Data-Driven Decision-Making

I take a data-driven approach to many things.  I don’t just take someone else’s word for it, and I prefer to delve into the data myself.  Using secondhand knowledge can put you into embarrassing situations when that “trusted source” is quite possibly wrong or using dated information (so don’t take my word for it either if you’d prefer to look for yourself).

Lots of folks are playing “name games” with Gypsy Horses, and I don’t believe that this is productive for those that love these horses.

Phrases such as “all Gypsy Vanner Horses are Gypsy Horses, but not all Gypsy Horses are Gypsy Vanner Horses” evoke different feelings from different people (lots of strong feelings).  I’ve spent a lot of time recently with this in the spotlight of my mental ruminations.

There are two registries that are the most widely used by Gypsy Horse owners in the USA.  Both have their merits, both have their vision, and both have highly passionate people behind them that love these horses.

I feel that they feel they are competitors, but they cannot be competitors because they both have different foundational values that they pursue that are mutually exclusive to them being direct competitors.  I appreciate both of their perspectives, and I respect both registries equally.  I don’t feel like I must choose one over the other.  It’s not a “zero sum game” (one in which there is a limited number of resources to fight over and win).  If I agree with both, I believe I should be free to choose to support both and have the best of both worlds.  Both have won me over.

Forcing someone to choose one over the other is a petty, overly competitive perspective…they’re not sports teams and they’re not political parties.  They both have the interests of the horses at heart.

I came into the Gypsy Horse world, and like most, I’ve had to feel my way through where I fit in.

The promise of GVHS was the one that I latched onto first.  It was the largest.  It was the one that claimed that they are the only exclusive “purebred” registry.  My chosen slice of the horse industry is as a breeder.  That’s what I focus on.  That’s what I love.  That’s what I want to do best.  All other things Gypsy Horse related are not my focus.

It was then in my best interest in promotion of the “purebred” status of my foals to pursue supporting GVHS.

I didn’t know that there’s a rug under GVHS, though.  The history of the registry starts with the original vision of Dennis Thompson.  He had a vision for a new breed that matches the Gypsy Horse of a specific type and conformation profile from the second half of the 20th century.  Somewhere along the way, though, self-preservation of the registry away from exclusivity allowed in just a bit more than what that original vision entailed.  Waxing and waning, ebbing and flowing, peaks and valleys in dedication to the original vision have come and gone.  There’s a sea change at the registry right now, and it’s palpable.  Many are waiting with bated breath to see what comes next.  I have guesses, but I’ll have to wait and see just like everyone else.

I’ve come more and more to respect the position that GHRA has taken and their vision, too, though.  They are about Gypsy Horses, ALL Gypsy Horses.  They focus on the horse and specifically the Gypsy Horse whether purebred, whether crossbred, whether it also qualifies as a Gypsy Vanner Horse, cobs, tinkers, ALL Gypsy Horses.  Where GVHS frowns on crossbreeding and promotes maintaining breed purity, GHRA is much more libertarian with an attitude of “do whatever you want with your horses, and we’ll be there to register/track them.”

The rug under the GVHS, though… this is due to inclusiveness allowing horses that do not meet the original Gypsy Vanner Horse vision into the registry.  Care must be taken here.  If they go all out with proclaiming, focusing on, and putting the original vision in capital letters shouting it out all throughout the land, more than half the registry will be “put off” by this.  If they plan to extinguish the elements of the registry that they don’t really see as part of the true vision of The Gypsy Vanner Horse over the course of the lifetimes of all current registered horses (next 30 years or so), their future as a registry is one as a much smaller, elite registry.  I don’t think that any amount of “education” of the registry community is going to be successful with any planned eugenics campaign within today’s registry, though.  It’s going to be seen for what it is…the realization of the control of the registry by “original vision” elitists that need to tell everyone else why their horses don’t meet up to their registry founding standards.  That would not be good for the registry nor the members nor the horses in the long term.

