Horse cams

Let’s be honest, we all like spying on other people; some of them even invite you to do so. If you like watching horses (and you must, or you wouldn’t be here, would you?) there are a few horse and barn cams out there for your viewing enjoyment. You may need additional browser plugins in order to see some of these streams, and not all of them work well on Macs, grrrrrrrrrr.

AnimalCameras.com brings us the Jimmy Jam cam, broacasting from a horse rescue in Utah. Serenity Training shows a BLM mare and her foal. CEOates Ranch offers videos of their Quarter Horse Paint mares, and foaling videos. You can watch the arena at Haywire Farm in Ohio, or see spots in front of your eyes at Saddlebrook Appaloosas. SevenAcres Farm has minis for your viewing enjoyment, and there’s another good cam at Bestovall Arabians.

While we’re on the subject, you can also get disposable cameras with horse designs! They’d be great for 4-H, Pony Club, or as prizes or promotional giveaways at any horse event, and part of each purchase goes to help the North Shore Animal League.

More ways to get your horse book fix

Google has now made many out-of-copyright books available online. Some links to get you started: Appaloosa, Arabian, Black Beauty, Breyer Horse, Broodmares, Colic, Cowgirls, Draft Horses, Dressage, Equestrian, Equine, Equine Psychology, Farrier, Foal, Hackamore, Hoof, Horseback Riding, Horsemanship, Horses, Horse Racing, Horse Show, Miniature Horse, Morgans, Mules, Natural Horsemanship, Ponies, Quarter Horses, Rodeo, Saddle, Snaffle, Sport Horse, Standardbred, Thorougbred, Veterinarian, Welsh Cob, Wild Horses, Zebras.

What treasures have you found? My favourite thus far is Conquerors: The Roots of New World Horsemanship by Deb Bennett.

Blog Day 2006

BlogDay was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. On this day every blogger will post a recommendation of 5 new blogs. In this way, all Blog web surfers will find themselves leaping around and discovering new, previously unknown blogs.

Just to be different, here are some non-horsey blogs I love…had a hard time narrowing it down to just five!

Swapatorium
I love ephemera, and Swapatorium serves up mysterious old photos, junkyard treasures, weird old crafts and lots of other neat things.

WhatWasThen: News of the Unexplained
All the latest Fortean happenings.

History Spork
It’s like a brilliant mashup of MST3K, Ebert & Roeper, and some drunken graduate history students (which I used to be–well, not so much the “drunken” part).

BlogBling
Great potpourri of all things neat, cool, useful and interesting.

The Old Foodie
“From Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, The Old Foodie gives you 400 words each weekday on a topic related to the day, plus a historic recipe, and sometimes a menu. And how much fun is that!”

Honourable mentions: DogBlog, Pop Culture Junk Mail, I Wanna Be A Supermodel, High Strangeness, Strange New Products. Let us all hail BarnGoddess for her post, which is how I found out about BlogDay.

I say: hold out for the real thing

iGallop:embarrassing

IGallopOn: enlightening

Horses in the earth

Before the gods that made the gods
Had seen their sunrise pass,
The White Horse of the White Horse Vale
Was cut out of the grass.

Before the gods that made the gods
Had drunk at dawn their fill,
The White Horse of the White Horse Vale
Was hoary on the hill.

Age beyond age on British land,
Aeons on aeons gone,
Was peace and war in western hills,
And the White Horse looked on.

–G.K. Chesterton, “The Ballad of the White Horse“, 1911

Throughout England, there are numerous white horses carved into hillsides; the Uffington white horse (shown above) was found to have been created sometime during the Bronze Age (1200-800BC). I found a nice account of the visit to the horse here; some more photos here. (Of course, it could be a dragon too, a victim of St. George, but my hunch is that it could be an emblem of the pre-Christian horse cult in Britain)

Others are much more recent; the Alton Barnes horse, above, was commissioned by a man named Robert Pile in 1812, while the Westbury horse, also in Wiltshire, is thought to be much older, as it was mentioned in an 18thc. book. Exiled Preacher and Wiltshire Hotpot have some great photos.

