Horse Football - A Growing Sport

This will be the last newsletter for a week - AHA, I can hear your sighs of relief. Well, 'er indoors and I are off sailing in the Whitsundays with my friend Capn Pugwash and his mate Roger the cabin boy (girl). I have to catch all the fish and have been threatened with dire consequences should I fail. Frankly, my idea of the trip is a slab of cold tinnies in the yacht cockpit, lunch and an afternoon snooze and let someone else sail the thing. Fat chance of that.....

The history of the horse has been one of pain. Maybe that will end. Rolex World Cup Final 2009 winner Steffen Peters, treat trains and he has changed the future for riders who thought aggression based training was tops. Steffen Peters went to the Olympics on the first horse he ever trained. Below is a video of Steffen Peters’ Kur with Ravel 2009 and it is breathtaking. Turn up the volume, this horse can dance!
This courtesy of Aileen Berwick who writes for Philadelphia's Examiner.

Here's the story of Me & Sebastian...well not ME, but this YouTube video. It's a nice story of one plucky young girl's journey with her horse. Well worth a look and you'll like the music too but don't look too closely at the spelling.

A nice video on round penning an unbroken Arabian filly. I'm facinated by the differing methods people use to train their horses. Some are patently bad, some are excellent but each one seems to have an individual approach. This one is called 'Journey to Connection'.

High Tech Saddle Pads
Learn about the benefits of high tech materials, such as closed cell foam, memory foam and gel, and how they work, to help you select the right saddle pad for your horse. Courtesy of Equisearch and I can tell you that I wish some of these had been around some years ago when I was riding.

Controversy continues over Mongolian race. If you hadn't heard about this both sides involved have invoked the memory of Genghis Khan, and both seem as intractable as the mighty Mongol warrior, as the war of words continues over the merits of a 1000km horse race across the Mongolian steppes. Rather them than me...have you ever been to Mongolia? Nice place they say but I prefer Queensland....it must be my adventurous spirit.

Ever done an egg and spoon race on a horse?? Or even a pairs race, you know, when your inside legs are tied together with your partner. Well, have a look at this video of just that. I couldn't do it...could you?

Now I've shown you horses playing football before. Here they are actually having a competitive game. It's Dutch which may account for it and the horses are dressage horses which means that the style is terrific but the talent may be missing. Good laugh though. Courtesy of Lauren and The Examiner

Have a great week!