FCF Rhythm Nation. The Morgan Horse Magazine, Jan 2002

This will finish the Jan. 2002 issue of The Morgan Horse Magazine. 

And there is a story here--a story of upset, drama, and disappointment. 

This stallion was foaled in 1995; he went on to have a successful show career in the Morgan world, culminating with being World Grand Champion Stallion at the Grand National Morgan show. Things got really hot after that win in part because his breeder was one of the judges, which was legal by the existing rules, but ethically dubious. 

There had been rumors about this horse; rumors that he was not out of the Morgan mare listed on his papers but the result of a "sneak" breeding to a Saddlebred mare. The Morgan mare was a 1972 foaled mare of old line breeding of Brunk and Lippitt. Could she have foaled a stretchy, horse like this? AMHA stonewalled, denied, dragged, and managed to anger a lot of people. A group of members kept pushing to investigate. Things happened that I do not now recall the time-line, but finally AMHA had to investigate. 

Now, a brief aside. The alleged dam of Rhythm Nation had had DNA sent in by the breeder of RN. It could not be compared to the Morgan mare's parents who were long gone, or any full siblings, or much of anyone. 

Finally, AMHA sent that DNA to the American Saddlebred Registry to compare to their data base. And a hit happened--the DNA sent in by the breeder of RN was a perfect match to a registered Saddlebred mare. 

Whoops--caught!

RN was then expunged from the Registry as were his get, and his breeder was banned from anything Morgan (he slimed off to go to Dutch Harness horses). The uproar was not finished yet, however. The people associated with owning RN and his get sued AMHA as they now had "worthless" horses. Many members of AMHA were disgusted with the entire affair and how AMHA had to be pushed to do the right thing; some left AMHA and some even left Morgans. 

Here is RN's correct pedigree

https://www.allbreedpedigree.com/fcf+rhythm+nation

And this is a short summation of a long, drawn-out situation. Us old-timers remember it well. People new to the breed may not know of it at all. I hope my essay here is clear and makes sense. It was an important part of our breed's history, albeit a sad part.