Most of the figures were created by scraping away the top layers of grass and soil to expose the stark white chalk underneath, and the ones we know of only survived due to the maintenance efforts of local people, who scraped the figures clean and removed any vegetation which began to grow on them. However, some were constructed by piling light-coloured stones or rubble together to create a shape. According to Wikipedia, “Ancient figures all have an associated fair or ceremony which involves maintaining them.” Not all have survived; many of the older ones were lost and overgrown, like the Rockley horse (below).

Recommended:

• Wiltshire White Horses: their origin and locations
• The Hillfigure Homepage: particularly valuable for its information on lost figures
• Google Earth Hacks: lovely aerial photos
• Temporary Temples: more aerial photos (and some crop circles too)
• Tan Hill Fair and The Modern Antiquarian: Wiltshire customs and lore
• Mysterious Britain: g’wan, you know you love this stuff as much as I do
• Weird Wiltshire: actually, it looks rather nice…
• Royal Berkshire History: more on the Uffington horse

“Whoa Nellie”, indeed

Matthew Broderick just broke his collarbone while riding a horse. This makes Broderick the fourth or fifth person I have heard of in recent months who was injured while riding a horse. This got me to thinking: how dangerous is horseback riding, especially as compared to, say, riding a motorcycle?

Read the rest at Freakonomics.

…and could you pick some carrots out of a salad?

Another great horse-at-the-drive-through photo, found here.

Who’s your daddy?

According to a rancher in French-speaking Quebec province, a rare mating of a wild moose and a horse likely resulted in the birth of a funny-looking foal with a big head and long legs. The foal named Bambi was born 11 weeks ago following a mysterious conception,Although the foal is pretty gangly in the leg department, as a whole it appears pretty normal; from the neck up however you can see that it has the head of a moose (poor thing)!The owner, Francois Larocque told Le Soleil newspaper: “When the mare gave birth, my sisters said: ‘It has a moose head.’”

Passers-by spotted more similarities to a moose in the foal: Bambi has elongated legs, likes to hang out in a nearby forest where moose typically venture, and sleeps lying down instead of upright like a horse, Larocque said.

A front-page headline in the newspaper La Presse quipped with some long thought out originality: “Is Bambi a hoose or a morse.”

Gilles Landry however, a biologist with Quebec’s parks and wildlife department, remains sceptical.

“I have serious doubts because there has never been a birth from a moose and a horse reported, even though some have mated,” he said. “It’s more likely that it’s a deformed animal.”

The rancher insists his two stallions were sterilised over a month prior to Bambi’s conception and there are no other male horses in the region, only a few moose in a nearby wildlife reserve.

Perhaps this immaculate conception could be the next big follow up to The Da Vinci Code; whatever happens, veterinarians plan to carry out tests to check Bambi’s genetic profile.

Link

Before you get too excited, the Messybeast animal hybrid site says:

Although there have been reports of moose mating with horses, according to biologist Gilles Landry of Quebec’s parks and wildlife department, no offspring have ever resulted. Moose and horses are not just different species, they belong to two completely different orders: moose are Cetartiodactyla while horses are Perissodactyla. This is simply a foal with a deformities and genetic tests are likely to confirm this identity. The unusual physical proportions could be due to recessive genes e.g. a heavy horse somewhere in its ancestry. Larocque insisted his only 2 stallions were gelded a month before the foal was conceived. There are apparently no other stallions in the region, though there are moose in the nearby wildlife reserve.

My thoughts: There’s not a heavy horse anywhere in the world which is going to give you a critter which looks like that. What is a “mysterious conception” supposed to mean? If the mare actually was pregnant, there was probably some fence-jumping and confusion over conception dates. She then lost the foal, and adopted a moose calf which wandered in from the bush. Assuming that the pic really is of the critter in question, its body shape isn’t equine at all. It’s a moose calf, folks. The only real mystery is what it’s doing in his horse pasture.

