IT’S a well-known fact that a cob is a type, not a breed. But what breeds actually go into making a cob? It’s a question with many possible answers, none of which are easy to come by, for one simple reason - many cob owners have no idea how their horses are bred.
Of the 20 lightweight cobs forward at Horse of the Year Show (HOYS) in 2022, 14 of them had no breeding listed, including the winner, Richard Leeman’s Love Joy, who went on to claim the overall cob of the year title.
In the heavyweight section, 16 of the 19 cobs listed in the catalogue had no breeding information, again including the winner, Susan Granger’s Freddie Kruger.
So when it comes to figuring out how a cob comes to be, where do we go from here?
“A true-to-type cob, only God knows how it’s made,” says Val Sheehan, known in the showing industry as “the cob finder”.
“A cob should be low to the ground, with short cannon bones and quality limbs, but how you get that type varies
