WP too complicated for you;

Some terms for you horse idiots out there, don't be offended. Your just stupid. =].

WP- Western Pleasure. WP evaluates horses on manners and suitability of the horse for a relaxed but collected gait, cadence and relatively slow speed of gait, along with calm and responsive disposition. The horse is to appear to be a "pleasure" to ride and very comfortable, while being very smooth
Jog-a western term for the two beat diagonal gait also known as a trot.
Lope-a three beat gait also known as an English canter.

Most of the focus in WP horse today is in the hind end, not so much the front end, but today balance is important, you ideally should have a horse that is deep and slow behind and pretty in the front...12 years ago (and much further back it was like that for a while) it was all about the front end - everyone wanted a horse that had "flat knees" and was just a real pretty mover in the front. No cared much about the back end as long as the horse could lope slow.

The back half:
Then about say 8 or 9 years ago WP became all about "the hind end" and it got to where you could have a horse that was not real refined in the front at all and no one would care too much as long as the horse drives up deep under itself in the back. A way to spot a really deep mover is to watch the split between the two hind legs - usually the wider the split the better. The more the horse is reaching up under itself with it's "balance leg".

The balance leg is the leg the horse uses to balance almost all of its weight on in the lope stride. It's the second beat. As I see it, if your horse is driving deep up under itself with its "drive leg" (the other hind leg and the first lope beat) it can reach that balance leg up under itself further - that motion, the swinging of that hock, should be smooth rhythmic and the hock itself should exhibit very little flexing movement. Today I believe today we are moving towards a much more balanced and pretty horse. Focusing on the front and the back of the horse. Most horses specially bred for WP will exhibit this movement will little coaching from a trainer.

Slow legs:
Another quality that is desirable and exhibits is that he is slow legged. This doesn't only mean that he is moving slow it means that his feet stay on the ground longer and his legs move to their next positions in the stride in a slow manner. It's not rushed and not quick. A nice side effect of a slow legged horse that is collected and balanced, is that they are light footed. As they lope on by you sitting in the stands you can hardly hear the hoof falls. If a horse is heavy on his front end or unbalanced you can hear that horse go thundering by.

Learning how to see it:
I've only learned these things by watching a lot - a lot of horses. You have to develop an eye for it. When I was in my art program in college our instructors would make us go out and to gallery reports once a week. It was their theory that if you expose yourself to good art enough you'll develop an eye for it - not only will you be able to spot it easier but it will eventually start coming through you. That's I how feel about WP once you develop an eye for the things that make a winning WP horse you can spot a good one more easily.

The reason for "slow" - in my opinion:
People are always arguing and asking me why WP horse have to be so slow. WP horse are slow because of a couple of reasons - one, theoretically is that a slower horse is a pleasure to ride. A horse that you have to speed up is far less of a hassle that one you have yank on all the time to get it to slow down. A slow horse shows off how easy it was ride - they threw in some slack in reins in demonstrate how easy and pleasurable their horse was to ride, how collected they can get them with NO to little mouth contact (Look MA! No hands). Two, originally it increased the difficulty level, if you two horses that are collected pretty movers - the slower one will win. It is generally more difficult to move in a pretty way and keep the gate collected and true slowly than it is with more forward motion. It requires more strength and talent on the horse's part. Slower horses won and we breed and train for what wins - so WP horse got slower and slower and slower. And also lastly - a slow lope and jog for that matter showcases the horse's movement better than a quicker one. We have these gorgeous horses with these beautiful gates - people who breed for and train and show WP horses - want to see them. We all know our horses look best at a certain speed, doing certain things - for Hunt Seat horses it's an English trot - for western pleasure horses it's a slow lope.

Crab loping - head bobbing - peanut rollers:
In my opinion a horse should be shown at the speed which it looks best at - for some WP horses it's a little faster than others, slow is not everything anymore. The industry gets in trouble when people try to make their horses go slower than they are designed to go - that's when you see the artificial looking gates, the horses who are terribly canted towards the inside - loping around the arena like crabs - and really bad bobbing heads. In all fairness though - some horses have such a dramatic drive from behind that they have to left their head and neck up slightly during each stride, sometimes speeding the horse up does not fix this. A judge with a trained eye can see if the horse is head bobbing because it is unbalanced, lame, or if it's bobbing because the horse is stepping so deep up under itself that it has to. With modern bred WP horses their conformation almost demands that they carry their head and neck that way. The peanut rollers are a thing of the of the past and were another by-product of the ---- your horse won and all I see different is a low head, so I will make my horse's head even lower---mentality. Occasionally I see tired WP horses with lower heads and necks than what is allowed (the rule states that the tips of the ears cannot drop below the horse's withers for more than either 3 or 4 strides.. a judge has to see it and count strides from when he spotted it to give a penalty.

Not all WP horses are this refined, slow and good movers and the way they carry their heads, but I'm seeing more and more of them, and they are what's winning. In my opinion - they are a little fragile. I have seen them get a stone bruise from the one single rock that in the arena and be out all season. Could you imagine a heard of these horses running at top speed over uneven ground? TRAINWRECKKKK and unfortunately, I've seen this. BUT they aren't bred to do that - so it's debate for another day.

Conformation Faults
With western pleasure horses, I do see conformation faults being over-looked because the horse still can move good in spite of - or maybe because of the faults and win. I see a lot of steep shoulders with sometimes mismatched angles on the hip and pasterns, I see a lot of permanently hip high horses (which doesn't make sense to me at all cause that makes it harder for the horse to collect itself??) I see lots of bench knees, I see a lot what people call post hocked horses (when the hock is pretty straight with little to no set in it) this is actually kind of a desirable trait for pleasure horses as long as the hock is not parked too far out behind them - but I have seen horses with hocks that are "really out there" that move well and win anyway, so go figure. I also see a lot of cow-hocked horses, I see some horses with long backs and I see a lot of horses with toes in or toes out and most people will generally ignore these faults as long as the horse is a good mover and the faults don't interfere.

Most performance horses of any kind today are just going to have different conformation than a Halter horse, that's a given - so I am not judging the industry here. Halter horses aren't exactly bred to do anything other than stand there and look pretty - they have their own issues of lameness, temperament and such so they are in no position to judge either.

Soundness:
What I have a problem with is soundness - in my opinion, because of continuously over looking certain conformation faults (and our ability to correct some at birth so you never knew they were there to begin with) and our inclination to breed what wins, because it wins - I believe I am seeing and increasing number of Western Pleasure horses (note I didn't say ALL) with lameness issues. From hock problems to front end problems. Now granted some of our soundness issues may come from training practices, and maybe even just from asking the horses for this super demanding gate all the time.