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Because it's interesting! Depends on the horse and what you want it to do. Overall basic conformation rules that apply to every horse:

The back should appear relatively level from shoulder to butt, with a slight dip in the middle. Too much of a dip is a swayback, no dip is a roach back, both are probably painful and bad. The shoulders can appear higher, but the butt should not be the obvious high point. There's some leeway on this last point for young horses who usually grow into it at least a little.

The neck should be a smooth line on top and bottom. It shouldn't appear to dip in front of the shoulders, and the horse should carry it in a smoothly arched posture while moving around, especially while moving faster than a walk. There should be visible muscle in the neck. It should be long enough that the horse can easily arch it enough so that the forehead is vertical. The head should never be longer than the neck, but in some heavy draft breeds and stocky ponies they'll sometimes look about the same.

All four legs should be vertical and straight when viewed from directly in front or behind. The joints should be as close to in line as possible. When viewed from the side, the long bones of the front legs should be in line above and below the knee. The knee will bulge out a bit, but any joint that looks abnormally large or out of line is an issue.

When looking at the hind legs, the long bone in the lower leg should be as vertical as possible, but this varies with posture. Judge this when a horse is standing calmly on level ground and bearing its weight evenly. The upper long bone in the hind leg absolutely should not be vertical in a neutral weight-bearing posture (when the lower bone is vertical). The closer to vertical, the more wrong it is. If it looks like the horse can easily bend and flex all joints in the hind leg, and the lower bone is often held comfortably vertical but the upper one isn't, you're good. If the movement, legs, and topline are fine, the hip is also probably fine, but you can get really technical with hip angles if you want. It should look like a triangle. Don't worry about it yet.

The feet should all be pointing straight forward, not facing each other or out. The pastern, the short bone just above the hoof, should be long enough to flex as they walk, but not so long that it looks like it's sagging. All four pasterns should be at about the same angle (though they can appear slightly more vertical in the back without issues) and that angle should match the angle of the base of the neck at the shoulder. This is a pretty easily visible line. Generally speaking, longer pasterns and a deeply sloped shoulder angle indicate smoother gaits and a more comfortable ride, and vice versa. Neither is necessarily more desirable, it depends on what activities you're doing. Steeper angles are better for jumping, for example, even if it'll mean a bumpier trot.

Overall, the horse should appear balanced and move freely. There should be visible muscle throughout the body and the coat should appear healthy. There's a wide range of acceptable body types specialized for different tasks, and the horse you choose should have a body type that lets it perform what you ask comfortably.

This is kind of off the top of my head but these rules should be pretty universal (and a perfectly achievable bar for any intentional breeding imo).

There's also the phenomenon where virtually every breed of every animal gets more extreme over time. Some people will always try for the most dramatic type they can achieve within the breed standard, until that's considered the new default and a new generation rises to push it even further, and that's how you get from a cat to a pipe cleaner in under a hundred years.

Very cool! Very rare. I've never seen one irl that was significant enough to require intervention but I think the extra digits are generally removed if possible. There's a good chance it'll cause issues in a lot of cases, they're not always growing at a good angle or they'll interfere with joint movement. I've seen a few pictures floating around of adult horses with fully developed extra digits, apparently fully functional, but there's no way to say what issues that would cause long-term (if any, I suppose!). As long as no one's actively selecting for this trait (they shouldn't) it's an interesting curiosity whenever it pops up, and probably fun for farriers.

Not strictly fugly because people aren't at fault for this one, but yeah, it's potentially disabling and would require a lot more care in even the best cases.

It's so common to see broodmares who are structurally fine but desperately out of shape because they've never been taught anything. It doesn't have to be like this! Give her a year off and ride her around a little! If she absolutely can't be worked, you shouldn't be breeding her anyway.

Yeah, body condition can be hard to judge from photos sometimes, depending on the breed. Some breeds are just gloriously beefy, some Arabians look like they could blow away. Generally, there shouldn't be so much subcutaneous fat that it starts to obscure muscle contours. When a horse starts to get out of shape because they're not being worked I find you often see it in the neck losing visible muscle first. The boys can get some fat at the crest of the neck but the rest of it will start looking skinny, and their posture always suffers and they start falling out of collection. On the other hand, a horse that's consistently active and well-muscled can often carry a bit more weight and look even better for it. They should never look flabby, but there's nothing better than a sturdy pony fat and glossy on good pasture and ready to go. Muscle should always be visible, seasonal coat considered.

Just stay on top of any fluctuations, work consistently for targeted muscle development to support any weak spots, and talk to your vet about diet. When judging, if something is very wrong, you'll see it. Look at enough fit animals and you'll know when something's up.

too many

I haven't worked with one directly but I know someone with one at her barn that she raves about, super rare here. The ones I've seen have been inconsistent (common issues seem to be wonky hind leg angles, longer backs, weird necks) but some have been really nice. Some really good examples of nice desert types with agility and stamina. I think people use them for polo, which I'm sure they're great at.

It's the worst thing ever. It accomplishes nothing but suffering. If they ever decide they want the atrocious shepherd hips too it's gonna look terrible.

I saw this foal while working at a TB stud farm. She couldn’t straighten her knees, and we were told to pull on her legs a bit when she was lying down (to relax her tendons I guess?). I was working nightshift at the time, and bottle fed her every few hours. She would make the cutest little “neigh” when I entered the stall. Sometimes I had to feed her lying down because she struggled a lot getting up.

She died a couple weeks later sadly, I’m not clear how because I was not there that day. IIrc I was told they had bandaged her legs as straight as they could, and that probably put a lot of stress on her.

Is this tendon flaw a common issue in TBs? Can it be cured or was this foal always doomed?

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Oh that sucks. Contracted tendons aren’t uncommon in very fresh foals and mild cases often straighten out on their own. If it’s more severe they’ll need bandages/splints/physical therapy, which is what it sounds like they were attempting. In most cases it can be more or less corrected, depending on the initial severity. It’s impossible to say how bad it is from a photo but look at her vertical pasterns. You see that in newborns sometimes* and it generally loosens up without intervention (assuming they inherited the genetics for a normal angle). It looks pretty bad but I wouldn’t say she looks doomed when a lot of it could be just awkward posture and tightness that could self-correct at least a little. It’s certainly not usually a death sentence, there had to be something else going on.

So there are a couple of things that can cause this. The two that I’ve seen cited the most are bad positioning during fetal development, or a recessive gene that’s roughly analogous to clubfoot in people (but I would think probably that could be caused by multiple things as well). I don’t know about TBs specifically, but recessive genes are more likely to pop up regularly in populations with significant inbreeding so you’d likely see this more often in closed studbooks, and especially in intensive linebreeding. If it’s genetic. If it’s a result of positioning, it’s entirely random. In this case, because all four legs seem affected, I’d lean toward this being genetic or secondary to something else.

It’s possible that it’s a side effect of some other condition that could’ve contributed to her death. I’m not a vet and wouldn’t presume to diagnose but there are endless mutations and abnormalities and malformations that can happen with any pregnancy, and all kinds of complicated genetic combinations with unexpected results.   

Poor baby.

* you also sometimes see the opposite, foals with extremely lax tendons, flopping all over the place. 

I love Kookie but her legs don't

I have great news for you about donkeys! We're closer than you think.