My Soapbox for Equestrian Writings
Totilas, called by some the “rock star of the horse world” died Monday, December 14, after a severe case of colic. He was 20. The legendary dressage stallion, who retired at 15, captivated audiences worldwide with his impressive movement. The Dutch Warmblood stallion was the first to score above 90 in dressage competition with his […]
Read More
Bob Baffert’s famous pony horse, Smokey, was auctioned off on December 5th, with the proceeds going to Old Friends Thoroughbred Retirement Home. The 11-year old buckskin gelding sold for $80,000 at an auction by Twombly Performance Horses, a renowned ranch horse operation in the Quarter Horse world that specializes in roping and reining horses. Smokey, […]
Read More
One of the most spectacular examples of prehistoric cave paintings are the dappled horses of Pech Merle, a panel of horses drawn more than 29,000 years ago in a cave in Southern France. Discovered in 1922 by three teenagers from the village of Cabrerets, the caves feature more than 800 prehistoric drawings. The dappled, or […]
Read More
The single pole challenge sounds simple: walk your horse over a pole with his or her feet straddling it. Let me tell you, it’s much harder than it looks! When I tried it with Zelda (in hand; riding over a pole is more difficult), she was utterly perplexed. “Why?” She asked, “would I want to […]
Read More
Clothes horse: In 1788, a clothes horse referred to an upright wooden frame for hanging clothes to dry. The word appeared in the English language around the same time as “sawhorse”. In the mid-1800s, that meaning became more figurative, referring to a person whose sole function seems to be to show off clothes; a meaning […]
Read More
It’s about time that riders have enough information to compare the safety performance of different equestrian helmets — and that’s finally going to happen now that the Virginia Tech Helmet lab has been fully funded to study equestrian helmets. More than $425,000 was raised through the collaborative efforts of the United States Equestrian Federation (USEF), […]
Read More
One of the (only) downsides of the warmer weather we’ve been enjoying is the number of ticks has increased. Zelda, in particular, is a tick magnet. It’s not unusual for me to pick seven or eight ticks off her during grooming, sometimes more. She reacts quite badly to the tick bites and I can usually […]
Read More
When you have 50-degree days in November, you have to seize the day and ride as much as possible. This weekend Zelda and I covered a lot of ground. Not fast — we didn’t hunt, but we hacked on our local trails yesterday and today went out to trail ride with friends today. How glorious […]
Read More