Recreation & Lifestyle
Welcome to Recreation & Lifestyle, which includes leisure riding and other aspects of the equestrian lifestyle for you and your horse loving friends and family.
Looking for the perfect present? See the Gifts & Jewelry section. Redecorating? Find a Painting, Photograph or Sculpture in the Artwork section. Need to check out a movie or crawl up with a good book or magazine? See our Entertainment section where you will find and Books, Movies, Games, and Magazines. And don't forget about Fine Art in some specialty Museums that might surprise you.
Looking for love or a trail buddy? Riding Partners is the spot to seek other riders who share your passion. Find a place to ride with that special person in our Trail Riding section and if you need more time away, take a look at Vacations. Want to know about the next horse show or special event? Don’t miss it! Dates and locations are included in the Calendar of Events for Recreation & Lifestyle.
Do we need to add more? Please use the useful feedback link and let us know!
By Dominique Barbier and Keron Psillas, Photographs by Keron Psillas.
I heard the name Mestre Nuno Oliveira in 1991, when I rode in my first clinic with Dominique Barbier. As the years passed and the clinics became more or less frequent, my knowledge of French classical dressage expanded, as did the mystique around the name Nuno Oliveira.
I read Reflections on Equestrian Art and then moved on to texts from de La Guérinière, The Duke of Newcastle, Baucher, and others. All the time I was working to understand how to apply these principles to my limited ability with my own horses.
In my mind’s eye I would even try to envision what it must have been like to be tucked away in Portugal, at the edge of the European continent, and yet, have the world coming to you to watch, to ride, to learn. I was imagining and dreaming of a Lusitano that would make my struggles to achieve lightness disappear.
Many years would pass until a fairytale-brought-to-life had me living in Portugal. I was still a dedicated student of Dominique and Debra Barbier’s teaching, visiting them often in California, and by this time (2011), I was also traveling to Brazil, Europe, and all over the United States to photograph (and sometimes even ride!) Lusitanos.
Living in Portugal has given me a much more nuanced understanding of the impact of Mestre Oliveira’s teaching. He is discussed, of course, around the lunch and dinner tables of riders, breeders, and aficionados of dressage and the Lusitano horse. These discussions go on for hours!
As the years pass there are fewer students alive, but I am lucky to be able to hear the stories first-hand. A few will argue that Oliveira’s legacy is being lost. And then the majority will speak up and disagree. My voice is added at that time.
By Richard N. Velotta / Las Vegas Review-Journal
It must be rodeo season in Las Vegas. Operators of the 1,000-room Plaza in Las Vegas made a bid to reclaim downtown’s western heritage Tuesday by officially opening Core Arena, downtown’s first permanent outdoor equestrian center.
Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman and 2017’s 13th-ranked rodeo cowboy Matt Shiozawa presided over a ribbon-cutting event for the facility opening two days before the start of the 10-day 2018 Wrangler National Finals Rodeo at the Thomas & Mack Center and a day before a downtown hoedown on Fremont Street.
The new facility will feature two outdoor arenas for roping practice and exercise during NFR. After the rodeo concludes, the Plaza’s equestrian center will become the city’s newest outdoor event venue which operators say will diversify the downtown experience and attract more business and people downtown year-round.
Read more: Permanent Equestrian Center Opens in Downtown Las Vegas
by Madeleine Aggeler
Earlier this week, the world received this small blessing: Liam Neeson said that on the set of his new Coen Brothers movie, The Ballad of Buster Scurggs, one of the sweet, majestic horses actors remembered him from the set of a previous movie.
“I play a traveling impresario. We filmed in New Mexico. The odd thing is the horse who pulls my wagon knew me,” he told the crowd at the New York Film Festival, according to Cindy Sherman at “Page Six.”
“You won’t believe it. I’m saying this horse knew me. He actually remembered me from another Western we made a while back.”
How did Neeson know the horse, presumably a very good boy, remembered him? “He whinnied when he saw me, and pawed the ground.” Ah.
