A horse is a horse

\

Reflected glory: the Paso Fino

A remedy for the bugle-beak

BLOGGER'S NOTE. A good remedy for the hideous bugle-beak nose which has become the breed standard for Arabian horses is this radically-contrasting model, the so-called "Roman nose", which is convex and varies from gentle swell to really pronounced hump. This occurs naturally in certain breeds, such as the Andalusian, Lusitano and Lipizzan (and I feel better just having written those glorious words). I've found some examples of this classic noble horse profile, and I put them here because it's Easter Monday, a day as indefinable as that abyss between Christmas and New Years, when you might as well eat egg salad sandwiches and relax. 

We ride at dawn

Beautiful sight Herd of Horses

Please turn up  the sound on this! The clopping of hooves is even more enchanting than the sight of all these horses swiftly trotting along the path, one after the other. 

Hands on/hands off

Changing horses mid-stream

Chatty foal

 
  

        
          Watch with sound on!

Rhapsody in black and white

Friesians in snow. Very close to perfection. OK, I know I post a lot of Fresians in snow, just like I post a lot of northern lights and trolls and William Shatner. Call them obsessions.

A clockwork horse

Horse Playing in a Paddling Pool Funny

Horse heaven: Friesian runs free

Full-tilt gallop

This video is stunning, not just because the horse is a honeyed streak across the field, but because its rider, without the benefit of bridle or saddle or stirrups, sits the horse like a centaur: compensating so perfectly for the heaving hindquarters that she is completely level and all forward motion. She slows him down by some invisible signal, perhaps subtle pressure of the legs. Natural horsemanship is beginning to overtake the awful hardware horses had to wear to "train" them. The best horsemen/women are minimalists, as this video demonstrates.

William Shatner: 'The horse is a free spirit'

Two of my favorite forces of nature. I find it amazing he is nearly 87.
Two hours of riding a day!

The world has been waiting for this to STOP!

The World Has Been Waiting… The Unveiling Of A King!

By Nakashen Valaitham & Kristi Hopp

Do you believe in love at first sight? Something so magical it takes your breath away, leaves you speechless and captivates your attention? The time to fall in love is now. The wait is over. He was born in the heartland of America, bred by Jack & Elizabeth Milam of Regency Cove Farms in Oklahoma.

El Rey Magnum RCF has arrived.

For breeders, it is love at first sight when newborn foals struggle to their feet and takes those first steps. It is quite overwhelming to watch the birth of an exquisite gift after waiting 11+ plus months.

His name means greatness in Spanish; El Rey translates to “The King.” He had not been around long before The King became the most talked about colt in the world. Having a keen eye for a unique look, and an urge for hidden treasure, when David Boggs first met The King he was captivated. David acquired the colt and eventually brought him to his Midwest Training Center in Scottsdale, AZ.

Soon after that Doug Leadley heard about The King and scheduled a visit. Once he laid eyes on El Rey Magnum RCF, he urged the new owners to acquire this special young colt. “I travel all around and see several impressive young horses but rarely do I see one that stops me in my tracks. I simply could not believe my eyes and what I saw in front of me. Horses like this come by once in a decade. We must preserve Arabian type or we will loose the majestic look the separates us from other breeds.” Doug Leadley

2018 will be an exciting year for El Rey Magnum and the team behind him - he will be ready for his coronation.

WOAHWOAHWOAHWOAHWAAAAAAAIIIITTT!!!

Yes. The world has been waiting, all right - waiting for this sort of genetic abuse to go away.

This is not a horse. It's Michael Jackson. It's My Little Pony (I almost wrote "Phony"). It's an Arabian horse so genetically manipulated  for certain traits that it has become virtually deformed. Yet it's touted as God's gift to horses, the next generation of custom-made equines (and never mind if they can breathe or not).

I write about horses quite a lot, because I love them so, and never get to ride or even come near a horse. But I do know something from my horsy girlhood. And what I know is that THIS AIN'T IT: this isn't the standard for the breed, at all.

The standard is more like this:

This is a great example of the classic Arabian head: broad forehead, big dusky glamorous eyes, slightly concave profile, tapered muzzle and small nose with large nostrils. What is called the throatlatch (where the horse's head attaches to its neck) is quite defined, and the crest (top of the neck) is high and arched. The Arabian head exudes exoticism and gasping loveliness, and for many a little girl an "Arab" is the ideal horse, the horse of their dreams.

Never mind that the actual breed is a little flaky and skittish, a status horse that's not always too dependable to ride. Maybe they've been told they're beautiful once too often.

When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time mooning over "Arabs" in my horse books (some of which I still have). The Godolphin Arabian, whose story was fictionalized in Marguerite Henry's King of the Wind, looked something like this:

The Godolphin Arabian was quite literally a prototype, one of the foundational sires of the Thoroughbred horse breed. He was not just an Arab but a Super Arab. But there's no trace of My Little Pony here.

