The eighth in a series of guest blog posts from Michelle Binder Western Dressage is a big up and coming equestrian discipline right now. I believe this is the right time for the sport to emerge as a reality and the interest level proves that the idea has been around for a long time. When I started talking to everyone about it, I was surprised! In our area, a Western Dressage Facebook page was started and we had 130 members within about 2 days! That was so important because it showed how much...

Courtney King-Dye will speak about The Road to Grand Prix during the KWPN-NA Annual Meeting. (Susan J. Stickle.) Sutherlin, OR - Once again the KWPN-NA Annual Meeting pulls out all of the stops to give breeders, trainers, owners and riders information to help them advance their horses up the ranks to Grand Prix, for both jumping and dressage. The Royal Dutch Warmblood Studbook of North America (KWPN-NA) has put together an unprecedented number of experts that includes Olympic medalist Steffen...

Laura and O Lordy++//. (Photo by Suzanne Sturgill.) Aurora, CO - It makes sense that the Arabian Horse Association’s Amateur of the Year would be the owner of the High Point Horse of the Year—it’s happened before. Laura Wolsey of Langley, B.C. and her gelding O Lordy++// (The Firelord+/ x Hi Passion) were recently given the AHA annual honor. In 2010 however, the AHA High Point Horse was also named Equine Canada’s High Point Horse for Breed Sport, the United States Equestrian Federation’s (USEF)...

Lexington, KY – February 9, 2011 – Equestrian Events, Inc. (EEI), producer of the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event, presented by Bridgestone, and the United States Equestrian Federation (USEF) have announced that the Kentucky Reining Cup, which includes international Reining and the first-ever World Championship Freestyle, will be held in addition to this year’s event at the Kentucky Horse Park, April 28-May 1. One of the world’s most prestigious equestrian competitions and the only CCI**** in...

Gunners Special Nite (Shannon Brinkman/USEF) Lexington, KY - The city of Lexington was largely defined by the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games in 2010, so it proved a fitting setting to crown the 2010 Farnam/Platform USEF Horse of the Year. And the winner couldn't be more all-American. The only multiple Gold medal-winning horse for Team USA, Gunners Special Nite, a six-year-old American Quarter Horse brought the sport of reining to the forefront of the American equestrian community. People...

The roster of horses at the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event, presented by Bridgestone, reads a bit like this, “16-hand Thoroughbred gelding, 17-hand Thoroughbred-cross, 17.1-hand Irish Sport Horse, 17-hand Selle Francais, 16.3-hand Oldenburg, 16.1-hand Holsteiner, etc.” It paints a picture of a sport dominated by Thoroughbreds, Sport Horses, and Warmbloods. But one Half-Arabian gelding is also making his mark in the top levels of three-day eventing. Technically he is an...

Unseasonably wet Fall conditions and ensuing reports of widespread mold in harvest crops have horse owners highly concerned about the possible presence of illness-causing, and sometimes fatal, toxins with every bag of horse feed they tear open. To ensure that mycotoxins do not get into the feed mill, much less their feed, Pennfield Equine Feed Technologies puts the horse first by investing in a highly effective rapid detection chemical test to identify and eliminate tainted ingredients before...

Photo Courtesy AHA/Conley Driediger (Conley Driediger with gelding, Winning Afire+//.) Alexis Starer Doughty of Cape Charles, VA, and Conley Driediger of Yarrow, BC, Canada, were named the Arabian Horse Association (AHA) Adult and Youth Amateurs of 2009, respectively. Doughty earned an impressive 646 points at 22 AHA-recognized shows in 2009, while Driediger earned a whopping 485.5 points from 17 shows. The AHA Amateur Achievement Award program began in 2002 and tracks the points of individual...

Famed publisher William Randolph Hearst, who also established an important horse breeding operation, is credited with having first coined the name “Morab” for the distinct breed of horses that are Arabian and Morgan crosses. He bred his Arabian stallions to Morgan mares to produce horses which were sure-footed, fast and versatile. Consequently, they were well suited to the rough and varied terrain of his San Simeon ranch near the Pacific Coast of California. More than six generations later, the...

A life-size statue of Tom Moore was dedicated on Wednesday, August 10, at 3 p.m. in front of Freedom Hall in Louisville. Tom Moore, a member of the World’s Championship Hall of Fame, trained and showed multiple World’s Grand Champions in all three divisions: five-gaited, three-gaited and fine harness. Commonly referred to as “The Tall Man,” Moore trained World’s Grand Champions CH Sultan’s Starina, CH Yorktown, CH Valley View Supreme, CH Bellisima and many more. The bronze tribute is by Douwe...