Horses!

It's A Colt! Visit our photo album for our new foal Gypsy Roadrunner.


I had horses as a teenager and gave them up for boys. Perhaps I'm just reliving my youth, but in October of 2001 we bought a Paint mare named Hasty Act (with a twice World Champion sire, Shots Flying Spark). She's 8 years old and pretty green, having had 60 days professional training, followed by just intermittent riding (due to my bad knee); I have a lot of relearning to do! So this page is currently filled mostly with the links I've found most useful in my new adventures with horses.
But before I start on the links, I wanted to let everyone know that one of the best places to board horses in Midland Texas is where we rent a stall for Hasty: at L.C. Hobbs' place on Midland Drive. I have written up a page, with thumbnails (and more pages, with full-sized images). Just click here to get a view of Mr. Hobbs' place.

AG Direct's Buy Horses.Com -- great searchability, photos, stats -- this is where I found Hasty. It's a great place to search for stallions standing at stud, too. As with all purchases over the Internet, buyer beware and we recommend you visit the horse before sealing the deal.
Good information on horse genetics can be found all over the Net. Some of my favorite sites include those on horse color inheritance. Here's a well-illustrated website devoted to horse color genetics, and another with easy-to-read charts for horse colors that tell you what you get, for example, when your buckskin carries the dun gene, and how you get grullo (or grulla) coloring. You can also find out if your horse carries the dangerous "Impressive Syndrome" also known as HYPP -- here at the U.C. Davis site you'll find history and how to have your horse tested. You can read more about the American Quarter Horse foundation sire, Impressive which passed the gene on to his descendants (born in 1969), too.
Clip Clop -- I especially like their searchable dictionary of horse terms, but they also have a great deal of information provided by professionals (farrier, trainers, vets, saddle-makers and so on). If only they'd get rid of the annoying pop-up sales window.... It aggravates me so much that I'd never shop there (if only they'd let me load the shop if I *wanted* to shop).
The National Research Council's online version of their book Nutrient Requirements of Horses, Fifth Edition (1989) has lots of values for various hays and grains if you're interested in doing a little science in figuring out what you should feed your horse.
Modern, gentler styles of training horses can be found at John Lyons' (great workbook offered for sale) website and Clinton Anderson's Downunder Horsemanship (excellent video series).
Texas Equestrian Trail Riding Association sponsors a yearly Expo and has lots of good information about trails available for riding here in Texas, as well as vacation spots where you can rent or bring your own horse.
If, like me, you're fascinated by Gypsy Vanners, visit my page of links to sites dealing with them on the web here.

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