Differences in temperament between breeds matter a lot if you are going to buy 100 horses.
If you are only going to buy 1 horse, differences between breeds matter a *little*, if you don't want to exert much effort horse-shopping and have a very large number of candidates of many different breeds to sort through.
However, really, to your basic horse owner buying one horse at a time, who's willing to go look at individual horses, differences between breeds are almost irrelevant. You don't ride the breed as a whole, you ride that PARTICULAR horse, whose temperament may very well vary considerably from the breed 'average'.
Indeed, you can get some pretty good deals on horses if you are willing to 'shop outside the box' and, for instance, a trail rider go look at Saddlebred, an eventer go look at an old-timey type QH, a pleasure driving person go look at a TB, etc etc.
So do not get hung up on "this breed is this way, that breed is that way".
JM$0.02,
Pat
If you are only going to buy 1 horse, differences between breeds matter a *little*, if you don't want to exert much effort horse-shopping and have a very large number of candidates of many different breeds to sort through.
However, really, to your basic horse owner buying one horse at a time, who's willing to go look at individual horses, differences between breeds are almost irrelevant. You don't ride the breed as a whole, you ride that PARTICULAR horse, whose temperament may very well vary considerably from the breed 'average'.
Indeed, you can get some pretty good deals on horses if you are willing to 'shop outside the box' and, for instance, a trail rider go look at Saddlebred, an eventer go look at an old-timey type QH, a pleasure driving person go look at a TB, etc etc.
So do not get hung up on "this breed is this way, that breed is that way".
JM$0.02,
Pat