Rachel Alexandra as photographed by Sarah K. Anderw
What do you get when you breed two Horse of the Year winners? 2009 Horse of the Year Rachel Alexandra was bred to Curlin, Horse of the Year in 2007 and 2008, on February 21st.
Certainly Jess Jackson, Barbara Banke (Stonestreet Thoroughbred Holdings) and Harold T. McCormick, who own Rachel Alexandra hope you get an extraordinary racehorse. Of course
Curlin as photographed by Sarah K. Andrew
since Jackson and Banke also own 80% of Curlin they have developed a taste for owning super stars.
The real question will be determined in a couple of years when the offspring of Rachel Alexandra and Zenyatta (who will be bred to Bernardini) may meet on the track!
tryingtoride presents This Weekend posted at yearwithmyhorse, saying, “Please forgive any errors. I just started this blog yesterday.” (I think your blog is great! Good luck with it!)
Kate presents Respect, Obedience and Submission posted at A Year With Horses, saying, “This post is about how we think about our relationship with our horses, and the power of the words we use to describe that relationship.”
Whiskey B. presents It’s a Cinch posted at County Island, saying, “Whiskey the ranch horse explains the importance of a very loose cinch, and also urges readers to vote for him in the Equestrian Social Media Awards, “if,” he says, “they reckon they want to.”"
Melissa presents Phases of Retirement posted at Paradigm Farms Horse Retirement, saying, “Retiring a horse is not always an easy decision. Since we have worked with so many people who have retired a horse I wrote a blog post describing what I see as the phases of retirement.”
That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of carnival of the horses using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.
Happy blogging! And may it please stop snowing soon.
My TB, Freedom, is a great horse in many ways. But one of his major “holes” is that he is very difficult to load on a trailer alone. He’s resistant to loading even a the best of times. It’s funny because he’s not scared of the trailer. He plants his feet on the loading ramp and just refuses to move. He only melts down when he realizes he’s alone on the trailer (for the record, he can’t be alone in the barn, either — he’d either jump out of his stall or go right through the door). From there it can become a full blown anxiety attack in less than a minute.
The first time I trailered him alone was the day I picked him up. He loaded with the help of a broom and encouragement. Then the trailer started to shake. Really shake. He was weaving violently in the trailer. He was okay while we were moving but when we stopped for lunch, he went full tilt boogie and people were staring out the window at my trailer wondering what type of wild animal we had inside.
After that experience it was almost three years before I tried to ship him anywhere alone. After awhile I gave up and put my other horse on the trailer for company. I know it was a cop out, but it worked. I know, I’ve even written a post on Trailering Safely – Loading Tips and I still couldn’t get my horse to load without help and a companion.
Last year, I wanted to take him to a hunt. My regular hunting partner wasn’t going and I had forgotten that he’d been riding with a friend all this time. I got him onto the trailer reasonably quickly. Then he panicked. I didn’t realize he knew how to piaffe. I thought he might try to go over or through the front bar and try to sneak out the side door! Finally, I realized that motion was required. Once we were moving, he was fine. Circling the block gave me enough calmness that I was able to grab my hunt clothes from the barn and head off to the hunt. After two hours of hunting, he was also fine. It just proves that fatigue is a great antidote to separation anxiety. He even stood quietly on the trailer while I had lunch!
Today we had a major breakthrough. He loaded (after backing up a few times) with some help from my husband. He stayed relatively calm as I got into the truck and started it up. Even better, after my ride, I was able to load him without any help. Yes, I had to back him up a few times but in less than five minutes he was on the trailer and ready to go!
I guess the backing up trick is a well known approach because I found a Monty Roberts video that shows clearly how well this technique can work. My goal for the summer is to fix Freedom’s trailering problems for good and now I can’t wait to try it again.
Helping to grow better hooves has been on my mind a lot lately! I came across this article today, Feeding the Hoof, by Pete Ramey. Certainly, this provides a lot of food for thought.
Briefly, the article discusses 1) the impact of carbohydrate overload on the quality of hoof growth and 2) the importance of testing your hay and grass to determine whether there are any gaps in your horse’s nutritional scoresheet.
To me, it is pretty clear that meeting your horse’s nutritional needs is key. What makes it difficult is that the hay I buy is not always from the same location and since I buy — at most — 100 bales at a time, testing each batch is somewhat futile. By the time I have the results, the hay has been consumed.
The other difficulty is that since equine supplements are not generally regulated, it’s very hard to ensure that the ingredients that are listed on the container are actually what the supplement contains. It also explains to me why one horse will respond terrifically to the same supplement that does nothing for another horse — if the supplement doesn’t fix a nutritional deficiency, it won’t help.
This article does give me more insight into what I should be looking for from the perspective of different ingredients. That and a call to my nutritionist should at least let me know if I’m on the right track.
So said Jockey Kent Desormeaux after Big Brown’s disappointing run in the Belmont stakes yesterday.
It’s been 30 years since a horse won racing’s Triple Crown — the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes. But it wasn’t always so. In the 1970s, there were three Triple Crown Winners!
In 1978, Affirmed stuck a nose in front of Alydar as he came under the wire. The duel between the two horses is a magnificent piece of racing.
In 1977, Seattle Slew won the Triple Crown in 1977 on a heavy, muddy track running at the front of the field most of the way and pulling ahead decisively at the end of the race.
And in 1973, the great Secretariat blew the field away, finishing 31 lengths in front of his nearest competitor.
I think many people felt complacent about the Triple Crown after watching these horses. This was a time when the Triple Crown seemed attainable and horse racing was, perhaps, at its peak. 30 years later, we have people saying that this combination of races is too much to ask of a three-year old horse; perhaps they should look back in history and figure out what it was that enabled it to be won in the past. Has thoroughbred breeding emphasized early speed and short distances to the detriment of the sport? Or have we just seen a string of bad luck due to the whims of Lady Luck?
