Kindle people with horses - horse photos please!

[lea_owens]

I'm 52 and I literally began riding before I could walk. I still compete to national level with my horses but  nothing beats just spending time with them at home on the farm. I hope people will share their horse photos.


This is one of my boys, Nights Of Gold - he's a cremello Quarter Horse stallion.



This is our daughter with our other main stallion, Days Of Gold - he's a perlino Quarter Horse (Days and Nights have over 30 national champions/titles between them... we love our boys!)



This is our daughter on Days Of Gold winning a Supreme Under Saddle competition at a state level show (he beats Warmbloods, Arabians, Thoroughbreds, Ponies and lots of other breeds under saddle)



This is one of our other stallions, a cremello Australian Stock Horse stallion - you'll see that he's the model for the cover of my book (below)

[TB Lover]

Hi - just announced the release of my young reader horse book on Kindle book bazaar a few minutes ago - won't mention title as don't think I am supposed to self-promote here?? (New to Kindle boards)

BUT....here are some photos....note all of my five ex-racehorses are in my book - borrowed their personalities but in some cases gave them more glamorous lives 

can't figure out how to upload pix but here is a youtube #Invalid YouTube Link#
w.youtube.com/watch?v=2tIszHpQaSo

if you tell me how to upload photos, will put a couple up.

[lea_owens]

You need a photobucket account (there are others, but I just happen to use photobucket).
1.Just go to photobucket.com and start an account - it's free -
2. and then it will prompt you to 'upload photos' and you use that to locate the photos on your computer which you want to upload.
3 It's a good idea to always resize every photo once it is on photobucket - just click 'edit' and then 'resize' (or just 'resize' which comes up sometimes) and have the photo at about the 640 X 415 option (or close to that - it will give you a series of size options)
4. There are a list of codes with each photo - click on the 'img code' to copy the code for the photo (sometimes it will copy automatically when you click on the img code, sometimes you have to do a right click for 'copy')
5. paste the img code into your forum message - but before posting, click the 'preview' button at the bottom of your post to see that the photo has come up correctly.

[lea_owens]

While I'm waiting for people to put up horse photos, here are some more of mine. They've all been shown and have won at state and/or national level, but they're just our farm horses when they're not in show condition.

This is Rev (GL Revelation Nights) - he's my palomino gelding and is by Nights Of Gold



This is Gilbert (Champagne Nights) - an Amber Cream Champagne (his colour) colt, also by Nights.



This is Diesel (Ahrem Time Out) - he's a Silver (his colour) Australian Stock Horse stallion



And this is a group shot of three of our young geldings...

[njeggels]

Oh, wow! They're so beautiful!

[lea_owens]

Thank you, njeggels... I was hoping other forum members would have photos of horses, but there don't seem to be very many horse lovers here.  The lady who trained the horses for Stephen Spielberg's movie Warhorse is interested in a couple of our horses for her training business, which would be nice. A few of ours have been on tv before, but only as 'background' or 'stock image' horses for Horse Talk TV because I sometimes do work for them (research, writing and occasional on-camera work). 

[Tiffany01]

My mare.

[lea_owens]

Wow, she is gorgeous! I love blacks when they have blue eyes. Beautiful markings. I love the forest in the background of your first photo, too.

[Tiffany01]

Thank You!

[riveroflight]

River, my mare, percheron/belgian cross

[JeanneM]

Oh my gosh...they are all so gorgeous!  I have a question...probably silly....but why do horses rear up like that.  It is so beautiful when they do it.

[lea_owens]

Rearing has lots of causes. Mostly, they do it when playing.  The shot of my Cremello rearing was taken on a windy day when he was let out of his stable, and he spent half an hour galloping around, bucking and rearing, just enjoying himself. On youtube, if you search for Mambo likes to play you'll find a 49 second video of one of our other stallions having a play by himself after being let out of his stable - just "I feel great and I'm having a great time" sort of playing.  If you search for why horses and monkeys aren't friends you'll see a video of him playing with a toy monkey, and there's rearing in that, too.

Sometimes they 'play fight' with another horse, especially young ones, and that involves a lot of rearing - if you go to youtube and search for When horses attack! Palomino fighters you'll find a video of some of our young horses playing in the paddock with very typical and normal behaviour that is interesting to watch. 

