Talk:Shetland pony

Flotsam for temporary storage
Article getting a bit image-heavy, moving this one out, but storing it here in case consensus says to return it. Montanabw (talk) 23:21, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

i see no need to keep that pic. Also should the American shetland pony have it's own page? Ponies registered with the ASPC are no able to be registered with the british assc. They are Deemed a A breed Here in the usa and not a type. Firesongponies (talk) 14:49, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

We sometimes keep some images on the talk page for various reasons. I think at this point, there is not enough content on the two registries to justify splitting the article, I think it is a better approach to expand the worldwide focus with info on each type. Similarly, the Welsh pony article covers all four sections, there once were separate articles on each, but so much was duplicative (particularly history) that they were merged back together. I think here the same logic applies. No sense having two stubby articles when there can be one reasonably good one. Montanabw (talk) 21:22, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

'k. I am rather new to all this so what kind of info should be put here? I'm on the region 6 Board of directors for the american shetland pony club, so most of my info is limited to the American Shetland. also currently going back through documents i have that will source when the 'A' or 'B' on the papers was dropped. i know it was 2009 just still working my ways through the papers. Been talking with breeders and am work on getting really good pics of the Modern, Modern Pleasure and Foundation types. When i gte the pics should i add them to the article or just have the Words link to the pic?Firesongponies (talk) 08:54, 27 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Not too much, really, mostly talk pages are for discussions. The fat pony photo was dumped here when the article was undergoing a big rewrite a couple years ago (yes, it once was worse!  Much worse!) and it was possibly going to be reused soon (but wasn't).  Sometimes when people have found 3 or 4 good photos and wonder if one would work better than another, they upload them to the talk page as very small thumbnails (the way I just resized the fat pony photo) and ask for opinions.  The best way to source the rule change is to cite to the 2010 rule book when it comes out, I presume it will be online, just like USEF and others are??   Montanabw (talk) 04:47, 29 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I'd say given that you are kind of new, we can do some of the formatting and such if you drop your best ideas on this talk page with teeny thumbnails or a small gallery of the photos (we can click to enlarge them and this way they won't clutter up the talk page) and we can sort things out. The page is currently a bit image heavy, so care must be taken.  I'd kill for a good show quality Shetland photo that could replace the little fuzzball currently leading it, but there simply is not a good enough photo on commons yet (The "American Shetland" image led the article for a while, but the pony is poorly groomed and the image is not of good quality, unfortunately).  That little fuzzball is a great quality photo even if I think that, in spite of its label, it may be a miniature shetland rather than a regular shetland, but as I think the image is from Belgium, that may be their standard over there, beats me...so it needs to stay until we have something significantly better.   Montanabw (talk) 04:47, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Sadly i do wish i had taken apic of her (the american shetland) other side but at last i did not.Firesongponies (talk) 19:01, 29 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, I tried to take any number of photos of my critters, hoping they could illustrate something, but decided that the quality just wasn't there. I guess you are a real wikipedia editor when you dump your own stuff out for something uploaded to commons from Slovenia or something!  LOL!  However, our barn cat is still immortalized fpr his "assistance" with my efforts at mounting block!  LOL!   Montanabw (talk) 03:28, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

this article vs the "pit pony" article
this article claims there were ponies in coal mines in the united states until 1971. the "pit pony" article claims that ponies were never used in coal mines in the u.s.

