365 Days in Horse Country –  The Perfect Whoa Stopping may be the most important skill to teach your horse.  If your horse doesn’t have a reliable stop, he’s not a safe horse to ride. Even if your horse is already adept at stopping, it’s a good skill to practice periodically just to reinforce it.  Your horse should be so responsive to your requests to stop that he will stop immediat ...

365 Days in Horse Country –  Encephalomyelitis  A number of viral diseases affect the horse, including encephalomyelitis, which used to wreak havoc with horse populations.  Fortunately, vaccines for this illness are in widespread use and have kept epidemics to a minimum.  Encephalomyelitis is spread through the bite of an infected mosquito.  The best way to prevent the disease is to ...

365 Days in Horse Country –  Mules One of the most often asked questions by non-horsey people is “What’s the difference between a horse and a mule?”  The mule is closely related to a horse; it’s actually the offspring of a horse and donkey.  Technically, the animal is a mule if the mother is a horse and the father is a donkey.  If it’s the other way around, the animal is a hinny.   Bo ...

365 Days in Horse Country –  The Aristocratic Arabian  No one is completely sure where the Arabian horse originated.  His beginnings are mysterious, which is fitting given the romance behind the rest of the breed’s history. The first documented breeders of the Arabian horse were the Bedouins.  These nomadic desert people of the Middle East valued the Arabian horse as their greatest ...

365 Days in Horse Country –  Teaching Tricks  Dogs do tricks all the time, so why not your horse?  Teaching tricks to your horse is a great way to deepen your bond, and it also gives you and your horse a way to entertain your friends. Some of the tricks you can teach your horse include bowing, counting, drinking from a bottle, and sitting up.  Let’s work on one of the easiest tricks to ...

365 Days in Horse Country –  The Beloved Paint  It’s hard to believe that once upon a time, the pinto-marked Quarter Horse was considered an outcast, unloved and unwanted in the horse industry.  That all changed in the 1960s however, when a group of horsemen decided to give official recognition to this colourful version of the Quarter Horse.  They started a new breed called the Pain ...

365 Days in Horse Country –  The Horses of San Marcos      In the year 1204, four magnificent bronze horses were found in Constantinople and brought to Venice. Much controversy surrounds these sculptures, which some historians believe may have been created in the fourth century by the Greek sculptor Lysippos.  The horses are life sized and represent a quadrangle of the type that wou ...

365 Days in Horse Country –  Cushing’s Syndrome Equine Cushing’s Syndrome used to be called Cushing’s Disease.  Cushing’s Syndrome is even more accurately labeled pituitary pars intermediary dysfunction (PPID).  This condition occurs when a portion of the pituitary gland becomes unable to function properly.  The ACTH hormone and blood cortisol levels are chronically too high.  Horses ...

365 Days in Horse Country –  The Connemara The rugged, damp, and rocky landscape of Ireland is the original home of the Connemara pony, an Irish Breed. The ancestors of the Connemara pony came to Ireland with Celtic Warriors from elsewhere in Europe more than 2,500 years ago.  These small hoses, which pulled war chariots and carts, escaped and became feral, living in the mountains of ...

365 Days in Horse Country –  The Invention of the Stirrup   If there is one piece of equipment modern riders take for granted, it’s the stirrup.  These days, every saddle uses stirrups, no matter what the style.  Before 300 AD however, the stirrup didn’t exist.  Riders essentially rode either bareback or with a treeless saddle, and nothing to support the foot. In India in 500 BC, a ...