Here is just one way this impacts the breed.

Breeders plan their matings by trying to come up with the best match for their mares by choosing a stallion that compliments their mares.

As with any breeders of animals whose function follows form, conformation is important.

Let's say you have a stallion that goes to stud that was born with legs that were severely deviated or deformed. Let's say this horse--we can call him him Real Quiet for the purposes of the hypothetical example--underwent surgery to correct his limbs.

Let's say that Real Quiet went on to win a race such as the Kentucky Derby. We will throw in the Preakness just for the sake of fun.

Well, by and by, Real Quiet goes to stud. His legs look all right. Breeders support him. When his foals are born, they have the same type of legs that Real Quiet had when he was born.

The breed has been weakened.

This is merely one example of the detriment of this type of manipulation.

When I first started writing about this stuff 8 or so years ago, I was not a popular figure among farm managers in Central Kentucky. Some of them, I have been told, paid money to a certain scumbag to make fun of me and my ideas in a certain scandal sheet printed in Kentucky.

Nowadays, everybody is talking about these things and certain people are trying to obtain full disclosure of the practice on young horses. Good luck to them because they have an uphill struggle ahead of them, as the establishment in the bluegrass like the status quo just fine.

By the way, conformation and honestly depicting the body of a dog is considered so important, that it is considered unethical to evem touch up a photograph of a dog, let along to surgical change its body.