At least a couple times a month I get emails or DMs from people asking me to help them find information on their horse’s pedigree or background. As you can probably tell from my extreme level of nerdiness about all things pedigree, I have spent a lot of time falling deep into rabbit holes on the internet looking for information. Especially when I’m doing spreadsheets for my “It’s in the Blood” series… you’d be amazed how freakin hard it can be to find information on even the most famous of horses sometimes (especially the Irish ones, omg). Names change, details don’t get entered… it’s a mess.

So I figured I would make a little reference post sharing what websites I use most when it comes to pedigree research or similar information. There are some really useful databases out there if you know where to look, although I have to say that none of them are totally complete – hence why I use several instead of just one.

Thoroughbreds

Thoroughbreds are obviously the easiest, assuming you have their registered name. If you’re lucky the horse will be showing under their JC name and it’s as easy as making a trip to Equibase, where you can see their sale history, race history, and pedigree, all for free. You can watch race replays through Equibase too, if you have a subscription (or you can buy a day pass for $5.25).

However some tracks have race replays available for free, depending on how far back you need to go. If it’s a California track you can go to Cal Racing and search by date, track, and race (which you know from looking at the horse’s Equibase results tab). You have to have an account for that site, but it’s free. For other tracks just try googling the track’s name with “race replays” and see what you come up with, you might get lucky.

If you want to see if said horse has any siblings, you can go to the Dam’s Foal Search page and look for them that way. I usually then take that information to facebook and google and run a search to see if I can find pics or info about the siblings.

Another option for researching TB’s is Pedigree Query, although that database is not as complete and anyone can go in and edit anything, so I always prefer to use Equibase first. Sometimes there will be pictures of the horse or it’s parents or grandparents in PQ though, so it may be fun for a quick consult just to see (CANTER often puts pics in PQ if the horse comes through their program, so if it was a CANTER horse you might be lucky and find a fresh-of-the-track pic). You can also go in and put pics and info of your own horse into PQ if you want to, just in case anyone happens to come looking later. You just go to the horse’s pedigree page, hover over Maintenance, and then click Add/Edit Information.

If you don’t know the horse’s JC name then your options are slimmer.

For a horse competing at the national level you can look in USEF via their Horse Search and use the “All Aliases” option – sometimes you’ll get lucky and it’ll actually have the horse’s aliases (which might be the JC name) or at least list the parent’s names (and then you can use the Dam’s Foal Search combined with the birth year on Equibase to come up with a JC name) if the rider/owner put that information in. A lot of times they don’t, but… worth a shot. I think you need a USEF membership (even just at the “fan” level) to use this search function. However, you can pretty much always find a promo code for a free USEF fan membership. If you can’t, give me a holler and I’ll find one for you.

If it’s a lower level eventer you can look in the USEA Horse search database to see if they entered the parent’s names.

If you still come up empty, your final options are creative Googling – which is worth a shot because sometimes you can find a website or something and hit the jackpot – or facebook. If you’re super creepy (like me. Yes I’ve done this.), you can always try to find the owner, message them, and see if they know the information. There’s no shame in my game, and it’s paid off more than once. Worst thing they can do is ignore you (no skin off my back) or think you’re crazy (they’re probably right).

Warmbloods/Sporthorses

Things get a little more complicated on this side of the spectrum, mostly because there isn’t one centralized motherload database. So, bear with me here and I’ll run you through some options.

The first thing I usually do is go plug the horse’s name into Horsetelex and Hippomundo. Yes, I always do both. They’re both good databases, but each has their pros and cons (Hippomundo is sometimes missing horses that Horsetelex has, but Horsetelex often isn’t as up to date on performance results as Hippomundo). So I usually pop open two tabs and search for the horse in both sites. If all you want to do is look up a horse to view it’s basic pedigree, they’re both free for that function. Fun Fact: all 3 Belgian registries (BWP, sBs, Zangersheide) have a partnership with Hippomundo, so any horse registered with one of those 3 registries is automatically entered into Hippomundo (as of… 2012ish? I can’t remember when that started.). If you’re looking for a Belgian-registered horse, Hippomundo is your place. For example, Presto is registered sBs, so they entered him when he was issued his papers.

