This Week in Horses—December 11, 2015

Hello and happy Friday, everyone! Here’s what’s been happening in the horse world this week.

• Last week’s news roundup included a mention of Houston Police Horse Charlotte, who was killed when she was hit by a truck while on duty. This week, a photo of her rider comforting her during her final moments showed up in various media outlets. My heart goes out to that officer.






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• The rugged Dartmoor Ponies of Southwest England roam freely, which unfortunately leads to a lot of pony-automobile collisions on highways in the area. A unique solution for this problem is to paint bright reflective stripes on the ponies so they’ll be more visible to drivers on those foggy roads.

Dartmoor Livestock Protection Society
• Carriage rides are a fun part of the Christmas season for many, including residents of Cape Girardeau, Missouri. This article is worth reading just for the quotes from the wagon driver they interviewed. Just trust me on this one.
• To be honest, I just bookmarked this article about the 10 Best Riding Holidays in the UK and Ireland because I wanted to look at it later and start planning my trip. Which I’ll probably never take. But if I share it here, maybe one of you will go on a trip and then you can tell me all about it.
• This article is a sponsored post from Samsung on the women’s interest site, Bustle, in which Maclay champion, up-and-coming grand prix rider and Harvard student Lillie Keenan is featured. When athletes from our sport make it into sponsored posts on non-equestrian sites, does that mean we’re going mainstream? I don’t know. Maybe, though.


Lillie Keenan after winning the 2013 Maclay National Championships.

• When I first read this article about Mini Horses visiting Montclair State University to help students de-stress during finals, my knee-jerk reaction was, “I wish I’d had that when I was in college!” Then I remembered that I was an equestrian science student and not only were there 100+ horses on campus every day of the year, they were the subject of many of my finals. But still.
  

That’s it for this week. Have a great weekend, everyone!

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Leslie Potter is Sr. Associate Web Editor of horseillustrated.com. Follow her on Twitter: @LeslieInLex.