Of course we have no photos of what he really looked like, but since normal horses were being bred to normal horses back then, it's doubtful he looked freakish like poor El Ray Magnum. When his exotic looks were poured together with the war-horse strength and brawn of the horses of the day, magic happened: a sort of genetic explosion which is still echoing down the generations. Take any horse breed, add a dash of Arabian, and voila - you have a brawny or cobby or rangy creature who has the desert horse's beautiful sculpted head and neck, grace in its step and a spark of spirit. It's as if Arabian genes have a long memory.





               Cass Ole, horse actor and star of The Black Stallion


It interests me that of the many dozens of comments on this photo when it appeared on Facebook, probably 85% were negative. These are horse lovers speaking out, and hardly any of them think this look is appealing or even fair to the horse. He's close to having a mono-nostril, for one thing, since the breed's very large nostrils are stuck at the end of a teeny-tiny muzzle. To me, it looks like somebody squeezed his nose with pliers. I think this look is "in" now in the show ring, for some reason, and because human beings always take a good thing and ruin it with extremes, it has likely become a sort of competition to see who can breed the most exaggerated Arabian features.


More has to be better. Right? ( - ??)

Along with the horrid dressage practice of rollkur  - reining the horse's chin to its chest - and "soring" in Tennessee Walker competitions (a painful way of forcing the horse to step so high it looks ridiculous), this extreme inbreeding constitutes a form of abuse. The horse has lost his horseness. 

The fanfare around this Wonder Colt, as if they're unveiling a new Maserati or other fine piece of machinery, is chilling. Behold, a genetic freak! It makes me shudder because this is being promoted by some sort of international Arabian society, clearly more interested in money and status than the wellbeing of the horse (or the breed - you can't tell ME El Rey is the answer to preserving the "majestic look" of the Arabian "type").

So until the situation becomes so grotesque that one of these breeders looks at a newborn foal and keels over in horror, we'll end up with a line of Hapsburg horses which are  more bizarre than beautiful.

(OK, I have leftover pictures, too gorgeous NOT to share!)

The Mystery of Dunbrody

This blog carries me from obsession to obsession, and horses are definitely one of them. When I see an exceptional horse like this one, a Gypsy Vanner stallion named Copper Coin, it makes me want to go on living.

I never heard of the Gypsy Vanner until seven or eight years ago, when I found an incredible photo of a massive dapple grey horse and could hardly believe my eyes how beautiful he was. I don't know if the photo is still around the internet, but he was a legendary sire at a stable called, I think, Kintyre. It started in Ireland, moved to the States, and now I can't find a trace of it. I wonder what happened.

The horse, I can't find him now, but he looked sort of like this:

I just remember the cream-on-steel-grey dappling, the floaty feathering that must be murder to keep clean, and the unexpectedly tiny pink nose. The trailing Veronica Lake bangs are particularly fetching. This might also be called an Irish Cob horse, because the names seem almost interchangeable. The horse I remember - the picture I remember - was a legendary sire who had "stamped his get" down the generations, dozens and hundreds of prize-winning foals. 

(Later): I can't believe I found him! 

THIS is the horse that blew my mind back in about 2009, though of course it was a grainy photo of only a few hundred pixels. It turns out that this horse is called Dunbrody (of course! How could I have forgotten that?), and is associated with the name Clononeen and Kintyre, though I don't know how. The Kintyre web site stopped being updated six years ago, in that frustrating way they do. And Pinterest, the evil sorceress, has swallowed all his pictures without a trace of useful information attached (because who cares about THAT, eh?).

It's hard for me to believe this is the same horse, though he's called Dunbrody: his mane, fanning out like Farrah Fawcett's hairdo, seems ash blonde compared to the other photos where he's more ginger. But horses of the grey persuasion are somewhat like Lipizzans, in that their coat often begins dark and grows lighter and lighter with the years. It must be him, because of that grey crescent on his left nostril. Imagine seeing all that mane and feathering floating behind him as he trotted along!

I even found some video which MIGHT be Dunbrody, but as usual with older videos, there are no identifying marks on it. Here, his mane and tail (if it's him) are very dark:

I don't want to say with certainty, but this may be a juvenile version, a not-fully-grown Dunbrody. If I could see his muzzle and his nose up-close, I would know for sure.

Chase the wind: girl on a flying pony

I made these not-entirely-satisfying gifs from a Facebook video I loved, mainly because the video won't fit my antiquated blog space (and I can't find it on YouTube, except for the short excerpt I posted above).

This little girl is hell-for-leather, and if her riding style sometimes lacks finesse (she loses a stirrup near the end and begins to bounce around alarmingly), girl and pony somehow come through with great bravura. Together, they are fearless. At first I thought this video was on the wrong speed, the pony seemed so fast, but I think it has to do with the photography - the cinematography, I'd call it, which has some sort of understanding of show jumping and the way horse and rider move around the course. None of this wretched miles-from-nowhere stuff shot on a phone.