Ok, so… let’s say you want to do more than just view the horse’s pedigree. What if you want to find out if the horse has other siblings? You can use both of these sites to do that, however, keep in mind that they aren’t always complete. Especially if the sibling never did anything of note in sport, or wasn’t used as a breeding animal. If it’s sitting in someone’s backyard doing nothing, odds are that it won’t show up in your searching UNLESS it was Belgian-registered or it’s breeder/owner cared enough to enter it into the database themselves at some point. Fair warning. But, it’s still worth a look.

To find this on Horstelex, there are two steps: 1) go to the horse’s pedigree page. 2) Click on their dam (remember horses are only considered siblings or half siblings if they share a dam) 3) on the dam’s pedigree page click on Progeny

If you want to look at the sire’s production instead, you would use the same steps – click on his name in the pedigree, go to his page, and click on Progeny. Some stallions have hundreds and hundreds of progeny in there, and there’s a handy “Sport” column where it’ll show what level the horse has competed to. BEWARE though, this isn’t always up to date. And for the eventers, they haven’t yet switched over to the new star system (it’s coming) so… I wouldn’t totally trust what’s in there. If it says a horse has competed to 3* eventing for example, I’d go verify it myself by searching the horse’s FEI record.

Ok, so.. Hippomundo. This site is usually more complete and up to date, and has more fun features (plus is a lot faster, if you’re impatient like me). However, you do need a subscription to access a lot of the features. You can get a one month free trial of their Basic subscription with the code COTH21 or BIGTALK21 – that’ll give you access to the horse’s sport results, rankings, full pedigree, and a few other features. If you’re a supernerd or a breeder the Premium yearly subscription is worthwhile because you can add horses to track, get notified when they have sport results, get access to all kinds of reports, follow riders, use their foal planner feature, follow your homebreds, have a “my broodmares” database, etc etc. If you’re just doing a basic sibling search, though, do the free month subscription of the Basic plan and you’re golden.

For that function Hippomundo works similarly in that you just enter the horse in the search bar, click on it, and go to their pedigree. From there you’d click on the dam’s name, go to her pedigree, hover over Horse in the upper right, and click Offspring. That’ll show you whatever other horses are in their database that she has produced.

If you want to look up the sire, same steps. Hippomundo makes it easier to sort the stallion’s offspring though, like for instance I can go into Mighty Magic, get a list of his offspring and then say “Ok, I want to see how many have competed to X level in X sport” by using the dropdown

This is really handy if you’re looking to breed and want to research what a particular stallion has produced in what sport and on what kind of mares, obviously.

From my experience Hippomundo has tended to be more up to date with sport results, and Horsetelex has tended to include more horses. Hence me using both especially when I’m looking for offspring from a particular stallion or mare. If you’re a breeder Hippomundo also lets you create a Breeder page, so if someone is looking at one of your horses and clicks on your name, it’ll take them to a page with your contact info, where you’re located, a list of the best horses you’ve bred, etc. Pretty cool.

Ugh, the Irish

Ok, moving on to the bane of my existence: the Irish horses. OMfreakinG y’all, you’ve never seen such incomplete information in your life until you’ve gone searching for Irish horse pedigrees. The truth is that a lot of these horses, especially 20+ years ago, were bred by farmers who just did not prioritize putting information down when they sent in their registration paperwork. Because of that, there are huge gaps in just about every Irish pedigree, especially if it’s traditional ID/ISH vs Continental breeding. Not only is this frustrating for the sake of lineage, it also makes it really hard to get accurate blood percentages. Drives me batty.