76.119.74.64 (talk) 12:58, 14 September 2011 (UTC)timh2870@yahoo.com


 * Well, someone ought to research the issue and bring both articles into a consistency on that. (Will not be me at the moment, too many other fish to fry) Good point to notice.  Montanabw (talk) 18:00, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Split... splat
Why is this not split? Seeing as American Shetland Pony is a different breed. Pitke (talk) 06:29, 3 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Not really a different "breed," just some differences in type and pedigree, not enough info to warrant a spinoff, particularly due to common origin, particularly when there are still plenty of "foundation" shetlands in the USA, probably more than the show pony ones, actually. (They just don't compete much or win much these days). I don't think we really have the sources to say they are two wholly different "breeds." I hate to balkanize articles into multiple breed stubs when the difference is primarily political and concerning if one nations is bad for having different bloodline or pedigree requirements. I think the separate section covers it.  To split would create a boring stub that basically just says what's there already and not a whole lot more.  Montanabw (talk) 06:33, 7 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Boy, talk about cultural differences! We Finns, and I feel somfortable to speak for Swedes as well, find it laughable it's still called any type of Shetland Pony at all :P But in all seriousness, how is ASP not a different breed? It's a wildly different type, with a considerable amount of foreign blood, steeply different movement, different temperament, and it's potentially a lot bigger. "Classic" or "Foundation", those ponies are NOT the same breed Europe knows as Shetland Pony. (For reference, Foundation stallions, Classics... Then some Europeans.) Besides, there is no way, ever, and I think I could source this in a heartbeat, that British breeders of SP would accept an ASP for their breeding -- and vice versa for European Shetlands. (And just where are we supposed to find the ASP breed standard?) Many breeds have common roots. Estonian and Tori come to mind, as well as Shagya Arabian. Sure, ASP might be a sorry little stub at first, but I see no reason to doubt it would grow. Pickeral alone would be enough to bring it to solid C quality, and I'm prepared to do just that. Maybe even DYK it per 5x expand. Pitke (talk) 08:46, 7 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Not in the least; I think there is no contradiction in adding the new material you suggested AND keeping the American Shetland section -- bloodlines diverge -- for example, you don't have four articles for the four types of Finnhorse, and on WP we don't have two different articles on, say, English and American Thoroughbreds, even though for a while the Jersey Act tried to insist the two weren't quite the same "breed" any more. That one page of European "shetlands" look like minis (at least in the USA, the "whinnying sausage with legs" is a mini)-- they'd never pull a coal cart either, would they?  (Grin)  Now, arguably, we could do a "British Shetland Pony" article and then watch the nationalistic sorts have a field day with the title! (LOL!) Of course bloodlines and type will diverge when geographic distance increases and local needs change.  I favor making the existing article stronger and of a true world focus that includes America  -- really, would be WP:UNDUE in reverse to split -- USA probably top three in total Shetland population, though I have no idea if anyone has accumulated stats.   Likewise, if you look at the ASPC site, they actually have four or five divisions (see section "our breeds") which basically acknowledges the bloodline divergences and the crossbred.  Not all USA Shetlands are little mini-Hackneys, we still register the fat fuzzballs too!  The ASPC is officially recognized by the USEF, which is our overall umbrella group that also sponsors the Olympic team and such. (The USEF link actually a good source for this article, BTW)  It's sort of illogical to say that the whole rest of the world gets the shetland pony article, but not those Americans.  Montanabw (talk) 06:03, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Breed standard--height
According to the Shetland Pony Stud Book, the breed standard for height is no more than 42 inches (107 cm). This converts to, I believe, 10.5 hands (for inches: 42/4=10.5; for cm: 107/10.16=10.5). But since the breed standard is given in inches, both in the UK and US, why bother with hands? In any case, in the lead, both the recent change to 10.2 hands and the prior value of 11 hands appear to be incorrect. Am I missing something? Richigi (talk) 16:43, 28 February 2013 (UTC)


