Author: RoanokeEquestrian

Virginia 4-H State Horse Show Photos

The Virginia 4-H State Horse Show was recently held at the Virginia Horse Center in Lexington, Va. The Roundup was there on Saturday to take photos of the event. Here are some of the photos with more to be posted in the coming days. If you’d like a copy of a photo, feel free to contact dilewin@gmail.com.

Get your horse fix: Sept. 27-28

VIRGINIA  HORSE CENTER

  • The American Saddlebred Horse Association of Virginia will hold their 2014 horse show at the  Virginia Horse Center Sept. 25-28. A full schedule of classes for Saddlebreds, Hackneys and Friesians will be offered, as well as UPHA Classics, futurities and Academy classes. Prize book with class schedule can be found online.
  • Also this weekend at the Virginia Horse Center, the Glenmore Hunt Pony Club will hold its fundraiser show for hunters and jumpers in the Wiley and Northern arenas. Find a class list here online. 

FRANKLIN COUNTY

The Franklin County Equestrian Club’s annual open horse show will be held Sept. 27 at Ginther Farm in Rocky Mount. The show will offer a mix of Western, English and game classes. Find directions and a class list here.

ROAD TRIP

The North Carolina Quarter Horse Association is holding the Tar Heel Classic this weekend at the Hunt Horse Complex in Raleigh, North Carolina. That is just under 3 hours of driving from Roanoke for top AQHA competition just before Congress.

ONLINE

Road to the Horse doubling the challenge

Jim Anderson

 Road to the Horse has become one of the premier horse training competitions in the country. Selected trainers (usually 3 or 4) choose a horse out of the 6666 AQHA Remuda — a herd of 21 untouched 3-year-olds. The goal is to teach horsemen and women that natural horsemanship is a kinder training method. The trainers are judged not just in the final outcome, but how they got there. Chris Cox has captured three Road to the Horse titles. Guy McLean has captured two, and last year the wild card trainer beat his famous competitors to take the title.

Although I’m a huge fan of natural horsemanship methods — I’ve seen it work miracles on countless horses as well as put a wonderful foundation on young horses that lasts them a lifetime — the speed of the training is at once impressive and counter-intuitive into going slowly with training. Unlike the Robert Redford film “The Horse Whisperer” from which these type of natural horsemanship trainers got a boost in their fame, they don’t have unlimited time to allow the horse to control the pace of his own training. These horses reach an incredible level of training in just a weekend.

The 2014 AQHA Remuda from the renowned 6666 ranch.

 This year’s competition will return to the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Kentucky, on March 26 to March 29, 2015 with the running of the Remuda on Friday morning around 10 a.m. And this year they are adding a new twist. Each competitor will select two horses to train instead of just one. The winner will be calculated on an accumulative score from both colts. The reason for the double duty? They want to show the trainers’ ability to adapt their training to different personalities.

Jonathan Field

Three-time winner Chris Cox will return to the lineup in 2015. And 2014 Champion and Wild Card Champion Jim Anderson will also return. Those two will face the 2015 Wild Card winner, who will be announced at the start of the event.

In addition to the trainers’ competition, a group of fans will be randomly drawn from the list of Road to Horse 2015 ticket purchasers. Those fans will then each select a colt from the Remuda. The fan who selected the highest-scoring horse at the event will receive a check for $10,000. Start checking out those horses now and make your picks! (Meet the 2015 Remuda here.)

Antoine Cloux (Switzerland)

Lexington, Kentucky, is an easy trip from Roanoke, Virginia, with a drive time of just under 6 hours. And if you’ve never been to Lexington, Kentucky, it’s worth the trip just to visit the town centered around great horses and horse farms. Road to the Horse 2015 tickets Ticket prices range from $83.00 to $203 per seat and are good for all 3 days. They are available online at www.RoadtotheHorse.com.

All photos are courtesy of Road to the Horse.

Road to the Horse 2014

Get your horse fix: Happening this weekend (Sept. 13-14, 2014)

This weekend is the Virginia 4-H State Championship Horse Show at the Virginia Horse Center. It opens Thursday evening with a Reining qualifier class and Hunter Showmanship in the coliseum. If you like your day watching at the horse show to be broken up by plenty of variety, this is a great place to go watch. Not only have these youth exhibitors from across the state worked very hard to get to the state show, there’s plenty of different types of action going on throughout the day. Even the most hardcore horse show fans can get a little fatigued after hours of the same discipline cantering along in front of them.  But at the state 4-H show there are 4 arenas running at the same time. For instance, on Saturday around noon, the Coliseum will be the site of Western Horsemanship, while in other arenas you can watch Driving, Hunter horses or hunter ponies. Find the full show schedule for more on class times and arenas.

If AQHA is more your cup of tea, you’ll have to travel all the way over to Doswell, Virginia, for the Virginia Bred Futurity at Meadows Event Park, which is just north of Richmond. The stallions involved in the Virginia-bred program for 2014 and last year’s results, including payouts, can be found here. Beyond the futurities there is also a full show. Find the schedule here.

