From what I've seen a lot of people have specific goals in mind for crossing; winning comps in certain disciplines or breeds; making certain ranks or winning/ranking in rosettes and Prixs. Think about what you want to do and examine the skills needed, targeting opportunities either bred or trained, and see who matches up with your goals. Know specific thresholds to meet for rosettes or thresholds that make training and BLUPing harder as your GP increases.

Making a detailed skills spreadsheet from the directories has been helpful for me.

If you are specifically looking to get a pony with high trot, take a purebred (or at least over 50% main pony breed) and breed her to a crossbred (with the dominant breed being less than 50% if your mare is not pure) that is high in trot, resulting in a crossbred pony with higher trot. Then take that pony, get it to where you want it (100 BLUP is ideal) and breed it back to a purebred pony that is the same as the dominant pony breed you are working with. Repeat the process to increase GP/skills

I got my first rosette with a crossbreed! Fools Wish won in one in reining.

Fools Wish

Anyone have experience cross breeding KWPN and Selle Francais? Opinions?

Yep! This is a great cross for getting show jumping rosettes because you get higher jump from the Selles, and higher dressage from the KWPN. Even though they have the same skill set, the distribution is quite different, and perfect for cross breeding.

These are my KWPN x Selle crosses. I made them all KWPN dominant because there are breed only rosette comps for KWPNs. Shimmer won more rosettes than the other two because available GP at the time I bred him was much closer to the top.
Bittersweet Shimmer
Lilac Luster
Polished Pin

Anyone have any good breed ideas for crossing with a Criollo?

A Criollo x Appy, Criollo x Marwari, or Criollo X TB would make for some interesting genetics for Western comps

I'm wanting a good skilled cross so I've just been looking around. Has anyone crossed a criollo with one of those?

Hey how would y'all recommend I start skilling this guy
Go for western (barrel or wp) or XC?

I would go with western personally, but it should work either way.

which rides and training should I work on first? should I pretend i'm blupping an IH

If I were you, Id try to get my wins in low Barrel comps, so starting with Forest rides, then training Gallop and Stamina. After wins bold out, and it should make a good reining horse.
Not sure if that's exactly how you'd blup a IH.

Because he is technically GV, I'm assuming there will be a lot of breed XC comps. You could try to get some wins there before switching over to western at 5yrs. However you will be competing with the top GVs, so that could go either way. Also, if you choose classical, low trot comps could help you get wins. Like sierrarc said, classical or western would work for him.

I can switch between classical and western freely, but i'll see he goes with western...if not i can try the other way on a different crossie

My horse Fools Wish made my 'top 200' target and got 170th place in the reining this week! Added a Poseidon pack since last week which I guess helped!

Very pleased: I'm not sure you could buy a horse to get you that high in reining without spending passes?

I did however spend time today blupping a new horse, then dozed off and missed entering her.... grrrr. Next week! LOL.

That's awesome! Hopefully within the next few generations of my crosses I'll be up there too for some Prix event.
Congrats!

Anyone know if any of the KWPN teams would breed a mare and sell the foal to me? Or if anyone that has a high GP KWPN that would do that? I am looking to raise the GP of my Legacy Line but I am stuck at 7300 GP currently. It is impossible to find high GP KWPN mares that are ready to breed in the sales.

So I've recently gotten into crossbreeding (and i'm really bad at it lol). I'm trying to make a Reining horse with the skills more balanced and spread out. So far I've gotten the GP over 12,000 but I'm trying to find the perfect combination before I continue breeding with a single lineage.

I have these two lined up to breed (one needs to be bolted):
- https://www.howrse.com/elevage/fiche/?id=57769620
- https://www.howrse.com/elevage/fiche/?id=57697089

And I'm thinking as a final cross, take the offspring of these two horses and cross it one final time with a purebred Marwari and take it from there. My fear is speed getting higher than Dressage, hence the introduction of the Lusitano bloodline. Since that will weaken the Gallop skill, that's why I'm thinking of crossing the offspring back to a Marwari, which will also help Stamina a bit all while keeping the GP relatively close or above 12,000GP.

Any thoughts?

You could ask the top teams for covers from their top stallions to raise GP, otherwise you'll be paying a lot for a top, purebred mare.

What about instead of Marwari at the end, seeing if someone has a good TB x GV cross? Good gallop, but the GV will help keep the speed down while keeping stamina up. Both are good for dressage as well.

It's a good thought, warnv18. Anyone have any high GP TB x GV crosses? I can always give both a try and see which result is better. I do want the horse to be Marwari dominant.

Seems like you've got similar aims to me! I'd be interested in trading coverings and helping each other in the gp race? I've got loads of horses and a shortage of heels/timers/ap points right now! Feel free to look through my Rein Wilds. If you want to go for a GV/Thoroughbred Dunwarrow is the closest to blupped stallion I've got at the moment (he's got everything but age...), but a little under the gp. His half brother Second Sun is better, but it might be a while till I get him blupped. I've also got Lusitano, Arab, Knabstruper and Friesian in the mixes in there! I intend to well and truly stir things up! Fools Wish is my current top horse of course... but he is very top heavy on the gallop! Shapeshifter is a nice Marwari/GV. His overall GP is a bit low, but his relevant stats are higher than you might think from that!

Actually, Fools Wish may no longer be the top... I just looked and Blizzard, the mare I missed entering this week, now has TWO rosettes! He still only has one, lol.

wolfcat111 was playing with these. We did a couple of breedings. I'll see what I have that could be fun too.

OOF I think I got the right combo of stats: https://www.howrse.com/elevage/chevaux/cheval?id=57860475

Order of dominance in the skills: Gallop, Dressage, Stamina
The correct order for the Reining discipline.

The only problem is the dominant breed is GV when I'm trying to get it to be Marwari. That may be because the father has no Marwari blood in him so I may just bolt the parents and try the breeding again to see if it ends up Marwari. And then I finally have a foundation to a lineage I can work with.

Sounds like that would probably work!

I'm going for a bit higher in gallop rather than the same across the board, but that's still useful information for me! Thanks!