Horse Blog

I recently learned that thoroughbred trainer D. Wayne Lukas has won more Triple-Crown races (13) than any other horse trainer, more Breeders’ Cup races (17) than any other horse trainer, and higher earnings than any other horse trainer (14 years), for a lifetime total of an astonishing $250 million. As a student of management, I learned something even more interesting: that he’s done this by challenging the conventional wisdom that a horse should always be raced in a location near its stable. Bucking conventional wisdom, Lukas shipped horses to tracks around the country, carefully picking locations and races that offered a given horse the best chance for victory, while also gradually increasing the level of competition for that particular horse over time.

Hi there! We are running our ’soft’ opening for friends and family this weekend, getting feedback on our physical plant, our food and everything before our ‘hard’ opening in just a couple of weeks. We moved into the Coda just a couple of months ago–and it’s been a busy couple of months. Cleaning, redoing the interior, flying off to cater the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, the Belmont and who knows how many other events–and relentlessly learning more and more about food.

Four years later, Gene Autry would die, on October 2, 1998. He was buried a hero, an All-American Cowboy. Four years after his death, his beloved Angels would win their first World Series title — and without a twenty-game winner either.

Therapeutic Riding has wonderful benefits for a variety of riders with special needs in many different ways. Additionally, “therapeutic riding is a safe venue for children with special needs to interact with horses”, she tells Mountain Times readers. Conditions benefiting from therapeutic riding include Multiple Sclerosis (MS), developmental disabilities, Down Syndrome, cerebral palsy, sensory impairment, emotional and behavioral problems, cardiovascular accident/stroke, and amputations.

Today I volunteered at the Classic Company's annual Bilmore Classic Horse Show on the Biltmore Estate. I drove a golf cart around for the Chamber to meet some of the guests and shuttle them from the stables to the rings to the parking lots. It's very relaxing, but very tiring, as the heat, dust, and smell of horse will wear you down. Fun just the same. Here are two photos - please note, the grounds do not look this nice once horses, dogs, trucks, a half-million golf carts, and mopeds have been on them! Have a great weekend - hope to see you at the Estate!

As I mentioned before Nevada is mainly a big desert, it is the one on cowboys movie, we headed to the desert it’s a nice place to drive between the mountain and imagining your self as a cowboy looking for you escaped horse, although we have almost the same whether in Kuwait, their desert has more planet than we have on our’s I can’t understand why ours is differ than everything!.

Napster and I have finally found a place to go and have drinks that is actually kind of fun. It's a genuine Texas honky tonk with line dancing, two stepping, cowboy hats, wranglers, boots and everything. Makes for some great people watching. Anyways after we left last night we were both a little hungry.......

Gunracks? No. Big cowboy hats? No. Thick southern draws? No.

For the British people reading this, the closest thing to Rodeo in Britain is probably something like Speedway Racing. It’s got the same excitement but also the slightly down at heel, past its prime feel to it. Not only is it dangerous but nobody wears any padding or helmets and they’re sitting on top of 1400lb bulls which could crack your skull with a single kick. I was surprised to see the junior events: Kids as young as 8 being strapped to bucking bulls for 6 seconds without helmets or padding. But, we stood up with everybody else for prayers and the national anthem and generally went with the Cody zeitgeist. The idealised “cowboy life” existed across the western USA at the turn of the century and at its zenith in the 50s, the entire world knew of the cowboy through countless avidly watched movies and TV shows but there’s no doubt that the experience of a town celebrating a 50 year old idealisation of a life that existed 100 years ago is somewhat odd.

On Saturday, July 2, someone driving an older, white truck, pulling a four-horse trailer, dumped the horse, which was still alive, off alongside the roadway nine-tenths of a mile beyond the pavement on Van Duessen Road. They left on Butte Road.

I have to wake up at like 6am for the horse show tomorrow so goodnight! Expect more Maggie pics and such!

So basically it’s a very large fair. With rodeo. And concerts. And the really neat thing is everyone wears cowboy stuff. Not just the people at stampede who have to be there, but the entire city. You go into the grocery store and your cashier is in jeans and a farm shirt. Random people are sitting at bus stops with cowboy hats on. It’s all very festive. I saw a pink cowgirl hat yesterday and told Jim I want one of those. And to add to the festivities there are pancake breakfasts. WHAT?!? I’m sure you’re totally trying to figure this one out. I’m still trying to figure it out. Apparently this group called the stampede caravan travels around the city during the stampede, in their cowboy hats, cooking up pancake breakfasts for people. Free food, people.

Competing on the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association circuit is challenging.

Kyle Smith, a 23-year-old steer wrestler from Muholland Wells, is experiencing an up-and-down season.

You’re on your way to work one FEBRUARY morning and suddenly you’re trapped in a traffic jam caused by a chuck wagon and fifty horses - with riders - and you look around to see that everybody in the cars around you is wearing a cowboy hat. (time for the Rodeo)

I drove home with my shirt off and my shades on. I donned my recently purchase wicker cowboy hat. I felt sly in this situation. Crusing down the road well above the speed limit and not having shaved for long enough to look it were in combination. This added to my sly feeling as well.

I rode Sealy-Babe until five p.m. when it started to get really dark. Sealy and I enjoyed riding bareback through the snow, and it turns out Sealy-Babe likes riding at night as much as I do. In the summertime, I think I’ll train her for the horse show at night.

Well, I spent the better part of Sunday up in Hollywood Park Race Track at the Gold Cup room. It was my first time at the horse races, much less any kind of races. I went not planning on gambling, but I ended up spending just a little bit to have some fun. (For the record, I ended up $7 down; I was $3 up at one point, with my only win coming in for $17.00.)

