Sprit was both a Masterpiece and a Mistake

“Bottom of the Barrel,” as it were!

A barrel racing piece for a friend of mine

:(

I would love to visit The Tempel Lipizzans in Illinois. There was one Lipizzan troupe I saw years ago in New Jersey where the riding was atrocious, but this company seems like the real deal. No one shoot me for saying this, as I realize it might just be a result of them perhaps having a larger arena, but I actually like this more forward style of classical dressage more than what they do at the Spanish Riding School. 

Proper hack today, with canter*. I can't wait to get this pony back in front of jumps, he flew so effortlessly.

*Blue would appreciate it if you didn't look to closely at the definition of the word "canter"

Happy Birthday Luna!!

On Saturday the most perfect pony turned 12! She got all dressed up and covered in purple sparkles to go on a trail ride. She was super brave about the big water crossing and then refused to walk through a quarter inch deep puddle 🙄 which was extra embarrassing because the puddle was on the side of the road crossing so there were several cars waiting for us to get it together and get off the road. But we stepped around and it was fine. She then got her birthday present of a whole bag of carrots and a happy birthday balloon. (She maybe only cared about the first part of present ). But overall she was super and she was a great sport about all the weird shit which bodes well for fun Halloween costumes, bit that I have any ideas yet

Ribbons are SCARY

photographer @linusthelizard

photographer @linusthelizard

Donkey missed their friend

Source

Oh my god, please put the sound on if you possibly can, this little dude has so much to say. :')

Omg the donk noises! ❤️❤️❤️❤️🥺🥺🥺🥺

YEEHAWGUST: 26. A Horse With No Name

Ok Horseblr listen up

It can’t be all drama and discourse so today I’m gonna talk to you about my favourite horseriding event, the Warendorf Stallion Parade in Germany. Some of you probably know that Germany is very proud of its horses, and often rightly so. And to promote their different studs, the Northrhine-Westphalian state stud farm holds this incredibly strange event where they show off different breeds and disciplines.

That’s all fun and games, right? Some old horse fans watching a few showjumpers and dressage champions canter around for an hour or two.

But this particular parade appears to have a history of just… doing stuff for shits and giggles, I guess. For example, they tend to just toss a bunch of stallions performing wildly different things into the arena at the same time, with no particular rhyme or reason to it:

Why are the draft horses on the ground now? Why is there another warmblood stud in the background lying down? Why did the long-reining guy decide to walk right through there?

The wildest thing about this is that there’s so much going on, the Grand Prix-level dressage in the background is the least interesting thing here.

The opening number is traditionally a jumping quadrille. That’s a concept within itself, but in the context of this madness you’ve forgotten about that part by the time it’s all over.

They tend to show a lot of driving variations, ranging from whatever the go-fast yellow ones (I gave up on trying to look up the names for these)…

…to the quadrigas…

…to the german version of the Budweiser Clydesdales

There’s also a part where they toss every other carriage they had left into the ring all at once. It’s a beautiful expression of utter chaos.

And let’s not forget about the in-hand driving! What’s in-hand driving you ask?

Basically, you do dressage while also long-reining a different horse. Is this the point where I have to remind you that these are all stallions?

They also toss in a quadrille of some sorts every once in a while, ranging from pretty normal stuff with four warmbloods strutting in circles to the part where they put their working students on their draft stallions and watch it all unravel

That is not a picture of the latter, the working student part mostly consists of them doing handstands on their horses. The picture just shows the normal draft quadrille.

Then there’s the hungarian post, which is the most unneccesarily dangerous thing to do if you have two horses and not enough money for a proper saddle:

They do this with both drafts and warmbloods, and while the drafts have a steady pace and seem to be relatively easy to balance, the pair of warmbloods barreling through the arena with the poor lad holding on for dear life radiate completely unleashed chaotic energy.

And no one can tell me that this is even remotely useful. Not even photographic evidence could convince me that there was a time when barreling down the road on the back of two unleashed stallions was a commonly acceptable way of getting from point A to point B.

But I have yet to tell you about my all-time favourite discipline. There’s no english word for it, afaik. I mean, why would there be? It’s basically up to half a dozen draft stallions tied together, charging at whatever gets in their way:

This is the Kaltblutkoppel (roughly translates to “leash together the drafts”). Don’t ask me on what kind of mission that poor guy in front of them is, but where he stands is probably the one place you don’t want to be.

I don’t know what this does to show off the stallions, but it’s incredibly entertaining to watch those poor handlers get dragged around by them. I think they reduced the number of horses that are tied together, as well as only showing one Kaltblutkoppel instead of tossing four teams in together. Why? Because they kept getting loose. Who would’ve thought.

fjord horses!!

fake horse adventures

Brachycephalic horse. 

And to think humans did this to wolves long ago

Oh my f u c k i n g god

I mean… I’ve seen quarter horses look a bit like that.

Thanks! I hate it!

congratulations! you have made horses

in every conceivable way

Oh look, it’s Seriously Secure! I can’t tell the difference!

@craigslisthorses

I thought of your blog immediately when I saw this unholy bab

omg