This Week in Horses — July 3, 2015

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

• The Kentucky Horse Park, located mere miles from Horse Illustrated HQ, has three foals in residence who will be trained to be police horses when they’re older. In the meantime, they need names befitting such an important job. Learn more about the foals and suggest  names for them at the Kentucky Horse Park’s website.
• In other Kentucky Horse Park news, it was just announced that the park’s iconic white fencing would be repainted black, as is the standard for most horse farms in this area. The cost of black paint is lower and it requires repainting less frequently, so it seems a logical switch. But it will take some getting used to!
• Check out this video about an equestrian center in Colorado that’s giving senior citizens with Alzheimer’s a chance to ride horses, with some pretty incredible results.
• A stuntman in Austria just set the record for “longest distance pulled by a horse while on fire.” So. Good job, I guess. True story: If you post the photo of this stunt on your Facebook page, within five minutes someone will comment with, “Where is the rider’s helmet?”







• The small town of Goldendale, Washington, has a problem named Cowboy Bob. More specifically, the problem is Bob’s horse, which he leaves tied out on the sidewalk on main street while he stops into the local watering hole. It strikes people as dangerous, but there’s no rule against it, so they let him keep on keeping on. #SmallTownLife.
• The New York Times this week reported on a conundrum in the homeland of polo: Manipur, India. The sport there is in decline, and with it, the native Manipuri Ponies that are used for it have become endangered. There are only a few hundred left.
• The infamous Palio horse race, in which jockeys catch ride racehorses—bareback, no less—around the Piazza del Campo in the city of Siena, Italy, took place on Thursday. The race has no rules and a dangerous track, and when a horse died in a “rehearsal” race this week, it was the 50th equine casualty at the event since 1970.
• And finally, we’ve talked a bit on this blog about riding and barn chores as exercise, so I feel that it’s relevant to share this invention. EdiPulse is a 3D printer that uses chocolate as its source material and responds to signals from a heart rate monitor. Basically, the more you exercise, the more chocolate it gives you. Riding is its own reward, of course, but chocolate is a nice secondary perk. Sign me up.

That’s it for this week. Enjoy your Fourth of July Weekend!

Back to The Near Side

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