the horse when she got home, but thank goodness that even through her grief, she had the presence of mind to have him dug up so she could pull enough mane hairs to have him DNA’d. The following year, she sent in all her registration applications for the foals and they were all rejected by the AMHA. When she contacted them to ask why, she was told that she had failed to bring the stallion permanent. She asked, “How CAN I bring him permanent when HE’s DEAD?!?!” She was told that the foals would not be registered with the AMHA because if he had lived he might have oversized. Since he was dead, there was no way to prove he WOULDN’T have oversized!! My friend said, “He was 27 inches tall when he died at four years old – do you think he might grow seven inches IN ONE YEAR?!?!” This argument went back and forth for days, and they finally told her that if she DNA’d all her babies for that year, they would register them, which they did.
Now my question is: Why was my case and the two cases above “solved” by us having to pay to have our entire foal crops DNA’d but the fact that a mare was sold at the AMHA WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP SHOW SALE that seven stallions had a chance to cover goes totally unpunished? Is it a matter of the NUMBER of horses we own? If I own 100 to 300 horses, can I just dream up a bunch of names & dates for the stud report & worry about it later IF someone is stupid enough to request Parentage Qualification? After all, that would just be too many to dream of having to DNA, right?
My point in mentioning those two cases is to ask this: “WHY are we all paying all this money to have every single one of our horses DNA’d? What is the AMHA DOING with all these lab results?? How many freaking years are all the horses going to be DNA’d before parentage qualifying is routinely performed? Are we just waiting for all the “big guys” to get their paperwork straight so we don’t upset them??
I’ve always been all for the DNA tests, but I truly thought there was going to be an end result that would benefit all of us. I clearly remember when you could go to any local horse auction and there would be someone with a briefcase full of registration papers from “killer-horses” that had gone to the rendering plants and all you had to do is say “I have a bay mare with a star, 8 to 10 years old.” You’d hand him a couple of twenties or whatever the going rate was, and poof, you suddenly had a registered mare to run through the ring.
In my opinion, the AMHA has not even caught up to those standards, much less progressed beyond them…
Oops, nearly forgot to mention: I got a call from the AMHA & it seems the sire of my stallion IS one of the seven that Mr. ******* said to try. Well, whaddayaknow. I was told that per the current AMHA President Mike Want, I can “leave the papers ‘as is’ and keep the Desert Storm bloodlines (Un-Parentage Qualified) OR I can send them back in and they will Parentage Qualify my stallion with the correct bloodlines. It’s up to me.
Let me see, famous bloodlines vs. worthless bloodlines, already bought the darned mare, waited six months for the baby, paid for double-registrations, got three years of training, feed, vets, farriers, some foals on the ground, more mares in foal, folks wanting to breed to him… Eenie, meenie, miney, moe….
Leslie Cunningham
Post Script: I just received some of the new, improved registration certificates from the AMHR ~ if you flip one over and read the back, one statement by this association certainly stands out:
#1 Any Registry record found to be inaccurate may be expunged or altered as deemed appropriate by the Director of Operations or the Board of Directors.
Hummmmm…Seems the AMHR works hard to have CORRECT pedigrees….
Now please tell me again why it’s so much better to have your horses registered with the AMHA rather than the AMHR?
The bottom line is, when you receive your "EQUINE GENETIC MARKER REPORT" and it lists the Sire's name & the Dam's name just above the DNA Results of the horse submitted, and it LOOKS like the DNA has been compared to the Sire & Dam, it HAS NOT.
UNLESS EVERY HORSE ON YOUR HORSES PEDIGREE HAS BEEN "PARENTAGE QUALIFIED", IT MIGHT AS WELL BE LISTED AS "UNKNOWN" "UNKNOWN" BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT YOU HAVE.
PS: The only offer of compensation the seller ever made to us was to buy the mare back. My feelings are that the MARE isn't the problem, the FOAL is. In my opinion, the very LEAST he should have offered would be to buy the resulting foal (now a 3 year old stallion) back for at least the cost of the mare & to also reimburse us for the 3 years of expenses. This entire situation is due to his negligence and poor recordkeeping. (Keep in mind that we would still be losing 3 years of our time & work and five of our best mares have foals with bloodlines we don't want.)
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Leslie
TLC MINIATURE HORSE FARM
Tony & Leslie Cunningham
Paris, Texas
903-784-3363
