We talk very easily about “a gene for this” or “a gene for that” but most of our characteristics have more complex biological origins than a single strand of DNA. That’s perhaps why it’s such a surprise to read this story, which my brother, Sarah Everts and Christine Wilsdon all sent me. Researchers at Uppsala …
Continue reading “Nature Wins Over Nurture in the Gaited Horse”
Books I want to buy and read: Sometimes it’s tiresome when publishers try to ape a successful book by buying similar titles, but sometimes that policy opens the best of floodgates: suddenly writers get the chance to work on projects that would have been turned down as uncommercial till a forerunner proved otherwise. Laura Hillenbrand’s …
I was away! Things happened! But first – a round up of curious happenings in the horse world! Looks like I got rid of the virtual racing stable I ran in the early 1990s far too early. An unraced imaginary horse from the Digiturf game has just been sold for $5,225. Yes, not only is …
If you want to learn more about Sven Forsling and the wonderful Frossarbo reform school for girls, there’s an eBook in English called The Girl and the Horse. The video above is in Swedish but features not just Sven but also the school and its horses. This post relates to a chapter of the book …
The Viennese Opera Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York features a surrey drawn by two greys circling the dance floor with two ballet dancers on board. There’s a nice little New York Times blog piece here – with photos – about the logistics of getting two 17hh standardbreds into an elevator, through a hotel …
Continue reading “You Shall Go to the Ball. Even If You’re a Horse”
On Sunday I went to the Trabrennbahn Mariendorf to watch the 2010 Deutsches Traber-Derby – my first harness racing meet. I saw a couple of exhibition trotting races at Hoppegarten last year and was fascinated – the horses so fast they seemed as low to the ground as the rocking horse racers in old paintings, …
