Sundance Equestrian Art-Horse training and Riding Instruction

07/18/2024

🌎🏇🏽🎠

Where entire breeds can go off track is when some one feature becomes so popular that breeders get so focused on that single piece to the neglect of the real deal basics such as soundness, temperament and general athletic ability.

Examples might include the way some Arabian breeders focus on a distorted looking dish face, some Quarter Horse breeders on extreme musculature, some race horse breeders on intense early speed, some Morgan breeders on a high knee action trot, some color breeders on specific color, any one piece of the whole that leaves other more important features neglected when decisions are being made about which stallions to breed to which mares.

Why does this happen? Probably because of ignorance about overall horsemanship that fails to take into account that horses should be sound, sane and athletic if they are to be useful to the average rider or driver.

But fads have a life of their own. One breeder produces it, some judge rewards it, and before you know it the aberration has become so popular that that’s where the money goes, and we all know the saying, “Follow the money.”

And once that starts it can so easily become a runaway train, and another breed is in trouble. And it started with some fad made popular through ignorance of basic horsemanship.

06/03/2024

So True🦄😎

05/18/2024

My Heroes 💕🌎🏇🏽

Golden Cloud made an early appearance as the mount of Maid Marian, played by Olivia de Havilland in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). A short while later, when Roy Rogers was preparing to make his first movie in a starring role, he was offered a choice of five rented "movie" horses to ride and chose Golden Cloud. Rogers bought him eventually in 1943 and renamed him Trigger for his quickness of both foot and mind. Trigger learned 150 trick cues and could walk 50 ft (15 m) on his hind legs (according to sources close to Rogers). They were said to have run out of places to cue Trigger. Trigger became such a ham that as soon as he heard applause, he would start bowing and ruin that trick. He could sit in a chair, sign his name "X" with a pencil, and lie down for a nap and cover himself with a blanket. Rogers' most carefully guarded trade secret was to get Trigger housebroken. "Spending as much time as he does in hotels, theaters, and hospitals, this ability comes in might handy and it's conceded by most trainers to be Trigger's greatest accomplishment." —Glenn Randall, wrangler with Hudkins Stables.

His horse was so important to Rogers that when he purchased a "Best Wishes for the New Year" advertisement in Variety, he signed it "Roy Rogers and Trigger". Trigger was ridden by Rogers in many of his motion pictures, becoming much loved by the youthful audience that saw him on film and in Rogers' 1950s television series with his wife, Dale Evans, who rode her trusty buckskin Quarter Horse, Buttermilk.

Trigger became the most famous horse in film entertainment, even having his own Dell comic book recounting his exploits.

Roy Rogers made many personal appearances with Trigger in tow. More than once, he escorted him up three or four flights of stairs at hospitals to visit with sick children, according to his autobiography Happy Trails.

04/18/2024

True 🎠💕🏇🏽

"A young rider was lunging a horse when an old rider came close. After having observed him, the old man asked the boy: And the boy answered Yes. So the old man closed his own hand into a fist and said to him: Then the boy used his strength in any way possible by pinching, hitting, pulling, pushing...but he just couldn't open the hand. So he finally asked the old man: