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To Hell with AP.

Scientists have traced the origin of the 'speed gene' in Thoroughbred racehorses back to a single British mare that lived in the United Kingdom around 300 years ago, according to findings published today in the scientific journal Nature Communications. The origin of the 'speed gene' (C type myostatin gene variant) was revealed by analysing DNA from hundreds of horses, including DNA extracted from the skeletal remains of 12 celebrated Thoroughbred stallions born between 1764 and 1930. "Changes in racing since the foundation of the Thoroughbred have shaped the distribution of 'speed gene' types over time and in different racing regions,"...

While you were preparing for Thanksgiving and President Obama was sparing the life of a couple of photo op turkeys, he also approved legislation that will result in the domestic slaughter of thousands of horses every year for human food. For the past half-decade the relatives of Flicka, Black Beauty and Seabiscuit have been spared the domestic livestock disassembly line -- the quick blow to the head, bleeding, eviscerating, slicing, grinding, packaging and cooking that comes with being edible around hungry Americans or shipped abroad as a delicacy for foreign palates.

Congress Reverses Domestic Horse Slaughter Ban Federal lawmakers last month quietly found a way to reverse a policy that has devastated the equine industry in recent years and advanced cruel and inhumane treatment of horses nationwide. In 2006 animal rights activists celebrated Congress’s actions to end funding for government inspections at U.S. facilities that slaughtered horses for meat to be exported to Europe and Asian countries. Emotionally driven advertising campaigns funded by national animal welfare groups helped impact public opinion and convince lawmakers that slaughtering and exporting horsemeat was cruel and should be ended. The benevolent move had unintended consequences,...

President Obama earlier this month quietly signed into law a spending bill that restores the American horse-slaughter industry, just a few months after a government investigation said the ban on slaughtering for human consumption was backfiring. The agriculture spending bill Mr. Obama signed the week before Thanksgiving did not include a ban on the inspection of horse meat — a backdoor prohibition that had, since 2006, effectively halted the U.S. horse-slaughter industry. In June the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s official investigative branch, released a report saying the ban had shut down U.S. slaughter, but that only depressed prices for horses...

In a bipartisan effort, the House of Representatives and the United States Senate approved the Conference Committee report on spending bill H2112, which among other things, funds the United States Department of Agriculture. On November 18th, as the country was celebrating Thanksgiving, President Obama signed a law, allowing Americans to kill and eat horses. Essentially, one turkey was pardoned in the presence of worldwide media while in the shadows, buried under pages of fiscal regulation, millions of horses were sentenced to death.

Long thought by many as possible abstract or symbolic expressions as opposed to representations of real animals, the famous paleolithic horse paintings found in caves such as Lascaux and Chauvet in France likely reflect what the prehistoric humans actually saw in their natural environment, suggests researchers who conducted a recent DNA study. To reach this conclusion, scientists constituting an international team of researchers in the UK, Germany, USA, Spain, Russia and Mexico genotyped and analyzed nine coat-color types in 31 pre-domestic (wild) horses dating as far back as 35,000 years ago from bone specimens in 15 different locations spread across...

NEW YORK -- What are the odds? On the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on Sunday, horses wearing the numbers 9, 1 and 1 won the first three races at Belmont. The New York City track served as one of the staging areas for workers and emergency vehicles in the days following the destruction of the World Trade Center. David Jacobson, the trainer at the stable that owns the first two winners, told the New York Post that the odds "were probably about a million to one." Actually, the pick three paid $18.60 for a $2 bet. Lottery...

n part one of 'South Pole Ponies - The Forgotten Story of Antarctica’s Meat-Eating Horses' posted yesterday we met Frederick George Jackson's favorite mare, Brownie, who ate polar bear meat and Socks who en route to the South Pole became the first known horse to consume meat together with a human, Shackleton, demonstrating that both species are omnivores. In this final part CuChullaine O'Reilly shares another piece of little known polar history. "In stark contrast to modern dogma," O'Reilly writes, "which insists that it was a race to the Pole that pitted British man-haulers against more competent Norwegian dog-sledders, there...

