Hooves and horses

Today, Sunday, Colin and I drove two and half hours west to a tiny dot on the map of Australia to a property called Jondaryan Woolshed. I had found out that there was to be a "Working Draught Horse Expo" to be held over the long weekend and my camera finger was decidedly itchy!

I was not disappointed. There were more horses and handlers at Jondaryan than there were spectators so I had a ball - I padded out into the ploughed field to take pictures of the pairs ploughing.

I talked to the owners of the horses and learned all about the training of the plough horses and was told all about horses that would work well together and young horses that have to be taught how to react to the reins. Everyone was just so willing to talk to me about their beloved hobby.

When we arrived we watched a horse breaker working with a young horse and later I found that same horse waiting with its young owner and again struck up a conversation and learned lots about the reasons why this horse had been chosen for the horse breaker to demonstrate his skills. This is a lovely looking horse and the young couple who own him were eager to tell me all about him and about the things they were learning from this weekend spent with other people with heavy horses.

I took quite a lot of photos and again if you would like to see them, click on this link

http://picasaweb.google.com/joanren/Horses?feat=directlink

Click on Slideshow.

Press F11 so that the menu bars all disappear and when the first image comes up click on the PAUSE button. Progress through the photos using the arrow pad, allowing time for the photos to load.

When you are finished or have had enough (there are a lot of photos!) press "Esc" and also press F11 once more to bring back the menu bar.

AJ