Horsetelex and Hippomundo are especially lacking in the Irish horse pedigrees, probably because none of the aforementioned farmers have come along and put any of this information in, particularly further back down the line. So, if you have an Irish horse, my suggested database to use is the Irish Horse Register. You need an account but it’s free. You can go to their Horse Search page and search by any of the listed criteria. IF there is any pedigree data to be had for the horse, the IHR is the place that will have it.

When you find the horse you want, click into their info page

And then to get to their pedigree click on the Pedigree tab at the top. You can view by 4, 5, or 6 generations.

Seriously though, there are big gaps in their data that are unlikely to ever be filled and that’s just the way it is. Join me in my lament.

There are a few other features in IHR that you can play around with too… it’s a more simple tool without a lot of the bells and whistles of Horsetelex or Hippomundo, but it’s got the basics. It’s certainly your best bet if the horse in question is registered Irish.

---

Those are my main sites that I use, although a few others are worth a notable mention:

AllBreed – I have all the same complaints with this site as I do with Pedigree Query (same site just hits different databases) but for some reason American breeders love to use it. I wish they wouldn’t, Horsetelex or Hippomundo are both WAY BETTER, but alas here we are. So if I’m struggling to find info about a horse and I know it was US or Canadian bred, I might try searching AllBreed just in case. Sometimes you get lucky.

FEI horse lookup – I mentioned this one briefly earlier, but it’s come in handy other ways too. Assuming the horse you’re looking for has competed to the FEI level, sometimes you can find a horse’s sire or dam listed in their FEI info, or the name of their breeder. IF their rider/owner chose to put that information in, anyway.

A couple other European pedigree sites:

Sporthorse Data – I find this one to be less complete than the other two main ones, but I’ll use it if I’m desperate and grabbing at straws.

Rimondo – this one is more complete than the above but the vast majority of their info is behind a paid firewall and I don’t like the site enough to pay for yet another subscription. They have a lot of pics and video though.

Now, what about if a sporthorse/warmblood is registered under one name but shown under another? Same advice as far as looking in USEF for aliases, BUT worth nothing that Horsetelex and Hippomundo include any known aliases in their search results as well. For instance – Off the Record was originally known as Cooley Stateside. Luckily someone put this alias into the major databases, so searching for either name will return a result.

Breeders and riders, take note of this and enter any aliases that your horses may have! You can do it by editing the horse’s information from their pedigree page. (I’m always happy to help anyone with this if they need assistance navigating any of these sites)

I think I’ll stop there, this is already a massive information dump that a lot of people don’t care about. There are more hints and tricks and websites, so if you try all of this and still aren’t having any luck, ask me and I’ll see if I can help. For most horses this should be sufficient though. Wait, no – one more piece of advice: never underestimate the power of a facebook search. You’d be amazed what you can find just by poking around there.

I swear I’m done now. Many gold stars if you actually read all this.

No, still no baby from Peyton. She’s big as a house and increasingly uncomfortable but clearly my impatience is having zero impact on her timeline. Still holding out hope for an April Fools baby, which might be the joke she’s ultimately gonna play on us.

But while there’s no new foal to introduce yet, as I mentioned earlier this week, a new member of the WTW string has arrived. We’ve been hunting for another nice TB mare (and when I say hunting I mean HUNTING, I’m pretty sure we saw every friggin TB mare for sale in America) looking for one that we felt had the right pedigree, temperament, movement, and conformation to suit a sporthorse/eventer breeding program. A lot of them have one or two or those qualities, but not many have all of them. We tried to buy one a month or so ago from Benchmark but were about an hour too late (another eventing breeder snatched her up!) but I think eventually the right one did come along.

Vee is also known as Vonhra, an 8yo TB mare who just ran her last race in February. Despite a racing career spanning 5 years she retired sound on clean legs (not even so much as a pimple on those legs!). She’s also got a great temperament, good movement, and a strong more old-fashioned looking TB type. The shipper who brought her from AZ to TX had nothing but very positive things to say about how great she was to work with, and her previous owners felt the same way.