On July 10, at 6:39 ET, the BBC ran a story with a headline that stated, "Pony 'beaten' into Hampshire lake dies".I am sure millions around the world had the same reaction as I did when I first read the accounts as reported by the BBC. We really do owe a debt of gratitude to the nameless reporter who informed us of this heinous act. Well, that is what many must have thought as they read the story first thing Monday Morning before they headed off to work. Then again, what if the reporter was telling a tale that...

Dexter Hedrick swells with pride when he talks about the Wild Horse Program’s partnership with the United States Border Patrol. “To have done something to help protect my country is just such an honor to me,” said Hedrick, a manager for the Wild Horse Program at the Hutchinson Correctional Facility. On Friday, the U.S. Border Patrol adopted six mustangs from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Hutchinson. The horses were gathered from BLM-administered public lands and transported to the Hutchinson Correctional Facility, where inmates trained them as part of a special rehabilitation program. This is the first time...

Obama better pray that one of his devoted fans doesn’t shoot up an ATM tomorrow… But I digress. Let’s go straight to the horse’s mouth, shall we? Obama, yesterday: “A lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don’t go to a bank teller or you go to the airport and you’re using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.” Is the President of the United States trying to jump-start the buggy whip manufacturers? Wait a...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIo3ZfA9da0&feature=player_embedded

Remains of the oldest known Caspian horse, otherwise referred to as the "Kings' horse" due to its popularity among royals the world over, have been unearthed in northern Iran, according to CAIS. The more than 3,000-year-old remains were found at an Iranian site named Gohar-Tappeh. In ancient times, royals often chose Caspian horses to ride them into battle and/or to pull their chariots. During more recent history, individuals such as Price Philip of England have popularized the Caspian, which is the oldest breed of horse in the world still in existence. The Shah of Iran gifted such a horse to...

A pitiful, malnourished abandoned drug horse, used to move drugs across the Mexican border into Arizona, was so weak it kept trying to sit back on its hind legs because its front legs were too weak to hold it up, according to [the] NY TIMES. Brad Cowan, a 28 year livestock officer with the Arizona Department of Agriculture, and his partner had to carry it into a horse trailer. “I’d get angry when I’d see the condition these horses were in,” he said. Horrible sores from poorly fitting make shift saddles become infected, and their hooves get severely cut and...

At the Woodland Oaks Ranch in San Dimas, the welcoming committee is out. Hens and roosters, clucking and crowing in the morning light, are the first ambassadors, followed by Milo the Lab, Julia the Corgi and Sparkle the goat. Digger, a chestnut gelding, sticks his head out of a barn and watches as John Gorton steps out of a white Ford F-150 pickup and lifts the side panels and rear door of the shell, revealing racks of horse shoes and a clutter of tools. He pulls on chaps, hefts an anvil onto a knee-high table and fills a bucket with...

Two horses died after apparently being electrocuted in a mysterious incident minutes before the start of a hurdle race yesterday. Hundreds of spectators watched Fenix Two and Marching Song rear up and scream before ‘dropping like stones’ in the parade ring at Newbury racecourse in Berkshire. It is thought they suffered electric shocks from underground cables that may have been punctured during recent drilling to aerate the ground. There was disquiet that the race, the Novices’ Hurdle, which would have been Fenix Two’s first race, went ahead despite the tragedy, although the rest of the meeting was abandoned. Other horses...

In the Galilee region of Northern Israel, a tourist captured this video footage of three horses galloping down the road in the opposite lane in front of them. One of them had one on one meeting with a car. Here's the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxtStyuQJbo

I’d left Wyoming a few days earlier, I wound up in Bossier Parrish, Louisiana. I don’t know why, it just happened. It was ten PM and I was riding my Triumph down the “Strip” of Bossier City. The area that kept the uncivilized out of the “nicer” area of town. I spotted a diner that seemed to have a good crowd; it stood to reason, they might have decent food, so I pulled my bike in to the parking lot and walked in hoping for a decent meal. The reason it had such a big crowd was that it was...

