Abby Gibbon

From the moment the War Horse trailer first appeared online, the equestrian community spread the news like wildfire. By November, hype had reached an anticipatory crescendo: “War Horse—is it going to make us cry?”

I’d already received several emails promising tissue-stocked concessions at my local screening, and when at last I found myself in the darkening theater, a couple clad in paddock boots to my right, I resolved that—in case of tears—at least I was amongst compatriots.

After 30 years spent managing and showing Welsh and Dartmoor stallions, Shull can’t envision a future without ponies.

Hershell Shull leads me into a field of yearling ponies. Soft roans, fuzzy bays and winter grays look up as we walk toward them, their tails swishing, interested. A few take a first step in our direction, and within moments they’re all ambling as a herd: not rushed, just eager.

On Nov. 18, President Obama signed into law an agriculture appropriations bill, which, among many other provisions, lifted a 5-year prohibition on funding for U.S. Department of Agriculture inspections at horse processing facilities.

Though Barbara Crabo and her 5-year-old Swedish Warmblood mare Over Easy (Quite Easy 958—Olivia OF GCF, Admiral 764) were originally declared the winners of the Galway Downs long format CCI* (Calif.), Nov.

Philip Astley, 24, returned to London a new man: Seven years backing cavalry horses in Col. Granville Elliot’s 15th Light Dragoons had quashed the familial tensions he’d joined the army to avoid. Alongside the Prussians in the French and Indian war, he’d rescued the Duke of Brunswick from enemy territory. By his discharge in 1776, he’d risen to a stature of 6 feet and a rank of sergeant major. Elliot, now a general, bestowed upon his soldier an opulent parting gift: a white stallion named Gibraltar. 

Meter wheels may soon go the way of dodos, car phones and FEI phases A-C: relics of bygone days. That is, if Nick Hinze, eventing and global positioning enthusiast, has anything to say about it.

“You can buy a $25 meter wheel, or you could just use GPS,” said Hinze, creator of the recently launched CourseWalk application, available for an introductory $4.99 download for Apple and Android platforms.

Riding is an empirical art. When we witness that rare round or freestyle, we know that we’re watching something beautiful. But how do we know?

Last Saturday, Sept. 17, Lucia Strini and her horse, Altairs Luck, fell at the A element of the coffin complex on the Plantation Field CIC** (Pa.) cross-country course.

Strini, who was wearing an air vest, suffered a mild liver laceration and 10 non-displaced fractures, including her hip, pelvis, sacrum, three ribs and four vertebrae in her lower back.

“One of the most dramatic demonstrations of concern and affection for GMHA took place following the flood of 1973,” wrote former Green Mountain Horse Association President Eileene Wilmot in Green Mountain Horse Association, 1926-1990s. “We all met to view the disaster and destruction, some of us with faint hearts. I never will forget Wilson Haubrich, who quietly said, ‘We have 120 children arriving in two days; we must get this fixed.’ Friends and members came down from the hills and up the valleys… In two days we were ready to receive the children.”

Fairburn, Ga., Sept. 11

Calvin Ramsay competed a horse and a pony in the novice junior division of the Nutrena/USEA American Eventing Championships, but his pony, Razzle Dazzle, almost didn’t make the trip.