That brings me to my thoughts on elitism.

Someone brought up that 25% of GVHS folks show their horses annually.

That’s not what I see experientially, so I embarked on a numbers quest.

And I found the normal case…you can pick and choose statistics to say whatever you want them to say if you pick the right ones.

I took the pointed horses for 2024.  I pared that down to horses shown in more than 3 shows local to their owners.  This gives me what I consider to be “regular showgoers.”

I found that around 1% of Gypsy Vanner Horse owners show their horses regularly throughout a show year.  That’s way different than the 25% quote, but I also know where that 25% quote comes from.  I dug up those numbers also.

Very few horse owners obtain and/or maintain their membership at the registry.  About 700 members.  Over 7600 Gypsy Vanner Horse owners.  That’s less than 10% of the Gypsy Vanner Horse owners that maintain their memberships.

So, of that 10%, I further drilled down into the numbers.  Right around 24 to 25% of current, active members attended at least one show with one of their horses in 2024.

You could make a big deal out of the number 25% but if you realize that it’s 25% of the 10% that maintain their memberships (and minimum standard of only one show), and you realize that even a very much smaller percentage of those are regular showgoers, then the show world for Gypsy Vanner Horses becomes a tiny speck containing the most elite that have the time and money to regularly show.  1% does not a constituency make.  1% is a minor, vocal lobby…something akin to a country club.

You ignore the needs of 99% of The Gypsy Vanner Horse owners if your primary focus is on horse shows as a registry.  Apparently, 90% of the owners don’t need anything from the registry at all if they don’t renew their memberships annually (or don’t already possess lifetime memberships).

I’d like to talk about the 10% in my geographic region (Region 8), the members.  I did a deep dive and enumerated every single horse owned by members in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and the Carolinas (members by location are publicly available at the registry website without being a member).  There are less than 500 horses.

Horse ownership over the registry, overall, numbers an average of 2.5 horses per owner.  The big farms pull that number up just a bit from those individuals that own only 1 horse.

There are lots fewer horse shows in this geographic region than some others.  Analysis of all registry members in this region shows that horse ownership averages over 6 horses per member in this region (about 6.3).  That’s a lot higher than the registry average of 2.5.

If we have 25% of this community as paying members solely to show horses at one or more shows per year (and it’s much more complex and mixed than this), possibly another 25% are members that desire to potentially show their horses, but then, for personal reasons over the season, they do not show at all.

Why are these other 50% or more of the members paying their dues to maintain their memberships then if they do not show horses or have no intention of showing their horses?

The clues are that they do not show, have no shows in their areas, and they have a much higher average number of horses owned over and above the registry average.

They’re breeders.  This is a horse breeder heavy area.  This area is not going to be served well by internal registry efforts to focus on “horse shows.”  This region of the country either is not happy that there are not more shows in the area (shows must be able to make money from participants and the scant outside spectators that attend) or these breeders straight-up just don’t care about horse shows at all.  Probably more the latter.  They’re too focused on being good breeders like myself (hopefully).

Shows are useful tools for a registry that wants to propagate standards by rewarding what they see as superior.  I understand that.  It’s hard to say that you are rewarding the best of what the breed has to offer when only 1% of owners are regular showgoers, though.  There are a lot of fantastic horses out there that never set foot in an arena.

I have one other registry-related numbers dive that I performed recently.  I feel that it’s primarily a matter of lifestyle changes and economic impacts across the nation.  Someone told me that there is still solid growth in the registry.  My numbers, freely available to regular members at the GVHS website, show a decline in reported births and registrations.  I’ve also estimated projections for this coming year based on trends (and non-scientific polls).  This should be a wake-up call to the GVHS registry.  I’ll leave off with this.  Focusing on shows will not get you the money you need to continue to operate the non-profit.  You need to start doing something better for the members that don’t show their horses and for engendering interest in the breed.