Remember how the prize from the Nunn Finer caption contest with Boyd was a $40 gift certificate? I sent our winner, Lorraine, an email asking her where we should send the gift certificate prize and she said that she would be donating the gift certificate to the Camp K therapeutic riding center, where she volunteers. Thanks Lorraine, that’s a wonderfully generous gesture and a reminder to all of us to give back, especially during the holidays.
A long time friend of mine who is a very smart guy, and not just because he visits Eventing Nation regularly even though he isn’t involved with horses at all, gave his very successful and very hard to shop for stepfather a check written out to a local charity, with the donation in the stepfather’s name. I thought it was an extremely classy gesture and a great gift idea. Whether it’s gifting a donation, donating a gift certificate, or just helping at a food shelter for a few hours one afternoon every little bit helps.
–The Badminton blog has posted some great photos from 2010. [slide show video]
—Zenyatta was released in her paddock for the first time at Lanes End Farm on Monday. [Story, Video]
–If you are stuck at work today and trying to kill the time until your vacation starts, Barnmice has posted an entire horse movie, called the Miracle of the White Stallion, in 12 sequenced Youtube videos. Spoiler alert: the miracle is that the owners put the white stallion in his stall one night and he wasn’t covered in poo stains the next morning. [Movie]
–For our thespian readers, the cast has been announced for the US stage version of War Horse. [Horsetalk]
–VIDEO: I don’t know what meeting I was in at the USEA convention instead of the MIM Pin seminar, but fortunately the USEA has posted a video of the presentation so I can catch up on one of the newest innovations in safety and one that we will surely see more of in the US soon. [USEA]
–There’s only one exception to our ‘feel good news’ today, but it is a big exception. The Daily Mail published an article on Tuesday about the abandonment and neglect of horses caused by Ireland’s incredibly bad economy. People have literally resorted to abandoning horses in public parks and estimates are that Ireland has between 10,000 and 20,000 “surplus horses.” It is an incredibly bleak situation. [Daily Mail]
—Edward Gal may have lost the best dressage horse on the planet to Germany a month ago, but he has gained the best young German dressage horse, according to Eurodressage. The owners of Hanovarian licensed stallion Lissaro van de Helle have sent the horse to be ridden and trained with Edward, which makes sense because he did such a good job with Totilas. Yeah, the horse is a pretty nice mover, and the Germans certainly know how to show their horses off don’t they? [Eurodressage]
–I’ll leave you with an email EN received recently which is one of my favorite emails ever. Let this serve as a public service announcement to our readers not to read EN right before cooking Christmas dinner–you will not get dinner finished in time. From BC:
Just wanted to say, “Damn you EN!” I’ve got 18 people coming to dinner in 2 hours and I logged onto EN while waiting for the oven to warm up. Thirty minutes later–it would have been 20 but then I saw the Hamish & Dave video–the carrots aren’t ready, the beans aren’t cleaned and the ham is going to be lukewarm.
Sorry BC, I hope your guests understood that EN is more important than their food. That’s all for now but we have a busy day planned on Eventing Nation and if we can’t find any important news by lunchtime then I’ll just make something up. See you soon…
