ABSTRACT
In Knabstrupper breeding, almost everything except these colourful horses’ spots is contested. Facing extinction after World War II, Danish Knabstruppers experienced a comeback in Denmark and Germany in the 1990s. Their breeding, however, has taken entirely different trajectories on both sides of the border. While renewal, mixing, and openness defines an awakened interest in Knabstrupper horses in their country of origin, German breeders largely subscribe to preservation breeding with old bloodlines. As matters of blood, purity, character, and colour are negotiated across national boundaries, horses’ bodies become living symbols of the human search for the ideal horse: ideologies of perfection that prove deeply problematic in our time.
