As a journalist, one of my Facebook pet peeves are the numerous viral false posts that are shared on my news feed. I can’t help but head right over to snopes.com to verify the information. But this week I was the one who was helping spread a false study on horse blanketing.

Titled “CSU Blanketing Study” it backed all my own completely unscientific beliefs about blanketing horses, or more accurately, why you shouldn’t blanket horses.  It reads “Horses have the ability to loft and lower their coats to 17 different levels, so it’s like exchanging 17 different thermal weights of blankets off and on them all day and night, depending on what they need,” and, “Only three things make the ‘self-blanketing’ process not work: blanketing, clipping and wind. Not even snow or rain stops their own thermostats from doing the job.” Yes! I knew it! And finally a study was showing it was more than a horseman’s hunch!

The only problem was, there never was such a study at Colorado State University. The fake claims seem to start making the Internet rounds every fall, but the university says it has never done such a study.

So what is the prevailing beliefs on blanketing horses? It seems to depend who you ask and on your individual circumstances. Older, weak or ill horses; horses that are clipped; very extreme weather or lack of shelter; a move from a warmer climate to a cooler climate; and of course if the horse is shivering are all reasons that blanketing is recommended.

Several years ago, Animal Planet did a reality show “Horse Power: Road to the Maclay” that I became obsessed with. The journey of a group of teens from around the country trying to win the most prestigious hunt-seat equitation championship in the world was fascinating. On Sunday, Oct. 13, this year’s competitors took to the arena in Harrisburg to go after the Medal Finals at the Pennsylvania National Horse Show. While we didn’t get to follow them for months to see the obstacles they faced to be in that arena Sunday night, they undoubtedly overcame many, regardless of talent, money or training.

Lillie Keenan, who was crowned champion Sunday, admitted to the break in her confidence leading up to the Harrisburg show. Keenan is one of America’s top junior riders, and has been for many years. She made history at the 2007 USEF Pony Finals when she won all three regular pony hunter divisions. In 2008, she won five out of the six possible championships and was reserve champion in the medal. She has been in the top ten at the Maclay Finals twice.So what would shake such an accomplished rider’s trust in her horse and her own ability?

At the Platinum Performance/USEF Show Jumping Talent Search Finals-East in New Jersey, where she was leading the competition after two rounds, Keenan’s ride, Clearway, stopped twice at a simple stone wall oxer, eliminating her.

“Horses are horses. I think it was a wake-up call that they’re not robots; they’re animals,” Keenan said, who admits she brought a backup horse with her to Harrisburg. She said that in the first round of the Medal Finals, she wasn’t riding her best. “I wasn’t trusting my horse as much as I should have and I wasn’t confident in myself. But my horse didn’t put a foot wrong all week, so I gradually began to trust him again and ride him like his old self.”

Sunday night the final six riders were put through a very difficult test over jumps, without their irons. Given to them in the arena, it was repeated three times before the first rider took to the course.  Keenan’s carefully thought out ride that gave herself the time and room to do the required movements between jumps secured her the win.

Michael Hughes finished in second and Charlotte Jacobs, who had been leading the competition but was unable to complete the two lead changes required in the final test, dropped to third.

Macs Good and Plenty

AQHA stallion Macs Good and Plenty will be offered for sale in the Quarter Horse Congress Super Sale on Sunday, Oct. 20 in Columbus, Ohio.

The 1997 brown son of Zippos Mr Good Bar (x Macs Debutante) is a Congress Champion and Equistat Leading Pleasure Sire. He has NSBA $13,991.79. He is the sire of NSBA, AQHA,PHBA, PtHA & Buckskin World Champions & Congress Champions.

Macs Good and Plenty’s stablemate and son, Ty, by Misstig Rebel (daughter of Iron Rebel), and the sire of AQHA point earners, NSBA money earners and multiple Futurity champions is also being offered in the sale. Ty was diagnosed with EPM in 2006 just before he was ready to show at Congress in the maiden 2 YO Master’s class. His owners say he has made a full recovery and is now not affected.

Ty

A few of Macs Good and Plenty’s other offspring will also be offered in the sale. To see a sale preview, visit the Congress Super Sale Preview of Entries. ready to show at the 2006 Congress in the maiden 2 YO Master’s class. He has made a remarkable FULL recovery and does not affect him in any way today.

