I was recently contacted by a Grade 8 student. This is not the first time that such a thing has happened, but, prior student contact has largely been from university and/or college students.

She wrote: “I am writing to you because I love your articles on conformation, and have used multiple of them as sources for my horse conformation project in my eighth grade science class.”

She also asked why conformation – functional conformation, I assume – was so important at the upper levels of competition.

My response was: “As to high-performance, it is kind of like automobiles. An average car might get you from A to B, but, if you want to enter competitions, you might need more than an average car, and, by the time you want to enter a NASCAR race, you will need a car that is mechanically designed to operate efficiently and safely at that higher level. It’s just physics.”

Although the exchange was brief, I am extremely pleased that some young people are thinking of the horse in mechanical terms.That is good for horses and it is good to know!

I hope she gets an A+ for her science project.