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Equine News Stories

University Level Equestrian History Course Launched – Western Carolina University recently authorized Professor David Dorondo to teach the first class of its kind, entitled The Horse In European History. During a recent interview, Dorondo reflected on his belief that educators have “an enormous historical responsibility not to allow the collective memory of human-horse relations to die away.” The ground-breaking lecture series uses two titles in the Long Riders’ Guild’s Equestrian Wisdom and History Collection as texts.

Don’t get scammed on Internet Horse Deals – We all know about the various scam artists who infest the internet. They prowl online classified sites intent on making a tidy profit by pretending to sell bogus Rolex watches or offering to share millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains, if only you’ll reveal your bank details. Sadly, a new type of internet equestrian criminal has now appeared. This one attempts to defraud people into believing that they can obtain a $30,000 Friesian horse in exchange for paying the nominal cost $3,000 involved in transporting the animal to the new owner. Once the funds have been transferred, the sting is complete as there is no horse, nor anyway to trace the criminal. With the assistance of the LRG-AF, a counter internet action against these sly thieves has been enacted by horse owners world-wide.

Horses were moved over long distances in pre-Roman Britain, recent analysis has shown. Read this fascinating story in The Times in England.

A scientific study in Britain, published in The Daily Telegraph, proves that horses can recognise individual neighs and match them to faces

A donkey is jailed in Mexico for violent behaviour: after biting and kicking two men he was locked up in a holding pen normally used for keeping drunks off the streets.

A wife wins £50,000 (about US$100,000) a year maintenance for her horses in her divorce settlement.

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Meet the Kelpies, Scotland's giant addition to the UK sculptural skyline. They will create one of the most dramatic gateways through which to enter Britain: two vast equine heads, centrepiece of a £49m eco-park near Edinburgh, are to guard the entrance to a canal link connecting the Firth of Forth with the Clyde in Glasgow. Each the height of a 10-storey building, and standing a third taller than the Angel of the North, the heads will dominate a 740-acre park of forests, walks and cycleways, the Helix project, being built on scrubland near Grangemouth refinery. The sculptures will be known as the Kelpies, after the mythical water horses in Scottish lochs and rivers.

Hybrid concept has only one horse: "In the never-ending quest for ever more horsepower by some automakers, it's refreshing to see inventive, ecologically-friendly ideas for new propulsion systems. A Dubai group is proposing that their one-horse vehicle supplemented by electric motors is the greenest transportation system available."

Meanwhile, the French are mounting "a transport revolution led by the humble horse, using it in more than 70 towns to pull school buses and to collect refuse."

Science Daily reports on:

	Clues to Horse Extinction point to gritty grass, climate change
	Rock Art depicting Comanches, horses clad in leather armour discovered in Colorado
	Scientists decipher genetic code of biothreat pathogen (glanders)
	Stem cell research to benefit horse owners and trainers
	From the bone of a horse, a new idea for aircraft structures

An article about The stirrup and its effect on Chinese Military History has been published in the Silk Road Foundation.

George Bush the Texan is 'scared of horses.' "President Bush may like to be seen as a swaggering tough guy with a penchant for manly outdoor pursuits, but in a new book one of his closest allies has said he is afraid of horses."

	The International Equestrian Federation (FEI) has called for the immediate resignation of its entire dressage committee, saying it does not fully represent the interests of the dressage community.
	Gavin Sutter, aged eight, unearths important fossils of a three-toed horse in Nevada. "Gavin's find fills a crucial gap in the evolutionary path of the horse, as it evolved from a five-toed to effectively a single-toed animal."
	Pictures reveal Greek's ancient equestrian marvel. "For well over a hundred years archaeologists have probed the site where the ancient Olympiad was held. But where did the Greeks compete with their horses and chariots in the legendary hippodrome? Now, its precise location has been revealed by sports historian Professor Norbert Müller, of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, and fellow researchers Dr Christian Wacker, who is a sports archaeologist from Cologne, and and Dr Reinhard Senff, chief excavator of the German Archaeological Institute."
	Equine 'flu outbreak in Egypt and India under control. "Equines remain a key part of the economy in the region, being used to carry people and goods."

