http://www.horsesdiaries.com my passion for horses Fri, 28 Dec 2007 10:44:26 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Now is the season to be jolly. We wish you all joy, love and happiness for Christmas ! May Jesus Bless you and your family as you go on all your rides http://www.horsesdiaries.com/merry-christmas/ Again a horse stumbled out of the gate, and again that horse was in front at the finish. Only it wasn't Curlin, and it wasn't even a colt. It was Rags to Riches, who not only took on and took down her male contemporaries, but did what no filly had done in more than ... http://www.horsesdiaries.com/queen-for-a-day/ No surprises for me this week with the news from the Street Sense connections that their boy would be passing on the Belmont Stakes, and they have sold him as a stallion prospect to Darley Stud, which already owns his sire Street Cry and dam Bedazzle. The only reason, at this point, for Street Sense ... http://www.horsesdiaries.com/street-sense-heads-for-easy-street-and-the-thoroughbred-retirement-foundation/ My toes were 'curlin' with excitement while I was watching the stretch run of the Preakness last Saturday and wondering if and when my chosen steed would ever change his leads. He finally did, and I suppose I can offer myself a pat on the back for picking Curlin to win, and even more for narrowing ... http://www.horsesdiaries.com/the-triple-crown-goes-back-on-the-shelf-and-a-rivalry/   War Admiral was not the only casualty of the 1938 Pimlico Special, which became the famous match race immortalized in the movie 'Seabiscuit.' The Pimilico infield's slight promontory, known as Old Hilltop, on which hundreds of thousands trainers and racing fans had stood through 67 years of racing was leveled in April of 1938, so ... http://www.horsesdiaries.com/preakness-prognostications/ Well, I didn't do too badly with my Kentucky Derby predictions; I just had the wrong horse finishing first. Street Sense and Calvin Borel took their time, picked their spots, and in general put in one of the finest horse/jockey team efforts, in making hash out of a twenty-horse field, that I ... http://www.horsesdiaries.com/the-street-fighter-triumphs/ Beyer speed figures. Dosage indexes. Post positions. Track conditions. Past performances. Put them all in a jockey's cap, toss them up in the air, watch where they fall, and then try reading some sense into them. You'll have as much chance as anyone of picking out the name of the 2007 Kentucky Derby winner. As with ... http://www.horsesdiaries.com/kentucky-derby-2007/ With the Kentucky Derby of 2007 approaching, all race fans are slowly turning their eyes towards Churchill Downs in Louisville, where the hopeful Thoroughbred bluebloods and their entourages will soon be descending. Should one of those royally-bred horses--Circular Quay, Street Sense, or Cowtown Cat, for instance-- prove very, very good, and very, very lucky, he ... http://www.horsesdiaries.com/galloping-gold-how-much-is-a-triple-crown-winner-worth/ Everyone who cares about horses knows about the Lipizzaner of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, Austria. I, in fact, made a blog post here about them not long ago. But not very many people outside of Austria, including here in Canada, are familiar with a breed of horses even more indigenously Austrian than ... http://www.horsesdiaries.com/haflingers-the-other-austrian-breed/ When doing the research for my blog entry on Pasos, I wanted to know if there were any the horses which could perform the Paso Llano so closely associated with the Peruvians. The answer, which surprised me, is “Yes.” But what surprised me even more is which other breed has this delightfully smooth action ... http://www.horsesdiaries.com/icelandic-ponies-pasos-of-the-north/ Although spring officially arrived less than a week ago, I am already planning a summer trip to visit my friends in Missouri. We were debating what we would do for our week together, and got one idea from the website for a farm about ninety minutes southwest of Saint Louis. The farm offers ... http://www.horsesdiaries.com/peruvian-pasos-the-best-ride-on-earth/ With all the racing sites happily reporting that Barbaro’s yearling brother now has a name, Nicanor, after another foxhound in the same painting from which Barbaro’s name was taken, I thought I would take a look at what has happens to the younger siblings of other great racehorses. The truth is that ... http://www.horsesdiaries.com/barbaro%e2%80%99s-baby-brother/ When I was in the fourth grade, more years ago than I care to remember, my teacher, Miss Sears, would read one chapter of a book to the class each morning. I still remember how excited I was when she chose Marguerite Henry’s “Misty of Chincoteague” as one of the books she would read ... http://www.horsesdiaries.com/remembering-misty-through-mists-of-time/ Pluto, Conversano, Favory, Neapolitano, Siglavy, and Maestoso. Are they names of characters from one Shakespeare’s more obscure plays? No. But they are responsible for some of the elite performers of their species. Those six names belong to the six stallions from which every Lipizzaner, the magnificent white ballet-dancing stallions of the Spanish Riding School, is descended. Pluto was ... http://www.horsesdiaries.com/airs-above-the-ground/ A few weeks ago I wrote about a hoof treatment known as the “Barefoot Trim”, based on the theory that horses’ hooves were much better off if they were allowed to go shoeless. The idea is that iron shoes will not permit the hooves to expand as they com into contact with the ground, and if ... http://www.horsesdiaries.com/barefoot-in-the-parks-houston%e2%80%99s-police-horses/