There you are, standing at the in-gate, trying to present a picture of poise and confidence. But the reality is that there are butterflies slam-dancing against the walls of your stomach. Right now you want nothing more than to just get this over with so you don’t have to feel this way ever again. Then some well-meaning bystander offers you a granule of wisdom. “Just relax!” she chirps. Don’t you just hate those two little words?

Desmond Sanford “Sandy” Hawley was born in April 1949 in Oshawa, Ontario. While hot-walking horses at a Toronto racetrack when he was just 17 years old, the future Hall of Fame jockey decided to abandon thoughts of being a plumber and follow a career as a jockey. According to the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame website, Hawley was employed as a groom and hot walker for trainer Duke Campbell who coached him along carefully. Sandy still credits Campbell as one of his greatest sporting influences. In those days he earned just $73 a week. In just a few years he would be earning $250,000 a year.

Six-time Olympian and longtime member of Canada’s dressage team, Christilot Boylen of Schomberg, Ontario, announced her retirement from international team dressage competition on July 8, 2020. Christilot Boylen was born in 1947 in Djakarta, Indonesia, and, with her family, moved to Toronto in 1951. According to the Eurodressage website, she bought her first horse at age 10 with savings she earned acting on the children’s TV series The Howdy Doody Show. She trained her first Olympic mount, Bonheur, and at just 17 years of age she received special permission to compete for Canada in the 1964 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Chances are very good that anyone who keeps horses for several years will encounter colic at some time. Mild episodes may resolve on their own before a veterinarian can arrive and more serious equine abdominal discomfort can often be managed with medication.

Contact, to the average rider, seems to refer only to the contact through the rein, but really, contact is communication with your horse and the rein is just one form of that communication. There are a couple of other points of contact, being your hips and seat, your legs through your thigh and calf, and your heel and foot.

As the Alberta government reviews its management strategy for more than 950 wild horses that roam the Eastern Slopes of the Rocky Mountains, the newly formed Canadian Wild Horse Foundation (CWHF) is getting set to petition the federal government to declare wild horses a heritage species, focusing their goals initially on Alberta’s wild horses. “The Foundation’s main focus is to actively bring awareness (to the public) of the plight of our Canadian wild horses,” said Adrienne Calvert, Executive Director of CWHF. “We aim to educate the public on the numerous historical contributions these animals have made to our country. CWHF believes all Canadian wild horses are an iconic heritage animal that should be protected for future generations.”

First let’s begin by locating the navicular bone in the horse. Each of your horse’s hooves contains two bones: the distal phalanx (coffin bone or P3) and the distal sesamoid bone (navicular bone). The navicular bone is a small, boat-shaped bone that is bordered by the coffin bone, middle phalanx (P2), and deep digital flexor tendon (DDFT). It is approximately six centimetres in length and two centimetres in width in the average 1200 pound horse.

We have all heard the saying “No hoof, no horse.” Hoof care is a vital part of ensuring horse health, but the best ways to keep hooves healthy are often hotly debated. We worked with UC Davis veterinary hospital farrier Shane Westman, APF-I, to share ten things you might not know about horse hooves.