Welcome to the weekend, everyone! Here’s what was going on in the horse world this week while you were cooking Thanksgiving food, eating Thanksgiving food, napping off a Thanksgiving food coma and/or standing in line for Black Friday deals.
Speaking of napping, have you seen this video of a horse who has supposedly learned to get out of work by lying down and playing dead every time someone goes to mount up? Stacy Westfall provides a pretty good explanation of how this may be a trained—or inadvertently trained—behavior over in her blog.
More barn fires, more heartbreak. More than 30 horses died in a fire at Valley View Acres, a hunter/jumper barn near Chicago last weekend. New Vintage Farm of Woodstock, Georgia, also a hunter/jumper barn, lost at least a dozen horses in a fire on Thanksgiving Day.
If you don’t already smell like the barn all the time, a New York based perfume company can help. The Library of Fragrence offers equine scents like saddle, fresh hay and riding crop (what does a riding crop smell like?)
Queen Elizabeth, a well-known equestrian enthusiast, received a lifetime achievement award from the FEI this week. FEI President Princess Haya presented the Queen with a custom white gold and diamond brooch as a symbol of the honor. While there’s something sort of uncomfortable about seeing a princess give a queen an absurdly decadent piece of jewelry in the name of our perceived-as-elitist sport, it is nice to see Her 88-Year-Old Majesty still riding and enjoying equestrian events. It’s a deserved honor.
And finally, with Thanksgiving over, the Christmas season is unofficially, officially here. The first family received the White House Christmas tree today, delivered by horse-drawn carriage. Sunny really wanted to get a closer sniff of those fuzzy draft horse feet, I think.
That’s it for this week. Good luck with your holiday shopping (just get everyone a bag of carrots, I say.)
Leslie Potter is a graduate of William Woods University where she earned a Bachelor of Science in Equestrian Science with a concentration in saddle seat riding and a minor in Journalism/Mass Communications. She is currently a writer and photographer in Lexington, Ky. Potter worked as a barn manager and riding instructor and was a freelance reporter and photographer for the Horsemen's Yankee Pedlar and Saddle Horse Report before moving to Lexington to join Horse Illustrated as Web Editor from 2008 to 2019. Her current equestrian pursuits include being a grown-up lesson kid at an eventing barn and trail riding with her senior Morgan gelding, Snoopy.
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Great videos!!
that is one spoiled horse
Fun.
haha! that made my day, the horse that "falls a sleep"
Its soo cute!!!