International???

I've noticed there's only 4 horses total in the international division. Is it just extremely hard to get to or are people who have international horses doing something special to have the opportunity?

The grade system is based off of your horse's stats so it just takes time and breeding up to it. Since the grade system is newer and the breeding stat gain was updated there haven't been very many horses to reach it yet. That was about a year ago though so it is a bit odd that there's only 4, though it could be there's a bunch of potential international horses who just haven't gotten old enough to gain enough stats for it yet.

So nothing special to reach it, just massive amounts of time and dedication :)

In order to reach the International 1 grade, a horse has to have a whopping 2100 stats!

So it is rather difficult to get a horse to that level! There are quite a few horses in the National grades, and some of them or their offspring may reach that level.

Another complicating factor is stat spread; at least at one point when I had looked at the handful of International horses we have in the game, they had stats all over the place among the different stat categories. (Usually this is achieved by feeding peppermints/hay cubes/other special treats.) However, most serious breeders (though not all) prefer to get the non discipline-specific stats down as low as possible; that makes their horses more competitive in shows, and is just an additional goal. So a horse/line of horses where someone is striving for low non-discipline stats may take longer to reach those highest levels, but will be better in showing than a horse with a more even stat spread. Since that's the method a lot of breeders strongly prefer, it's taking longer to get more horses up to that level.

Thank you for all the info :)