Also on Saturday, the Blue Ridge Eventing Association is hosting an Eventing clinic with Ashley Adams, who has been competing in the top levels of  the sport for more than a decade with an emphasis on starting young horses. The clinic is free to audit and $100 to ride.

Photos from the Virginia Color Classic

The Virginia Horse Center in Lexington, Va., hosted the Virginia Paint Horse Club’s Color Classic Horse Show and Futurities Sept. 6-7. While a traveling snafu of one of the judges slowed things down a bit on Saturday, a replacement was found until she could arrive. However halter classes didn’t finish until about 2 p.m. in hot and sticky weather, making it a long day for everyone. Below are some photos taken at the event:

GET YOUR HORSE FIX: Events and shows this weekend.

The best thing about summer is horse shows. And if you can’t get out to show on your own horse, they are still a great way to spend the day. The Virginia Horse Center is hosting the Virginia Barrel Classic, Dressage with a View and SBRAA Lee-Jackson Classic (Appaloosas.)and Hear the Beat Horse Show.

Can’t get out to see them live? You can still get your fix online. The Devon Horse Show is streaming live on the USEFnetwork every day. The show schedule can be found here and the USEFnetwork streams the Dixon Oval (Devon’s main arena) live every day. Meanwhile the AQHA’s Redbud Spectacular is streaming live through June 8 on iequine.com. Find the schedule here.

Should we be #AQHA Proud?

AQHA sent out this Facebook post on May 28 at 7 p.m. of a really gorgeous photo. A gleaming bay horse, his mane and forelock falling dramatically before him. Really quite beautiful. Except….. the very thing that has been called abuse in such disciplines as Dressage is being promoted here by the organization that oversees the quarter horse breed.

This horse is pushed to the ultimate in flexion, his chin pushed against his chest. His mouth is open and he has nowhere left to go. The bit appears to be severe with long shanks. And while it is a dramatic photo, AQHA’s promotion of it as part of its #AQHAproud campaign also promotes intimidation as a training technique, which is the very thing they should be protecting the breed from.

In this era when the general public has their eyes on the horse industry, the associations that run our horse shows, make our standards, and promote our breeds should be watchful of also promoting good horsemanship practices. Tennessee Walking horse breeders/exhibitors have recently come under much scrutiny for their training techniques. Horse racing is being more carefully watched by the public, partly due to a resent onslaught of undercover videos by PETA. Many believe AQHA could find themselves in the same boat if some training practices are not curtailed. It’s disappointing to see this image, as beautiful as it is artistically, featured on the AQHA’s page.

Extreme trail indeed

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This video is getting attention around the Internet of a horse performing in Extreme Trail without a bridle at the Oregon Trail Center in Eugene, Ore. The horse seen in the video is Sir Rugged Chex’s, aka Checkers, and is shown here with rider Mark Bolender, winning the class by turning in the fastest time.

The Oregon Trail Center duplicates the terrain of the mountains inside its arena using 200 tons of rock, dirt, hand-picked sage brush and trees and even a 20-foot waterfall for their Mountain Trail Show. Many different divisions from youth to advanced are offered on two different trail courses.

Mark Bolender, of Silver Creek Wash., is a leading trainer in Extreme Trail competition.

Cass Ole brought imaginations alive in "The Black Stallion"

He was a National Champion in Arabian Western Pleasure in 1975, National Reserve Champion Arabian Ladies Side Saddle in 1976, and U.S. Top Ten Arabian English Pleasure in both 1975 and 1976. He won more than 50 championships and 20 reserve championships in his seven-year show career and was high point winner of the prestigious King Saud Trophy. But it was his role as Shêtân in “The Black Stallion” that made Arabian stallion Cass Ole an icon.

What horse lover will ever forget the scenes on the beach, watching the gorgeous black Arabian gallop across the white island sand? Who needs Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp as a leading man when there is such a horse to play the leading role? Director Carroll Ballard traveled all over the world looking for the right horse to play “the Black” from Walter Farley’s beloved 1947 book. But it was in Texas, on Farley’s recommendation, that Ballard would find the perfect stallion to bring the story to life. Cass Ole was naturally black, except for a star and white socks. Those were dyed away for the movie. He was also given a weaved-in mane to help him look wilder.And it was his wonderful manners and trainability that sealed his fate as “The Black Stallion.”

Because Cass Ole was such a valuable show horse, he had several stunt doubles to perform the more grueling parts of filming. Cass Ole still completed 80 percent of the filming himself and proved to be quite versatile — able to look wild and furious toward his enemies, yet loving toward Alec. He would also appear in the movies sequel, “The Black Stallion Returns.”  
 After his life as a Hollywood star, Cass Ole returned to the show pen where he continued to win local and regional titles. He was also a successful sire with 123 foals.
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