Vee was not a very good racehorse, only winning once in all that time, but she had some serious turn of foot when she felt like it.

We really wanted something with a sporty pedigree, and I think we got that. Her sire Lonhro was an Australian racehorse (we didn’t set out to have two TB mares with Australian heritage, but here we are – Lonhro and Peyton’s damsire Quest for Fame were actually at the same stud farm in Australia! Peep this pic of both of them together.) who shuttled to America for a few seasons, and Vee is from one of those seasons. If you’ve never watched Lonhro’s Australian Cup win from 2004 you definitely should, it’s one of the most gutsy finishes I think I’ve ever seen. He stood in Kentucky but Vee officially hails from Maryland, having been bred by Robert Mantuso and born at Chanceland Farm. She was sold originally for 95k and made her way to the West Coast, racing mainly in California. When we picked her up she was at Turf Paradise, in Arizona.

Lonhro’s sire Octagonal is from the highly coveted Sir Tristam (Sir Ivor) line, and produced a lot of showjumpers and eventers in New Zealand and Australia. Octagonal’s dam was Eight Carat, one of the best producing turf mares ever. Lonhro offspring are a little bit hard to find in North America due to how little time he spent here, and they’re generally pretty popular as sporthorses. They can sometimes be a little on the smaller side but have reputations as great amateur-friendly horses with excellent canters. Vee was advertised as 16h, but sticks at 16.1 1/2… on the big side for a Lonhro and the perfect sporthorse size!

Some of that size may be thanks to her dam, Jolie Visage (looking at Vee’s gorgeous face, I have to wonder if – given the name – that’s who she got her head from). Jolie Visage’s sire is Broken Vow, who is a bit over the 16.2h mark. He’s another stout TB with a lot of bone, giving Vee substance from both sides of her pedigree. I’ve seen a lot of sporthorses from Broken Vow popping up in eventing as well as h/j, no surprise given that he’s by Unbridled and out of a Nijinsky mare.

On the bottom of her pedigree we find Lyphard, who should be pretty well known to any thoroughbred sporthorse aficionados. Lyphard himself was a fantastic turf horse in Europe and an excellent producer of mares, although he did find some success with his colts as well. Most notably he produced the stallion Dancing Brave, who produced Ghareeb – a stallion you find over and over again in 5* event horses from the UK and Ireland, especially on the damside. Rounding out the bottom of Vee’s pedigree you find the stallion Riverman, who was a very successful turf horse and sire in France that also become known as an excellent broodmare sire (fun fact: Riverman’s broodmare sire is 3/4 related to the dam of Mill Reef – another heavy hitter in the sporthorse world).

Basically, there is a lot to like about Vee, especially from a sporthorse breeding perspective. Her physical type is excellent too, with an super neck set, strong connections, good proportions, great balance, big feet and correct legs. She looks pretty darn good for a horse that spent so long racing and has just come off the track, and we can’t wait to see what she looks like once she’s been let down a bit more.

She’s the type of mare we think could cross well with some of the longer-lined European showjumping stallions, and that’s mainly what we’ve been looking at for her as a first baby daddy. The only bummer is that a lot of the US frozen semen brokers are very short on stock right now, so our first two choices aren’t available. There are still some good options that we’re pondering though, so stay tuned to see who we pick. Welcome to the WTW family, Vee!

I’m very late getting started with things this morning because SOMEONE either has an abscess or his leg is broken. Which diagnosis is more accurate depends on which of us you ask.

Considering Henry tried to kick me in the knee cap when I wrapped it with animalintex, I’m gonna say it’s probably not as broken as he insists it is. High drama. Always.

What I’m really after today though are some suggestions/input from the hive mind about something totally non-horse related (sorry) but I know there are a lot of spin bike fans out there so I’m hoping someone can point me the right direction.