He's been pictured shooting a whale, riding a Harley Davidson and flying a fighter jet. But Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin's latest photo opportunity shows his slightly more environmentally caring caring side. The former KGB man closed his eyes as he lowered his head to gently nuzzle the horse he had just been riding across the Siberian wilderness. Horsing around: Vladimir Putin cuddles his horse during an expedition to monitor the habitat of snow leopards Putin had been fighting the elements, again, as he trekked across the Siberian wilderness to check the endangered snow leopard's natural habitat. The route was...

Comments on articles about these horse shootings have been pro and con against the Twiss family. While no one thinks shooting horses is an answer, some have expressed their dislike of the Twiss family and their horse stable. Concerns of manure disposal and diseases were brought up. And yes, zoning issues too. The $5,000 reward for the horse shootings may bring some needed information to light. Meanwhile, you can't help wondering where the escalation of events will end. Nor can you help from wondering who wants the Twiss land or what's really behind the harassment and the change of ruling...

Amid continuing legal wrangling, Bureau of Land Management contractors on Monday began efforts to round up and adopt out an estimated 138 wild horses near Meeker. The agency’s action follows the filing of a lawsuit to challenge it last week by wild-horse advocates, and its recent decision to postpone until next summer plans to remove an entire horse herd west of Colorado Highway 139 and south of Rangely. The postponement resulted from the renewal of a legal challenge of that herd’s removal. Contractors used a helicopter Monday afternoon to begin what the BLM calls a “gather” of wild horses west...

FRANKLIN, Ind. — Soldiers at Camp Atterbury are getting some help staying in the saddle before they head to Afghanistan. Three instructors are helping train 60 soldiers and airmen at the Indiana military training site to ride horses before they head to Panjshir Province, where mountainous terrain makes it easier to travel by horse. The 189th Infantry Brigade at Atterbury is paying for the lessons. In addition to riding, the soldiers learn grooming, handling and how to put a saddle and bridle on a horse. "We're a security element, so we have to learn this stuff," Senior Airman Justin White...

A come-from-nowhere filly with a bum leg and one eye -- bought on a gamble by an out-of-luck trainer with his last $2,000 -- is stunning the racing world with her lightning speed and improbable winning streak... Her jockey, Racing Hall of Fame member Kent Desormeaux, said, "His late wife told him that she wanted to come back as a racehorse, and here she is, living vicariously through Lisa's Booby Trap.

The minis, along with 46 dogs, were surrendered by an owner who could no longer afford them.Earlier this week, a Texas horse owner has voluntarily surrendered a herd of 105 Miniature Horses to the Houston SPCA. The owner also gave up 46 dogs. She admitted she was not financially able to care for the massive number of animals she had bred, but was allowed to keep some of her animals with the SPCA monitoring their care. The owner cited the bad economy as the reason she was unable to care for her animals. However, local CBS affiliate KBTX reported that...

BELLEVUE, Iowa — Police confirm a 60-year-old woman has died from her injuries and 23 others were injured after two horses broke loose at a Fourth of July “Heritage Day Parade” in Bellevue and charged down the street for six blocks. Police in Bellevue say that a 60-year-old woman has died of injuries she sustained in the accident. Her name is not available at this time. Twenty-three people were injured, including at least two children who were in critical condition, police and hospital officials said. The horses took off after one rubbed its head against the other, removing that horse’s...

RENO, Nev.—Two men accused of shooting and killing five wild mustangs in Nevada last year have changed their pleas to guilty and now face up to a year in jail and $100,000 fine.

