Characteristics of the Arabian Breed

The most characteristic features of the Arabian breed are their bright, expressive eyes, their alert expression and the distinct shape of their heads. Identify the physical and personality characteristics of the breed with helpful advice from the owner of a training and riding facility in this video on Arabian horses.

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Hi I'm Tim Wigren, owner and operator of Command Performance, and I'm here to talk to you about the characteristics of the Arabian horse. For as many breeds of horses in the world there is more breeds of actual Arabians, meaning that there are Polish Arabians, Russian Arabians, Spanish Arabians, Domestic Arabians, Crabbet Arabians, Egyptian Arabians and they all possess certain characteristics. What we're looking at and we're going to be seeing some of the common characteristics that you would see amongst all of them. Number one, you are going to be looking at bright expressive eyes. That's the most common thing in the Arabian is their head, their look, their eyes, their expression and the alertness. We want to see that look of a horse who has got very proud, very very charismatic. We also want to see what we call a very long refined snaky neck, athletic from top to bottom. That neck should tie in very cleanly to the shoulders all the way down. Legs should be nice and firm, nice and straight with lots of bone density. For a smaller animal comparatively to many of the larger horses that we're used to seeing Arabians possess very very strong athleticism. They are very well noted for high endurance in many of the hundred mile endurance races Arabians are very very successful because they're so athletic. They originally were bred as war horses where they may have to treat, fight a battle in one territory and retreat across two territories. One of the most well known things about an Arabian is that you'll see that they are very very athletic. They are very tight. They are very, a little smaller bodied. Also as we'll walk this horse around a little bit and we'll kind of look around him. You're going to see that he is very refined, very solid, nice big feet and very very athletic. Everything is bred to be form to function and function to form. Here we're actually looking at a horse who is generally considered to be a domestic bred Arabian. He is a 16 year old Arabian stallion and he is going to be suited and is going to be utilized in the dressage and in the sport horse world in the competitions. He has already started his show career and we are hoping to be able to get him to come out here a little bit more. Let's walk him around so we can see some of the things that he'll face. As you notice the first thing as he walks off he raises his tail, very animated, it is a little different than any other breed of horse. You'll notice a lot of your stock type horses don't possess this. Arabians they have a long lengthy stride. They should be athletic. Everything should be a stride which moves out there, a horse which could cover ground all day long. It could be one that you could ride on all day long and would be happy at the end of the day to be doing their task. Also the look, the athleticism possesses. You'll see a quality which definitely all horses possess but in an Arabian it is one of those looks that we want to see, commonly referred to as the "Look of Eagles". Under many different countries their Arabian horses have been a very large source of pride with their breeding. In the former Communist block countries their breeding programs were used strictly for racing and in these countries they have let, we have been fortunate enough in the United States to now be able to import many of these breeds of horses that have come in, very very excited about the fact that the whole Arabian market and the whole Arabian horse seems to be getting more and more worldwide attention. The characteristics that you are going to be looking at there again as you see he looks up, he is very very looking, he wants to know what goes on. Definitely this is an Arabian stallion.