] A gentleman would have hack horses, for riding around from place to place, a hunter, specifically used for the fox hunting (bred specifically for this job and used exclusively for it--you would ride a hack to the meet to spare the horse for its job of hunting), and, if he wished, racehorses (Thoroughbreds, bred by Charles II for that purpose).

] Since foxhunting was a very new sport, I don't think that the breeding of hunters specifically was much developed in JA's time.

The regency was, however, around the start of the period where people began to fiddle around with selective breeding etc etc... horses were starting to be bred with a future purpose... Also, There were those horses which were specifically allocated by the owner as "the one i go hunting with", even if he/she was not bred for the purpose.

] and by the nineteenth century, many breeds of farm horse existed;

] Perhaps, but no-one sems to refer to them by breed. Usually it's just a "horse" or a "plough horse" or something like that. Do you have any quotes to share on this? I'd be very interested to know of specifc breeds being mentioned..I've got a bit on cows , quite a lot on pigs, and something on sheep, but on horses, I have nothing. And that's strange, because even in the breeding mania of the 1750's, no-one seems to have specialised in horses.

I think this is partly because most horses, particularly english ones, have remained quite pure to their own lineage - because of the large variety of mountain and moorland pony breeds that were very useful in their "original" state, there was not so much necessity to selectively breed them. With mountain/moorland breeds these days, people are trying to purify the breed as well as use them to improve others.

For example, Shetlands were always small - they weren't crossed with dwarfs or anything to make them small - and were very useful in the coal mines etc. People didn't have to crossbreed to form a small pony.