How a horse is made

You'll have to have a little patience with me on this one, but it is worth it. My brother's finacee is Swedish, and she sent me this link that is in, of course, Swedish.

Click this link: Så blir en häst till – se de fantastiska bilderna

What the article said was: "This is how a horse is made - see the fantastic pictures." They are photos of embryonic horses at days 10, 30, 65, and 85. I love the day 85 picture. I have pictures of one of my '08 foals lying almost exactly like that when she was about 6 hours old.

Thanks Malin for the link!

Choosing your leg gear

Equine leg gear does a lot more than just make your horse look good. The right boots can help your horse stay sound and at the top of his game. Some boots offer support, like an athlete taping his ankles before a big game. Other boots offer protection. Think football pads here. And some are designed for specific events and maneuvers. Knowing which boots you need is not always easy, so here's a crash course in leg gear for you.

Leg gear falls into two main categories. Support and Protection. If your horse has been injured or is structurally predisposed to injury you should look for support boots. Events with hard, fast maneuvers also make support boots a good option. Protective boots offer your horse added protection like those football pads we mentioned earlier. If there is a chance the he might be banging his legs on each other or on something else, then protection type boots can add the padding and defend him from injury.
Protection of specific areas of the horse's foot can also be added. Bell boots are also protective gear for your horse that prevent injury from over-reaching. When a horse over-reaches he strikes the front foot with the hind foot. Many things can cause this; conformation, deep ground, pulling a load, and other causes. Severe damage to the coronary band can occur, and if it scars the hooves can grow abnormally for the rest of the horse's life. Bell boots add a layer of protecting and padding around the coronary band so that if the horse does over-reach, injury is unlikely. Another type of protective boot is the skid boot. Reiners, calf ropers, and other equine athletes that stop hard and deep in the ground with their hind end can burn the fetlocks of their rear feet. If this happens often, they will become hesitant to 'get in the ground', or stop deep. Skid boots feature a hard plastic cup that covers and defends that fetlock area.
How can you tell which boots are which? Sports medicine boots help your horse stay strong by offering a little extra support to the tendons and ligaments. These boots have a sling or cradle design that wraps around the fetlock joint (where the cannon bone, sesamoids, and pastern meet. Protective boots usually feature hard plates of leather of plastic with padding underneath. Boot manufacturers have also designed boots for those of us who need a little bit of both protection and support by adding neoprene lining to the support boots to increase the padding.

To see our full selection of leg gear, click here.

Natural disasters and emergencies happen, whether we are prepared for them or not. I have watched disasters like Katrina on television. I even drove through Happy, Texas just two hours after a rather large part of the town was leveled by a tornado in 2002. Then in 2006 grass fires destroyed more than 600,000 acres of ranch land here in the panhandle. People I knew, who I saw every week or every month, lost everything. I heard many stories, horrible things, that had happened but one that really stuck with me was a customer of ours. They didn't have time or trailer space to get her rodeo horses out. The best they could do was turn them into the arena, dirt - no grass to burn around them. And it saved their lives. The fire roared over them so fast that they were not even severly burned. But it singed off all their hair. They had to put sheets on the horses so that the blowing ash, dirt, and debris would not literally sand through their hide. I remember thinking then that it could have happened anywhere. That could have been my home, laid flat by mother nature. My horses, standing defenseless against even the ceaseless West Texas wind.

Absolutely Nothing in our power can prevent these things from happening. The only thing we can change is what we do when something does occur. We need to think about the things we can do to minimize the damage and the trauma for ourselves and our families. And yes, even our animals. And we need to think of all these things ahead of time. When I found this guide, by TheHorse.com, I knew we needed to share it with other horse owners. Please take a look at it, spend some time over the next few days, and go through it. Pass it on. It may seem like a lot (15 pages) but if something did happen to you and yours, you would be glad that you put forth the effort.

http://www.thehorse.com/pdf/emergency/emergency.pdf

Tour Tom Balding Bits and Spurs

If you've been in my tack room you might know that my favorite bits are Tom Baldings. Now, I don't have just a whole lot of them, but I think I have more of them than any other single maker. Except for maybe Duttons. But anyway, for finished horses they are my absolute #1 first choice. Here is a neat slide show that takes you on a tour of Tom Balding's Bits and Spurs. If you ever get to Sheridan, Wyoming stop in and see the real deal. I know I will!

http://www.tombalding.com/tour.htm

A few days off...

Brandon and I both took a few days off work for a mid-year breather. First, for Brandon's birthday, he made me play golf for the first time ever. 18 holes of real golf. That was interesting. I actually did much better than I had expected and even had a couple of bogeys. I've been to hit balls with him on the driving range half a dozen times or so, so I had a little practice at least. Next, we visited family in Elk City and Erik Oklahoma. Grandpa Gillum's 91st birthday! Then we spent most of the rest of it playing with the ponies. Remy got saddled a couple times nd Brandon ponied him around on Studly, the big trusty ole rope horse. Remy wanted to balk at first but Studly has moved much bigger creatures than little Remy. He was acting right in no time. Then the yearlings got some leading lessons. They have not been worked much since right after they were weaned.

Pole bending - riders optional?