Legendary AQHA hunter stallion Last Detail has moved to Hanes Performance Horses and into semi-retirement. The Shelbyville, Tenn., farm is also the home of AQHA legend <a href="http://

Last Detail, which is owned by Larry and Linda Whitaker and is now 22 years old, will stand to just a few select outside mares in 2014, and Taylor Hanes said he will be mainly breeding his own mares to the stallion.
  
Last Detail’s Show and Sire Record:

• World Champion Junior Hunter Under Saddle
• Congress Champion Junior Hunter Under Saddle
• AQHA All Time Leading Sire Of Hunter Under Saddle point earners (27,910)
• AQHA All Time Leading Sire Of Open Hunter Under Saddle point earners (4,910)
• AQHA All Time Leading Sire Of Amateur Hunter Under Saddle point earners (4,361)
• AQHA All Time Leading Sire Of Youth Hunter Under Saddle point earners (3,405)
• AQHA All Time Leading Sire Hunter Under Saddle Incentive Fund Earnings ($444,142)
• Equi-Stat All Time Leading money earning sire of Hunter Under Saddle horses. ($508,238) 
• NSBA Hall Of Fame Stallion

Barrel racing came to the Virginia Horse Center over the weekend. The Colonial Nationals drew about 1,000 horses to the facility and the arenas were buzzing with both exhibitors and spectators to watch who would be fastest around three barrels. The top horses were posting runs just a split hair more than 15 seconds on a cool weekend by August in Virginia standards.

Clones at Texas A&M

A federal court jury said Tuesday that the AQHA should allow registration of cloned horses, possibly clearing the way for those horses to be shown and raced in AQHA-sanctioned events.

The jury in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Amarillo found in favor of rancher Jason Abraham of Canadian, Texas, and veterinarian Gregg Veneklasen of Amarillo, saying the association violated the federal Sherman Antitrust Act and the Texas Free Enterprise and Antitrust Act.

The plaintiffs had asked for $2 million to $5 million in damages, but the jury provided no money award.

 

Abraham and Veneklasen, both members of the association, had argued that cloning would strengthen the quarter horse breed by re-introducing champions who are deceased or unable to breed, and could help reduce disease by enabling breeders to “silence detrimental genes.”

 

But opponents of cloning within the association countered by saying that natural breeding produced the most desirable traits and that cloning undermines the progression of the breed. They also pointed to the chance of growth defects displayed in other cloned animals.

 

Cloning isn’t easy, it isn’t cheap, and there are no guarantees that the clone will match the talent of the original. The first successfully cloned horse, a mare called Prometea, was born in 2003. Today, there are only a few hundred equine clones, created mainly for breeding, not competing. The cloning process can cost more than a $150,000. With cloning, the original horse can travel and compete (and be gelded for better performance), while its copy becomes a full-time foal-making machine.

 

Pure Tailor Fit

One example of quarter horse cloning is Pure Taylor Fit, a young copy of two-time world champion racehorse Tailor Fit – a gelding. According to the website Taylor Fit Barrel Horses, Pure Taylor Fit began standing at stud in 2011.

“In my opinion, this is a perfect example of greed by two people taking advantage of a legitimate association with legitimate rules that they want to break,” Carol Harris, who has been a member of the AQHA for more than 60 years, and bred the legendary AQHA stallion Rugged Lark, told the Ocala Star Banner. ““We could lose the DNA trail, and that could be really dangerous,” Harris said of using cloned horses for breeding purposes. 

“If I cloned Rugged Lark, it wouldn’t be Rugged Lark. It might look like him, but Rugged Lark became who he was because of the way he was raised; what we did with him every day. I couldn’t even begin to do the things we did. I don’t even remember half of what we did,” she said.

Other equine champions that have been cloned include Pan American Games gold-medalist Sapphire, whose genetic twin is called Saphir, and Olympic dressage horse Rusty, whose genetic twins are now yearlings.
The two yearlings are being raised by cloning specialist Cryozootech to become stallions.
In July 2012 the FEI lifted a ban on cloned horses and their progeny competing in the Olympic Games.  

In analyzing cloned horses, the federation determined that the clones were only 98 percent copies of the originals. The FEI has been careful to emphasize that cloning is a breeding technique only—they will never allow processes that might select certain genes over others in an attempt to create a superhorse.

 

The Jockey Club, which registers thoroughbreds in North America does not allow cloning or any type of assisted breeding, including artificial insemination.

“Anybody can clone Secretariat,” Dan Rosenberg of the Three Chimneys thoroughbred farm in Lexington, Kentucky, told Yahoo! Sports in 2012. “Not everyone can breed Secretariat.”