I’m looking for some kind of desk or shelf that would attach to my bike that would allow me to set a laptop on it. I do my classes every morning on my phone and that’s fine, but I’d like to be able to sit on my bike and spin a little when I’m stuck in long boring meetings or falling down into an hours-deep rabbit hole on stallions (ok that’s horse related), and I need my laptop for that.

They make these little trays for Pelaton bikes, but I’m definitely far too horse poor (ok that’s also horse related) to own an actual Pelaton bike, mine is a cheap no-frills Amazon special. The handlebars of mine are shaped quite a lot different, they’re more sloped, so I don’t think the Pelaton one would set on them very well.

Anyone have any suggestions for something that might work with my handlebars that would allow me to set my laptop up on? I just need a little tray or shelf that hooks around them somehow…

Usually Mondays are my riding update days around here, but there’s not a lot to say about Henry except he continues to act 4 instead of 14. Since Presto left he’s the youngest horse on the property and I feel like he’s taking that to the extreme. The yeehaw was so real on Friday after we cantered over the natural ditch in the back that he came the closest he ever has to actually bucking me off. Like… I almost lost a stirrup. Nobody tell him.

We’ve been doing a lot of cavaletti exercises, and last week when we went in the arena after an overnight storm, he I guess… forgot… that the cavaletti were in the ring because he turned into a snorty spooky mess at the sight of the canter ones set up near the top.

I mean it’s kind of embarrassing to spook at the exercise you literally just did two days before, but ok. Once we walked up to it he was like “oh j/k I totally knew what that was, just seeing if you knew….”. Sure, Henry. Sure. I’m glad he’s enjoying himself at least. Once the hot weather hits he’ll be back to miserable and grumpy, so I won’t begrudge him some spring sillies.

Speaking of sillies…

I still don’t really have any particularly noteworthy Presto updates (he’s supposed to be doing something fun this week, so maybe in a few days) but he is indeed still alive and well and happy in Ocala. Settling into the busy bustling atmosphere of OJC has definitely been a thing, but… that’s exactly why I sent him. He’s getting his world rocked a little bit and learning how to deal. A local-ish to me trainer was there last week and happened to see him while walking past the barns so she took the above pic. Apparently he begs for cookies as soon as you walk up, so… yep that’s on brand. He spends his days snoozing in his stall, getting ridden, and begging for cookies, and spends his nights romping around giant pastures. Overall he’s doing a-ok I think.

Peyton is still holding in that hostage, no foal yet. She hit 340 days yesterday, but last time she foaled at 344. Maybe she’ll stick to the same pattern and give us an April Fool’s baby? That would be about right for these mares and their sense of humor. I’m very impatiently waiting for a baby already. Let’s get this show on the road, yes?

So, no baby pics yet but the new mare Vonhra did arrive at Willow Tree Warmbloods last night! Michelle said she’s even more stunning in person and will get some nice pics of her within the next couple days. I quite like her and think all of our endless internet stalking paid off, she’s a nice addition to the broodmare band.

I’ve been calling her Vee after Badminton’s Vicarage Vee, since Vonhra doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue or lend itself well to any good nicknames. We’ll see if Michelle thinks that fits or if she needs something different. But yay, new mare. WHO SHOULD WE BREED HER TO? Stallion shopping is almost as fun for me as the actual babies.

One more fun thing today: I’m hosting a giveaway for a $75 Corro gift card on Instagram so if you haven’t entered yet, don’t forget to do so! Y’all know how much I love Corro, and free gift cards are never bad. Plus I made Henry stand with Presto’s ball for the photo, which took some real doing, and he’s probably traumatized now. So… at least enter to make sure that all his suffering wasn’t for naught.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Breed.Ride.Event. (@breedrideevent)

Man I have REALLY missed my horsey related travel. I haven’t been on a plane since we went to Burghley in summer 2019 (thank goodness we did it then at least) and since we used to do 1-2 fun horse trips every year, I’ve really been jonesing. We’d planned on finally hitting Ireland last year with a Millstreet/riding/stallion viewing combo (a big horse show plus stallion/young horse viewing has come to be our preferred method ever since Bundes in 2017 – it’s definitely the way to do it) but of course covid derailed all that. At least it happened early enough to where all I’d done was spend hours plotting an itinerary but we hadn’t actually booked anything yet. The little airbnb cottage I had found though, y’all. Le sigh. It lives in my dreams.