Shortly after “Page Six” published the story, Russell Crowe chimed in on Twitter, saying that he’s had two horses remember him over the course of his acting career — George and Rusty — whom he describes as “lifelong friends”.
Read more: Talking to an Expert About Liam Neeson’s Horse Friend
by Denny Emerson
There must be something buried in the human psyche that craves an object of blind devotion, else why would there be fans of anything? Think about it. A 10-year-old boy, typical in many respects, is blindly obsessed with baseball, say, the New York Yankees, and football, the New England Patriots. Now this kid has never met an actual Yankee or Patriot and probably never will. But if you want to start an argument that has no end, say something demeaning about either team and you will hear a vast litany of reasons why these two teams, and these alone, are superior to all others.
Political parties, religions, nationalities, hobbies, and brands of cars all have their champions (and their detractors), and often there isn’t much logic, analytical thinking, or empirical evidence underlying these obsessions. It’s no different in the large world of horses. Try telling a devotee of some particular breed that some other breed is better and you are right there arguing with that 10-year-old about the relative merits of the Yankees versus the Red Sox, with no hope of either party convincing the other in 10,000 years. You may be an obsessed dressage rider, but you’ll be highly unlikely to ever convince a barrel racer to switch disciplines.
Most of the horse breeds and the horse disciplines have entire subcultures surrounding them, with associations, magazines, websites, blogs, registries, and competitive venues in interlocking webs of support. Once you have decided to pick one and choose to become (pick one: a show jumper, an eventer, a trail rider) riding (pick one: a Thoroughbred, a Morgan, a Paint), there is an entire network created and designed to make you feel comfortable and part of something special and larger and more important than yourself.
by Dianne de Guzman
Nov 15, 2018 - A horse was found in the backyard pool of a Paradise, Calif. resident, after the animal apparently tried to find a safe space as the Camp Fire moved through town.
Paradise resident Jeff Hill shared photos of the horse Sunday on Facebook. The photos showed the horse in a pool, but entangled in the pool cover.
"There's no telling how long she was there but she was shivering uncontrollably," Hill wrote. "She was all caught up in the pool cover but her being suspended by it prevented her from drowning."
Read more: Shivering Horse Found Waiting out Camp Fire in Backyard Pool
by Julie June Stewart
Harley the Magnificent! He is an American Sugarbush Harlequin Draft horse officially named “Daisy’s Chief Dane” but now is known as Harley when he escorts Thoroughbred horses to the racetrack. He is noticed whenever he is on the track at Churchill Downs or Keeneland. He is the number one stop on the Kentucky Derby Museum tour of the backside at Churchill Downs. If he is standing near the grandstand, you hear people shout out “Hello, Harley the Magnificent!” and then their hands stretch out to reach him. And now? Harley “the Famous Racehorse Pony” is a Breyer horse model and one of the stars of the 2018 BreyerFest!
Breyer horses began in the 1950s with a saddled Western horse. Their horses quickly became collectibles and the company has a long history with the “real horse world,” especially with the superstars of the horse-racing world. Their models have included American Pharoah, Man o’ War, Zenyatta, and Secretariat among others. It seemed natural to create a festival celebrating the wide variety of Breyer models.
Read more: How Harley the Magnificent Became a Breyer Horse Model
- USA’s Beezie Madden and Chic Hin D Hyrencourt Gallop Home with $250,000 Longines FEI Jumping World Cup™ at National Horse Show
- Iron Age Chariot Burial Site Found – Complete with Horse and Rider
- An Equestrian Princess
- The FEI World Equestrian Games™ Tryon 2018 Are Here
- Family Circles Wagon in Support of 5-yr-old Equestrian
- Bellissimo Works to Open the Equestrian World to All
- How to Relax When Riding
- Experiencing Northern Michigan: Horse-Drawn Carriage Tour on Mackinac Island
- Kentucky Horse Park Celebrates 40 Years
- The Ancient and Mysterious Chalk White Horses