Sgt. Reckless, a scrawny 14-hand mare who served in the Korean War and earned two Purple Hearts,was honored with a monument Friday, July 26, at Virginia’s National Museum of the Marine Corps in time to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the war’s end. 

The horse earned the rank of Staff Sgt. after being purchased  in October 1952 for $250 from a Korean boy who sold her in order to buy an artificial leg for his sister who had lost hers to a land mine. She had a Korean name, but the Americans had trouble pronouncing it, so they named her after the platoon’s radio call sign.

The horse bonded quickly with the Marines. She’d stick her nose in the tent where Marines were living and lumber in, said John Newsom, 77. “She’d eat almost anything,” Newsom said. “She loved Tootsie Rolls.”

She earned her stripes, which were pinned to her horse blanket, after the battle for Vegas Hill, a firefight that raged for three days.

 The Marines taught her how to duck under barbed wire and how to lie flat if caught under fire in the open.
After the war, the Marines managed to bring Reckless to the United States, where she became a minor celebrity. She appeared on television, and magazine profiles were written about her.

Reckless and Fearless

Reckless gave birth to three colts — named Fearless, Dauntless and Chesty — and a filly that died one month later.

Unbridled’s Song, the son of 1990 Kentucky Derby winner Unbridled who went on to capture a Breeders’ Cup race and become a prolific sire, died Friday. He was 20.

Taylor Made Stallions, where the horse stood his entire career, said in a statement that the stallion began showing acute neurological symptoms Thursday and was taken to Rood and Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington, Ky. An MRI showed a large and inoperable mass in his sinus cavities and around the optic nerves. He was euthanized Friday, July 26.

“Unbridled’s Song was one of those great horses,” Taylor Made President and CEO Duncan Taylor said.

“He had it all — looks, pedigree, speed, and presence.
Our team loved him from the beginning.”

Unbridled’s Song was a $200,000 purchase at the 1994 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga selected yearling sale by Ernie Paragallo’s Paraneck Stable. He was then sold as a 2-year-old for $1.4 million at the Barretts March sale of 2-year-olds in training, with Taylor Made as agent, only to be bought back by Paragallo when sale buyer Hiroshi Fujita refused the sale after stating that his veterinarian found evidence of ankle bone chips.

As a 2-year-old, Unbridled’s Song won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile. The next year, he won the Florida Derby and Wood Memorial. He was the 7-2 favorite in the 1996 Kentucky Derby but finished fifth while another Unbridled colt, Grindstone, took the roses. Unbridled’s Song’s career ended prematurely in 1997, when he suffered a broken cannon bone while training for the Donn Handicap.

Unbridled’s Song earned $1,311,800 before retiring to stud in 1997. He had recently completed the 2013 breeding season. He last stood for an advertised fee of $60,000. He sired 730 winners from more than 1,000 starters, the Taylor Made Stallions said.

His progeny are led by U.S. champion Midshipman, Canadian champion Embur’s Song, Breeders’ Cup Distaff/Ladies’ Classic winners Unrivaled Belle, and Unbridled Elaine. He also sired multiple Grade 1 winners Octave, Splendid Blended, Thorn Song, and Zensational, as well as 2008 Kentucky Derby runner-up Eight Belles and 2009 Belmont Stakes runner-up Dunkirk.

The reining industry lost a legendary performer and sire on July 8 when Colonels Smoking Gun, known worldwide simply as “Gunner,” lost his battle with laminitis. The National Reining Horse Association Hall of Fame inductee and $5 Million Sire was put down after spending a week at Equine Medical Associates in Pilot Point, Texas.

Tim and Colleen McQuay have owned Gunner since 2005. Colleen said, “Gunner was a sweet happy horse, and when I look at all he has given us I can only be grateful for the time we shared with him.  Losing him leaves another hole in our hearts.”

He will be buried next to Hollywood Dun It on the McQuay’s farm.

Watch a video of Gunner performing on YouTube. 

The Roanoke Valley Horse Show in Salem, Va., is often known for the classes that take place after 6 p.m. in the Coliseum that require tickets to get in the door to see. But there’s a lot more going on throughout the day that can be attended for free. Here’s some photos from Tuesday, June 19, as the show kicked into high gear.

Later in the evening on Tuesday, a storm would hit the showgrounds, ripping down one of the stable tents and causing flooding on the grounds. See a story about the damage here.

Some events were postponed after the storm, but things were back underway again Wednesday morning after volunteers worked through the night to get things ready for the next day.

Aaron Vale rides Bromance in a jumper class Tuesday.