It’s my style to try to get as much bang for the buck out of any horsey trip, hence putting horse shows and breeding stuff all together into one maximum bang-for-your-buck experience. If I’m getting on a tin can with a bunch of other people and being hurtled through space while spending a lot of money for the privilege, you can bet I’m gonna milk it for all it’s worth. So when I started thinking about planning a trip out to see Presto, the gears started turning. I mean, it’s Ocala… the potential is huge and it must not be wasted.

Of course, this is the worst possible time of year for my usual travel buddy Michelle. There are 6 mares due to foal starting sometime between ANY FUCKING DAY NOW PEYTON and late May/early June. Plus those mares need to be bred back, and Michelle does the majority of her own breeding work, which means a lot of ultrasounding and monitoring of cycles. She’s pretty much tied to the farm from March through June. Too bad, because she and I are really good at finding trouble any time we travel together, and we definitely enjoyed our last Ocala trip (one of the YEH/FEH symposiums in… early 2019 I think? That was a great travel year…).

But you know who else is an exceptional Trouble companion? Bobby. And you know who’s currently horse shopping? Bobby. Guess where’s a great place to go to look at lots of nice horses in one relatively small geographic area? O-freakin-cala.

I pitched my plan to him, which took about .00005% convincing on my part. April is Bobby’s birthday month, it’s extra easy to talk him into treating his’self anytime in or near that month. Plus like – who doesn’t want to go spend a few days trying horses in Ocala? Pffft. The idea sells itself.

We’ve been floating the idea for a week or so, while I dug through and looked at what dates would actually work for me. Bobby is already fully vaccinated but I don’t get my second one until the 10th, and I wanted to wait until after that. Looking at our two schedules, and Megan’s schedule, it seemed like the best bet was the following weekend. So yesterday we buckled down, starting hunting flights and rental cars and hotels, and started BOOKING SHIT.

And I have to give Bobby props (even if it pains me to do so, because it goes straight to his big overinflated head) he is a really useful person to travel with. He travels a lot with his husband so they rack up a ton of airline miles, and he has all kinds of special perks and memberships, plus hunting good travel deals is part of his job. He got us hooked the hell up with some flights, a discounted rental car, and a decent hotel at a great rate. Split that in half and, well, thanks to him this trip is costing me next to nothing. Well, except the pain and suffering that comes with having to deal with Bobby for several days. Pray for me. He farts in his sleep.

Jk, we’re gonna go find him a nice horse and then we’ll be even.

When those booking confirmation emails started to come through I got hella excited. It’s been SO LONG since I had a fun horsey thing like this to look forward to. So long since I’ve gotten to obsess about an itinerary, trying to figure out how to maximize every last minute. Plus I have like 36 vacation days to use and don’t want to end up losing 20+ like I did last year since we can only carry 5. I’ve only taken one day off in the past 6 months and I’m ready for a fun break. I’m excited to be going back to Ocala, and I’m for sure ready to see Presto’s crazy face again. I already started thinking about what to pack, because it’s not too early to start packing yet right? 3 weeks in advance seems totally reasonable.

The next step will be to start finding horses for Bobby to try, which is also super fun because I get to try to spend someone else’s money. My one true talent in the world! We’ve already got some plans brewing for other stuff too – we’re definitely gonna pack as much as we can into our long weekend. I can’t freakin wait. And just imagine the high quality blog fodder that should come out of the two of us idiots taking on Ocala together… comedy gold, surely. You’re welcome in advance.