The American Quarter Horse Association is being sued for not allowing the registration of cloned horses. (ABC News) A New Yorker suggests that the local Boris bike system is replaced by one providing horses. (Gabe Capone) The suspicious death of a racehorse in West Virginia. (Bloodhorse.com) A profile on Marty Irby, a Tennessee Walking Horse …
Category Archives: Quarter Horse
Whole Heap of Little Horse Links
Questions are raised over the treatment of horses on film and TV show sets. Are trainers’ welfare concerns being overruled? (LA Times) A “horse palace” in Montreal seeks donors for a makeover. (Montreal Gazette) A woman “gives birth to a pony” during a church service in Nigeria. (PM News) Lady Gaga arrived at the launch …
Whole Heap of Little Horse Links
A young Scottish showjumper who’s only been riding for three years has been sponsored by Euromillions lottery winners. (Horse and Hound) Meanwhile a nineteen-year-old started a millionaire’s fund of his own when he became the youngest ever winner of the showjumping CN International via Karen K. (Spruce Meadows) Corrective surgery for thoroughbred yearlings before auction. …
Horse vs. Grizzly
Here’s an absolutely cracking story from The Spokesman Review about a young woman and an 18hh Percheron/Quarter Horse called Tonk who chased after a grizzly bear that was pursuing an eight-year-old boy on a terrified horse. They faced up to the bear and charged. “… when you’re riding, the horse is your best protection, if …
Salvos Across the Equine Gene Pool: a Reader
This is not so much a post as a string of links to some interesting, thought-provoking essays elsewhere and a question: what is “pure blood” and should it matter? Let me explain. Roughly speaking, until the nineteenth century and even the twentieth century, the vast majority of horses and ponies in the West were not …
Continue reading “Salvos Across the Equine Gene Pool: a Reader”
Manmade Monsters and Chimeras
There are periodic mutterings about the discovery of a “speed gene” for Thoroughbreds, but on the whole, horse racing takes what is now a refreshingly old-fashioned approach to horse breeding: no artificial insemination, no embryo transfer and absolutely no cloning. The sire and dam actually have to meet in person, as it were, and the …
Doping Horses
PHOENIX — Found tottering alone in the desert with their ribs visible and their heads hung low, horses play a backbreaking, unappreciated role in the multibillion-dollar drug smuggling industry. Mexican traffickers strap heavy bales of marijuana or other illegal drugs to the horses’ backs and march them north through mountain passes and across rough desert …
Merlin the Bullfighting Horse
7/8/2013: Having learned more about the format of the rejoneador or mounted bullfighter’s craft, I’m updating this piece. There’s also a detailed account in The Age of the Horse: An Equine Journey Through Human History. Well, you call it a bullfight and you put the horse in the ring. What do you expect? This bullfighter, …