Here's a really neat video for all you horse folks. You don't have to run poles to appreciate this horse. Valentine here runs the pole bending pattern all by himself. With no rider. Very cool.

http://www.cbs7.com/news/details.asp?ID=6681

Stacey

Is your horse right handed or left handed?

I just got an email with this article and I can't wait to go home and see if it's right. I definitely have right handed horses and left handed horses. It's really easy to tell on the young horses when you are first starting to teach them to pivot or spin. And usually the good direction for them is their 'default' lead, too. This article claims that you can tell which they are pre-disposed to be by which direction the whorl on their faces goes! Right-handed horses should have clockwise whorls and left-handed horses should have counter-clockwise.

Wonder if I could use that as a training tool - teach them things their good way first? Would a left handed horse make a better head horse? Would that tell you which direction you should run your barrel pattern?

If anyone out there has a horse that is definitely right or left handed, post a comment and let us know if this holds true for your horse. I'd love to test it out.

Here is the whole article, if you are interested:
http://www.thehorse.com/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=12081

This mailing list is a wonderful source for equine industry news. Some is a bit technical, but it is definitely worth subscribing to. A vet recommended it to me, so I thin they are a pretty reliable source.

In a sight worthy of Stanley Marsh, someone has planted a crop of combines on a back road just outside of Amarillo. While I don't know the reason behind it, it did get me to waste a little $4 gasoline to take some pictures.

Collection

Found a GREAT article on collection. It kind of explains why collection is important for western horses, and also how to achieve it. Written by Ted Baker.

http://www.thejudgeschoice.com/LibraryArticles/collection.htm#top

SH

Tequila's first saddle

After work today we decided to take some pictures of Tequila. He's about to be listed for sale, so we thought it would be a good idea. And he's almost done shedding. He handled his photo shoot well. Then after we got some photos of him, Brandon decided to saddle him for the first time! He's worn a surcingle and blankets, and he's not the type to be spooky and flighty anyway, so I didn't think it would be too big a deal for him. I was right. I was there ready with the camera to catch him freaking out, but no such luck. And I say that like I am disappointed, LOL! Tequila was yawning through the whole process. He sniffed the saddle once or twice, but all in all he was not very concerned about it.













SH

New colt pics

The babies are growing like weeds! Chico is going through a shy phase and figured out how to 'hide' behind the hay bale and peek over the top of it at you. Shelby has got muscles on top of muscles and looks like a little halter horse right now, but she spends most of her waking hours running circles around her mom. I thought she was practicing to be a barrel horse until I caught her working on her spins... Both of them seem to think that Cheyenne is a lot of fun to chase. Fortunately, she's agile enough to outrun them still, but she won't be for long.

White Deer

Today we took a couple of our young horses to a ranch outside of White Deer. Well, it's really closer to Skellytown. It's a great place to play with young horses. There are gentle rolling hills but enough gullies and washes to make it as interesting as you want. It was really good for these two horses who have never been ridden anywhere but here on our little 12 acre plot.

Roses didn't want to go 'down' anything at first, but by the end of our ride she was almost fearless. And Spot of course was fearless from the get-go, but he's never been afraid of anything. Except maybe missing his dinner. Rein the trusty trail dog went with us. Cowboy started out with us but about 15 minutes in decided that his presence was needed back at the windmill to protect the truck and trailer from the cattle.

Photo shoot

Here's a couple of pictures from an impromptu photo shoot. These new sheets from Pro Equine were too neat to wait for an oppurtunity with prettier background, so my dried out excuse for a pasture had to fill in at short notice. Anyway, this is Roses, AQHA Dont Pass the Roses. She's a granddaughter of Barpasser, so she's western pleasure bred and her super smooth jog shows it. She looks pretty good in that hot pink camo sheet.

And here in the green is Remy, AQHA Remington Whiz, he's a son of Remin Whiz who was just recently sold to Italy. This little grulla colt is my next reiner. I'm really looking forward to starting him later this year. Both his parents are world champions so I have pretty high expectations for him. And of course, he's gorgeous! I'll try to get some more pictures, but his body, everything covered up by the sheet, is a really pretty dove grey color.

Hello everyone!

Since this is a new thing for me, I guess I should start off with a little bit of an introduction. I am the tack manager here at Coolhorse.com. I have been with Foust Feeds and Coolhorse for almost 10 years now. I started here part time and worked through college, and when I graduated they made a full time position for me, and I've been here ever since. My husband and I raise and train a few quarter horses, I'm a reiner, he's a roper. Our horses have a combination of good foundation bloodlines such as Poco Bueno and Doc Bar, and more modern world champion reiners. And we love buckskins and duns. We had two buckskin colts this year, one horse colt and one filly.

I grew up farming and showing livestock not too far from here. When I graduated from high school and couldn't show pigs and steers anymore I knew that it was time to pursue my life long dream - owning a horse! Little did I know that one single horse would soon become an obsession. I started showing on the IHSA intercollegiate team, and eventually started showing my own horses. I started out with an all around gelding and then migrated into reining, eventually winning the buckskin world show. Now that mare has four colts on the ground, and her first show offspring will be ready to start his career next year. Her first filly was injured, but will begin her broodmare career next year, too.

Here are a couple pictures of the little buckskins. The dark one sticking out his tongue is Chico. I know he looks bay in this picture, but I promise he's a buckskin. The light one sunbathing is the filly, Shelby.