So I’ll keep quiet this year, and try to enjoy the Stampede… this year. Thanks to Turner and Swerve. I'll try. You can't make me wear a cowboy hat, but I promise not to be an active party pooper.

In the current issue of Golf Digest there's a Q&A with Evel Knievel. It's fascinating reading. Knievel is that iconic larger-than-life American cowboy character whom we just don't see much of anymore (not that that is necessarily something to lament - it's certainly not lamentable that we don't see more of Knievel).

Cheyenne Frontier Days is a great event if you like country music, rodeos, parades, pancake breakfasts, and cowboys. For one week in July (22 - 31 this year) Cheyenne Wyoming a town of 53,000 people opens it arms to about 60,000 visitors. If you like the old west, the new west, or just cowboys and horses in general this is the place you want to be.

Inga und ihre Eltern liessen mich spaeter allein zurueck, da sie noch eine Verabredung in White Rock hatten. Gluecklicherweise klappte der vereinbarte Treffpunkt mit Peter, Angie und einer Freundin inmitten der Menge. Gemeinsam gingen wir in die Abendshow. Es regnete nach einem sonnigen Nachmittag mittlerweile in Stroemen. Die Show war beeindruckend. Echte Cowboys jeden Altern traten im Wettkampf gegeneinander an. Bullriding und Horseriding ist ja bekannt: ein Cowboy auf einem zuckenden, springenden Pferd bzw. Bullen. Nach einiger Zeit, sofern er nicht abgeworfen wird, ergreift der Cowboy den Arm des neben ihm Reitenden und gleitet von dessen Pferd gewollt zu Boden. Aber es ging auch brutaler zu. Es gab zum Beispiel einen Wettbewerb, bei welchem die Zeit genommen wurde, wie lange in Cowboy braucht, um ein Kalb einzufangen und niederzureissen. Pferd mit Mann und Kalb rannten gleichzeitig los. Nach einigen Metern sprang der Coeboy auf das Kalb und warf es um. Glaubt es oder nicht, aber beste Zeit lag bei vier Sekunden! Spaeter musste ein Kalb im Team eingefangen werden. Der erste fing mit dem Lasso den Kopf ein, der zweite musste per Lasso die beiden Hinterbeine erfassen und anziehen. Auch hier wurde die Zeit genommen.

It is once again Stampede time in Calgary. You see cowboy hats everywhere you turn, there are free breakfasts all over town, everyone takes the day off for the Parade. The first year I was in Calgary for Stampede time, the secretary where I worked asked the director if we got the morning off for the parade. The director said no. I didn’t think that was unusual - who takes a day off for a parade??? However, it turns out she was just joking and of course we, like everyone else, had the day off.

Every few seconds some old ginbag would bump into me and I’d check to make sure I still had my wallet. There were TVs everywhere simul-casting horse races from all over the country and a large crowd of the unemployable stood watching them with glassy eyes and rolled up tout sheets. None of them looked well off enough to be betting on anything. I haven’t been to the track in a long time, but I used to enjoy it. Of course, I always sprung for three bucks to go into the clubhouse where you could get a steak and people wore sport coats. I had never been to the hobo level before. It was like a scene in Escape from New York.

I took the photo in the beatiful walled city of Siena, just a few days before The Palio, an annual horse race held to mark a Virgin Mary sighting. Piazza Gramsci is the main bus terminal for the city, and visitors were coming in to the city for this famous event.

This is not something I would pick as an activity, but DLJ is going with folks from his company, I mean, the company hired a bus to take people so they can drink on the way, etc. Organized event. All I want is a window seat, as we will be going to a new city for me, Prineville, I believe. I am always up for visiting new places. I’m not sure how I feel about rodeos, but since I have never been to one, it’s a new experience and we know how much I love making notches in my Experience bedpost.

Follow this link to learn a little more about the Blowing Rock Charity Horse Show.

Tuesday night I headed out to Greune Hall to see Two Tons of Steel for one of the 10th annual Two Ton Tuesday shows. Every Tuesday night in the summer for the past 10 years this band has been playing Gruene Hall. This one was particularly special since they were recording for a DVD they will be putting out. They had girls in short skirts, baby doll shirts, and cowboy boots dancing on stage while the band was playing. Bizarre. I didn’t spend to much time watching the band as I invited a bunch of friends from San Antonio and Austin. I spent most of my time outside talking with them.

Day five was a blaze of colour - Siena’s Palio, a bareback horse race around the town square that has been in existence since medieval times.

They mean this as an insult, of course. They want to imply that Bush is hotheaded, vengeful, and dangerous. A real "shoot first, ask questions later" gunslinger kind of guy. Maybe even an outlaw. But they miss the mark completely. What is a cowboy? President Bush knows. He was raised in Texas, after all. And in Texas we know about cowboys. We learned about cowboys from the Lone Ranger and John Wayne. We grew up reading Louis L'Amour novels and watching Marshall Matt Dillon keep Dodge City safe. We grew up idolizing the American cowboy and all he stands for.

Occasionally I try to think up some scheme to use this phenomenon to foresee (or fore-influence!) the results of horse races, but I haven't yet come up with anything that promises a worthwhile ROI for the amount of time it would cost.

My Grandfather was admitted to the Prescott Samaratin Home for physical therapy so that he could get back up on his feet walking. His legs were somewhat useless and were very uncontrollable. Probably from his many years of them cowboy boots! Darn cowboy boots.