 * The article at present contains a summary of MULTIPLE breed registries (US, UK, etc.) and at the time the article was last reviewed, the range of up to 11 hands included whichever group had the tallest height standard at that time.  But 10.2 hands is 42 inches, by the way, a hand is 4 inches, there is no such thing as "10.5 hands" see hand (measurement).  Basically, WikiProject equine has debated this issue a lot and decided that our articles need a "three-way" conversion no matter which measurement method prevails on one place or another, but as the hands template goes hands, then inches and then cm, it's easiest to do it that way.  becomes . There is a more complicated hack to do the conversion in a different order, but it's only a two-way conversion, and those who really care can figure it out (we had one editor a while who was just offended that European breeds would be measured in anything but centimeters so  he figured out the hack, which you can see at Cavallo Romano della Maremma Laziale).  But basically, this article needs a lot of overall work and more sourcing, in a perfect world, we could review the different registries and their standards and say something like "the X association has a standard of A to B but the Y association has a standard of C to D"  I'm not opposed to making this sort of improvement, but we need the sourcing and footnoting to make it work.   Montanabw (talk) 21:53, 28 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Follow up: Just checked the American Shetland Pony Club] and it looks like they have a height limit for some shetlands of 46 inches/ 11.2 hands and another of 42 inches (10.2 hands), depending on the subsection of the registry we are talking (minis yet another standard, not relevant here). So you see the situation... yes, the article needs work...   Montanabw (talk) 21:56, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Ah hah! I was missing something (and more).  I should've checked at the Equine project (and read the whole hand article). Thanks for taking time to clear up my question, Montanabw. Richigi (talk) 22:37, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Images
The lead image is to show an ideal representative of the breed, not a random fat pony in a pasture. Thus, a show champion pony is shown. Images such as those on stamps are included to demonstrate the popularity and public image. Shetlands are not a feral breed, thus relatively few images of ponies in a natural setting are needed. Montanabw (talk) 02:28, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Why merge
I am proposing that the American Shetland article be merged back into this one for a couple reasons. First off, any animals moved to a new country will develop some new bloodline groups, and maybe even some phenotype changes. So where does it end? Australian Shetland? Brazilian Shetland? Etc... there's got to be a line drawn somewhere, and maybe this article is a good place to discuss where that line is. Montanabw (talk) 17:48, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, why indeed? Even the "foundation" type, supposedly the closest to the American Shetland of 50 years ago, is a completely different breed, both genetically and morphologically; the other three types bear no resemblance of any kind to a Shetland. The Shetland Pony Stud-Book Society won't (or at least wouldn't) register any Shetland with American blood, which is how/why the German Classic Pony came about. Where the line is drawn is normally when local populations develop as genetically distinct from the parent breed, particularly when there has been some cross-breeding with other local breeds. So the Brown Swiss is a different breed from the original Braunvieh, the British Landrace is distinct from the Danish Landrace from which it derives, the Finnish Ayrshire is distinct from the original Scottish breed, the American Belgian Draft is distinct from the Brabant and so on. Another line is when – as here – the derived population can no longer be registered in the stud-book/herd-book of the parent breed. The American Shetland is listed/described as a breed in numerous published sources, some of the less untrustworthy of which I have used in the article. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:37, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
 * In one sense, probably every horse breed on the planet is probably a "different breed" than it was 100 or 200 years ago. The question is where the line gets drawn. This article, and perhaps the Belgian horse one, might be good places to discern a guideline that is useful for current and future line-drawing. My other concern is creating comprehensive articles and not a bunch of low-quality start-class and stub articles.  In some cases, even though some significant bloodline groups can become effectively closed, there still may be a good reason to keep a single article; which is my thinking here.
 * I think your point that a line could be drawn where one breed society is not allowing cross-registration of another may have quite a bit of persuasiveness, though may not always be dispositive. For example, the Arabian horse has WAHO to recognize international stud books, and hence (to oversimplify) pretty much the same horses are allowed to be registered anywhere in the world, so clearly it would be inappropriate to spin off content forks for that breed. To take another example, the repeal of the Jersey Act clearly shows that any attempt to create an American Thoroughbred article out of Thoroughbred would be a clear content fork, no matter than a few breed encyclopedias claim otherwise. That said, exclusions are sometimes suspect and may be more political than scientific...as an example, the Gypsy horse promoters have such political infighting in the United States that I think there are 3-4 different breed registries for essentially the same horse breed.
 * Could you point to the UK studbook provisions that do not permit registration of American Shetlands? My (very brief) read of the American Shetland rules is that they actually have four different registries, one of which is for the "foundation" ponies. It appears the registry was closed in 1955 to imports (see  but there are some exceptions.
 * Overall, I think this is a good opportunity for a fruitful discussion and if we can reach some sort of consensus, we could also summarize our "findings" at WPEQ to see if anyone else has an important point to raise. Montanabw (talk) 00:27, 10 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Oppose, the American Shetland’s foundation stock were extensively outcrossed to other breeds in order to develop a different type of animal which breeds true to a distinctly different type. The two look different, are used differently and are bred separately. Cavalryman (talk) 20:23, 15 February 2020 (UTC).