The above four stories are from the equestrian Internet news service, Horsetalk.

A sad story about a grey mare abandoned in Sudan by Osama bin Laden, now being cared for by a kind-hearted benefactor.

Mane Attraction - A question was posed to Britain's Daily Mail newspaper: "When visiting Glasgow [in Scotland], I see a wonderful sculpture of a horse on the M8 [motorway] as you enter the city. Who is the artist and why was it put in that position?" Click on picture to read the answer and the explanation of how important heavy horses were in Britain.

A British company has developed a GPS product that attaches to a horse to send essential physical, physiological and environmental information about a training workout to the trainer, via the internet.

One of the last great cavalry charges took place 90 years ago at Moreuil Wood. Brough Scott (one of the best known figures in horse racing) and whose grandfather led the field, tells the story of the special horse who fearlessly carried the general into battle.

Asterix and Obelix, had they existed, might have paid for their mead and other magic potions with gold-silver-copper coins stamped with elaborate images of men and horses. Now a record-breaking haul from Gaul has been discovered at farm in Brittany.

Pack Saddles and Sudaderos: Long Rider Jeremy James was the first Westerner to discover an amazing girthless pack saddle when he made an equestrian welfare study for the Vietnamese government.

Kentucky overrun with unwanted horses. Kentucky, the horse capital of the world, famous for its sleek thoroughbreds, is being overrun with thousands of horses no one wants — some of them perfectly healthy, but many of them starving, broken-down nags. Other parts of the country are overwhelmed, too. The reason: growing opposition in the U.S. to the slaughter of horses for human consumption overseas. (March 2007)

Normandy grave hints at 300-year defiance of the Roman Empire. A macabre 1,700-year-old mass grave of people and horses, discovered in Normandy, poses perplexing new questions about the Roman conquest of France. The grave site, from the 3rd century, which was discovered by French state archaeologists at Evreux, appears to contain ritual arrangements of human and horse remains. In one, a human skull is clasped between two horse's skulls, like the two halves of a giant shell. (January 2007)

Horsemen of the Steppes: Ancient Corrals Found in Kazakhstan. At least 5,600 years ago the Botai people that inhabited what is modern day Kazakhstan used horses - both wild and apparently domestic - as the basis of their lifestyle. But proof of their ancient use has been hard to find. Because of the impermanence of leather, little survives of the implements that would be used to ride a horse, such as a bit or bridle, and domestication induced few morphological changes in the horse. But new research in the ancient Botai village of Krasnyi Yar seems to have turned up some ancient corrals--and pushed proof of horse domestication further back in time. (October 2006)

King Tut may have died in a riding accident. The world's most celebrated boy king, Tutankhamun, may have died after badly breaking a leg while playing sport. Speculation over the death of Tutankhamun has raged since the mummy was first inspected in 1925. (November 2006)

Centuries-old bones of horses unearthed in Carlsbad, California. Archaeologists working against the clock in Carlsbad have unearthed another nearly intact skeleton of a horse that may have lived and died 50 years before the Spanish began their conquest of California. (August 2005)

Hun Princess Graveyard’s Secret . A Hunnu princess’s graveyard discovered in summer of 1990 in Mankhan locality of Khovd province has become the sensation in the world of archeology... Five horse skulls were put on the northern side to the burial, with one horse head turned towards the coffin. The number 5 was revered by Huns because of their special reverence for Cygnus Constellation. One separate horse head probably belonged to the princess’ beloved horse. (May 2005)

DNA to help solve ancient equine mysteries. An archaeological project will be carried out to conduct a DNA analysis on a dozen horse skeletons unearthed from ancient burial tombs in Shaanxi, an inland province in Northwest China. A joint Chinese and British team of scientists from the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, Peking University and Cambridge University will undertake the project, said Li Gang, a Shaanxi Provincial Administration of Cultural Heritage official. (January 2005)

Court soaks 2 men in rain for cruelty. Magistrate makes men charged with cruelty to horses take off their hats and coats and stand in the rain. (December 1925)

Aeronaut on horseback sees rainbows (1850).

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