Quarter Horse

The American Quarter Horse is the most numerous horse breed in the world, and it is named for a race: a quarter of a mile, on a straight dirt track, which colonial Virginians ran as early as the 1600s. Over that distance nothing beats one.

The modern breed combines that Colonial stock with Thoroughbred blood and, critically, with the cow-working horses of the Southwest. The association was founded in 1940.

They are compact and heavily muscled through the hindquarters, and the breed's defining quality is cow sense: an inherited instinct for reading and controlling cattle that makes them the ranch and rodeo horse.

They are also calm and trainable, which is why they dominate as a general riding horse.

The trade is genetic disease. The breed carries five well-documented heritable conditions including HYPP, HERDA and PSSM1. All are testable, panel testing is available, and any purchase should include the results.