Stallions will rear when facing each other as an intimidation "I am bigger than you" thing, and they also do a lot of their fighting up on their back legs which is probably a good evolutionary survival tactic as it is the back legs that are most likely to kill or break the leg of the other horse by kicking, so if they prefer to fight on their back legs, they can't kick each other and it gives both a better chance of surviving the fight.

When you are riding a horse, if it is prone to rearing, it is often like an 'extreme jib' (jibbing being when a horse refuses to go forward even when you tell it quite forcibly to go forward) - almost like the front end has so refused to go forward that it ends up going upwards. Some learn to rear to escape pain or work - they rear, the rider falls or gets scared, so they learn very quickly that if they don't want to do something, they rear and the problem goes away.

Lots of horses, particularly stallions, can be taught to rear very easily - if they are playing in their yard and you stand on the other side and throw both your hands up over your head (like your hands are rearing) many will quite naturally rear in response to that. The movie horse Emily (the black horse in the movie Australia, ridden by Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman) came here after the movie to get in foal to Nights Of Gold (our stallion 'Mambo' in the above videos), and she had been taught to rear on cue for lots of scenes in the movie, which made it funny handling her as if you accidentally gave her one of the cues (touched in a certain place on her ribs, waved the rope in a certain rope... quite a few cues) she would gracefully rise up on her hind legs and stand there.

So, you can see, rearing has lots of causes, but mostly because it is fun for them.

[JeanneM]

Thank you so much.  I find horses so fascinating.  I think they are one of the most beautiful creatures on this earth. 

[Casper Parks]

Thanks everyone for sharing those horse photos...

[spotsmom]

Beautiful horses!!!

Here's a photo of "Jack Daniels".  hey, he's part Tennessee Walker and part Kentucky Mountain Horse.  What else would we name him?

[Casper Parks]

Spotsmom,

Nice looking horse, background is great.

[spotsmom]

That is Mt. Bachelor, Oregon in the background.  Only place on our property where you can get that view.  JD just walked into the picture.

[spotsmom]

And, this is Charlie Horse!!!

[lea_owens]

Jack Daniels looks gorgeous... and judging from the incredible mountain in the background (thanks for telling us it's Mt Bachelor), it seems like you might like your Jack Daniels on ice.   

Charlie Horse has that, 'Give me carrots... now,' look.

[Marie S]

Such beautiful horses 

[JeanneM]

Spotsmom...I'm coming to visit.    

[lea_owens]

More of my favourite shots.

This is me (this side) and my daughter on our two stallions - the same ones that are in my first photos. They've both won National Champion Quarter Horse Stallion buckles and Duffy (the taller one with my daughter) has also won National Champion Dressage and Nat.Champ. Hack a few times at the Quarter Horse Nationals. This is a shot of them warming up at the  2010 World Show Down Under.



And I love this one - our good friend Mel Cruden of Crazy Horse Designs is one of the leading horse photographers in Australia and also has one of the big western horse magazines, so she's always doing glamour shots of horses. She dropped in to see us one day, on her way to do a Warmblood shoot, and we were laughing at how muddy Mambo was (she usually only sees him done up for shows), so she grabbed her camera and had me stand him up as though she was doing cover shots, but he's totally covered in mud. His colour is Cremello so we jokingly call these photos the 'Mudalino' shots (he's the one I'm riding in the above photo, and you can see him 'done up for shows' in my first photos where he's won a garland - I love this horse!)



Some of the yearlings grazing - the two on the left are by the above stallion...




And a cute shot of my daughter's little mare

[phantomsmom]

I am a little late to the party; here are my ponies:

First is my 1982 gelding Hank who we lost in 2003...driving horse extraodinarewho also excelled in western and english as well...<br>
...and secondly, Phantom - a World Champion driving horse as well as an all-arounder  - my heart horse...<br>


Jeri in PA

[lea_owens]

Wow, they are absolutely gorgeous. Carriage driving is an amazing sport... just a spectator sport for me, though.

If any horse owners are interested in horse books, there's a new blogspot just started about horse books on Kindle   www. goodhorsebooks. blogspot. com  (without the spaces, of course). If you have written a book that involves horses, let me know so it can be added to the blog.

[Meb Bryant]

Thank you for posting all the photos of these lovely animals.  They bring back memories of my childhood when we had horses and ponies.

[jumbojohnny]

You have two things going for you here, fantastic horses and you take great piccys. These are superb, especially the one of the horse rearing up, brilliant.