Update from Newsgab (Sept/06):

Since posting this story in July, I’ve noticed quite a few visitors coming to Newsgab thinking that the picture in this post is an actual picture of the moose / horse hybrid. At time of typing this story I couldn’t find a picture of Bambi the Morse so the pic you see in this post is a baby Moose. Nothing more, nothing less.

Even though we never said this was an actual picture of Bambi, It’s amusing to read the number of posts in forums and newsgroups analysing the angle of the nose or the distance between the eyes of the animal in this pic to prove to others that this is indeed a picture of a horse moose hybrid. So to make it clear ITS A BABY MOOSE.

Hopefully this will end the debate for many

More amazing horse pictures

One from artist Jim Warren:

Can you find all seven horses in this picture?

I know what you’re thinking: “Ooh, wonderful, a picture of a frog.” But just tilt your head a little to the right…

Second pic found here.

The amazing Horse-o-Phonic!

From 8-Track Heaven:

About 6 months ago I received a series of e-mails from a gentleman in Italy who claimed to have developed an 8-track system for use on his horse! Well, he eventually sent photos to prove his claim, along with some technical data on how it all works. Check it out!

More about the system at the above link; no word on how he trained the horse to be cool about riding “through small towns and countryside with Lynyrd Skynyrd, Boston, Christie and other similar cool tapes playing loud”.

All creatures great and small

From CuteOverload.

Perhaps they could have put a little more thought into this…

View from World Equestrian Games webcam

Horses at BibliOdyssey

Lovely images from the early modern era have just been posted at BibliOdyssey, along with an equally fascinating bibliography.

Wild horse spurs suit against Texas farm

By Chris Dickerson – Winfield [West Virginia] Bureau

WINFIELD — Wild horses couldn’t drag a Hurricane man away from filing this lawsuit.

In fact, a wild horse is exactly why David Young filed a lawsuit against a Texas horse farm.

Young filed the suit July 31 in Putnam Circuit Court against Kelly Frost and Frost Farms.

On Sept. 28, 2004, Young bought Crystal’s Day, a chestnut Quarter Horse Mare, from Frost for $2,750.

“The purchase of said horse was predicated upon the defendant’s reputation and advertisement in AGDirect.com, wherein they stated that Crystal’s Day was quite (sic) to ride, had no bad habits or vice, nice enough to raise a fancy show baby, great disposition, loves people and is ‘super broke,'” the complaint states. “Defendant also advertised that said horse was suitable for the following activities: barrel racing, English pleasure, pole bending; breeding; hunter under saddle; competitive trail; and pleasure driving.

“Defendant further claimed that Crystal’s Day was trained for the following: show, trail horse; western pleasure; add, youth horse.”

However, Young says the horse did not arrive from Cleburne, Texas, as advertised.

Upon delivery, he discovered the horse possessed characteristics “that were anything but those described and represented in defendants’ advertising and words.”

“Said horse was uncontrollable and not able to be ridden, especially by children,” the complaint states. “Crystal’s Day has shown herself to be essentially unbroken, wild, destructive, violent, of foul temperament, and generally unsuitable for all activities described in the defendants’ advertising and representations.”

Young says he has incurred fees for the transport and delivery of said horse in the amount of $638 which was payable upon Equine Express.

He seeks an order finding the defendants have breached the contract regarding the sale of Crystal’s Day, that he be granted judgment in the amount of $5,000 plus pre- and post-judgment interest, including purchase price, transport costs, reimbursement of boarding costs and all other costs and fees associated with maintaining said horse; reimbursement of costs of a saddle and bridle destroyed by said horse; court costs and fees, including attorney fees, pre- and post-judgment interest and other relief.

Young is represented by attorney Shawn D. Bayliss. The case has been assigned to Circuit Judge Ed Eagloski.

Putnam Circuit Court case number: 06-C-252

Link

(I’m actually surprised that this doesn’t happen more often)

Quite right ;)

Image source