The Near Side: This Week in Horses — March 27, 2015

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

• Let’s start off with a feel-good story. Elementary school students in Indianapolis raised $200 for a beloved police horse, Jake, who had surgery for skin cancer last month. The kids did odd jobs and extra chores to raise the funds. Way to go, kids!
• This video has been framed as ponies chasing off an attacking wild boar. But it looks to me like the boar is scared and trying to get away and accidentally ends up in the ponies’ field. I don’t know, what do you think? (The action starts around the 0:30 mark, which raises the question, what exactly were they filming for those 30 seconds before the boar appears?)




• I had never heard of the Golden Horseshoe Ride on Exmoor until I read this story about how it may be ending after this year, but now I desperately want to help save it.
• Cutest couple award goes to George and Lexi, an Alpaca and draft horse who were rescued together and are now looking for an adoptive home together.
• I gave some serious thought to entering this essay contest to win a horse farm in Essex County, Virginia, but I didn’t want to bet the $200 entry fee on my writing abilities. But maybe one of you could do it. Let me know if you do, and if you win, remember the little people who helped you along the way.
• A Cleveland police horse got loose and went on a solo tour of the city this week, but was safely corralled and shows no sign of injury. According to the article, “…officers have not determined a motive for the escape.” We’re going to give the Cleveland PD the benefit of the doubt and assume that the guy shown casually tossing the reins around a parking meter at 0:30 in the video is not part of the mounted unit.
• Oh, hey. Here’s a major mainstream news outlet highlighting the extremely wealthy families whose kids travel from NYC to Florida every weekend through the winter to compete at the Winter Equestrian Festival. That’s great, because that tiny percentage of the horse-riding population definitely needs more exposure.
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  As you know, my favorite thing is when non-equestrians have to cover the equestrian beat, so I did enjoy this paragraph:

She sets her alarm for 5:50 a.m. on Friday to make her 6:30 a.m. lesson. There, she will jump over several fences, hone the position of her hands and shoulders during a trot and practice squeezing her thighs against the saddle just so to coax her horse into a seamless transition from walk to canter.

• This time of year, it seems like the mud could almost swallow a horse up. And it almost did during a trail ride in California. Fortunately, Snoop the horse was rescued by a team of police officers, firefighters and highway patrol officers.

That’s it for this week. Enjoy your weekend!

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