SNIPPET: "The attack took place at a hippodrome in the city of Nalchik, capital of Russia's North Caucasus region of Kabardino-Balkaria." SNIPPET: "A law enforcement source told the RIA Novosti news agency the explosive was a time bomb, equivalent to about 5 kg of TNT. The ministry officials said the attack was aimed at civilians and was designed to hit as many people as possible." Posted by Robert on May 1, 2010 5:21 PM

A TINY stallion just 35cm high is thought to be a record breaker as the world's smallest foal. Einstein, a pinto stallion, weighed in at just 2.7kg when he was born last week in the US. Breeder Judy Smith, of Tiz A Miniature Horse Farm, in Barnstead, New Hampshire, told Sky News she thought he was dead when she first saw him. "I have been at this for 20 years plus, but I have never seen one this tiny or even close to it. "At first he didn't move very much. We started rubbing him with a towel and he...

CHULA VISTA, Calif.—Manes and tails flying, a herd of horses galloped along paved streets of this San Diego suburb, through a parking lot, fields and an Olympic training center for up to two hours before a mustachioed cowboy herded them back to the ranch. Wild horses apparently led other horses to escape from a ranch east of town in Otay Mesa on Wednesday afternoon, Chula Vista police spokesman Bernard Gonzales said Thursday. "They had come down from the hills just above Chula Vista and they had intermingled with some other horses," Gonzales said. "I guess that the leader of that...

Revealed! 100-year-old memo from Department of Horses Posted: December 31, 2009 1:00 am Eastern By Franklin Raff Men are not always enslaved as a result of kidnapping, piracy or war. We often surrender our freedoms willingly, in the name of safety, and in increments we barely notice. Moreover, we become accustomed to the successive changes, degree by degree, over long periods of time, until we "suddenly" find ourselves living – or barely living – in conditions we might once have thought impossible. Exactly a century ago, when the horse was still our primary mode of short-distance transportation, the following memorandum...

To Louise Bowling, it was the fulfilment of a life-long dream. Having bought some land, surrounded by beautiful countryside, she now had space to rear her beloved horses. But. just a few months after purchasing the 1.1 acre plot, Mrs Bowling's dream is in tatters.

The government wants to deal with the booming number of wild horses crowding the Western range by sending the animals east. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar today unveiled his plan to control the rising environmental and monetary costs associated with wild horses and burros by moving tens of thousands of them onto new preserves in the Midwest and East. "We must consider citing these preserves in areas outside of Western States because water and forage are extremely limited in the West, and drought and wildfire threaten both rangeland and animal health," Salazar said in a letter today to Senate Majority Leader...

QUEENSLAND vet Alister Rodgers lost his battle with the lethal Hendra virus overnight, dying after two weeks in a coma. State Health Minister Paul Lucas today sent his deepest sympathies to Dr Rodgers' widow, Linda, and children Courtney and Duncan. “This is a terrible tragedy for his family and they are being supported by the staff of Princess Alexandra Hospital,” Mr Lucas told Parliament this morning. Dr Rodgers, of the Rockhampton Veterinary Clinic, was infected with the virus when he treated a sick filly - thought at the time to be suffering from snakebite - at the J4S stud in...

MIAMI (AP) -- Someone is killing the horses of Miami-Dade County. Since January, police say at least 17 horses have been butchered, their carcasses left on roadsides or in stalls or rural pastures.

The US Government is about to spend $700 million on wild horse contraception and management. Yes, really. Powerline and HotAir have hit on this already, but it’s worth beating this dead horse a bit more. A bill being put forward by Rep. Raul Grijalva D-Ariz. and Rep. Nick Rahall D-W.Va. named the Restore Our American Mustangs Act has wasteful spending opponents’ jaws dropping, and given the ridiculous amount of wasteful spending we’ve seen this year, that’s no small accomplishment. ...This whole discussion reminds me of my little sister obsessing over horses for three years, usually culminating with a tearful Christmas...

HORSE-drawn carts have been banned from one of Ireland's most famous national parks in an escalation of a long-running row about their refusal to use "nappies" to deal with the horse dung. The National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) said today it had "taken action to refuse entry to jaunting car operators'' to the Killarney national park in the south-west unless they have "the required dung catcher device''. Operated by so-called "jarveys'', some 66 traditional carts, known as jaunting cars, carry tourists along 15 kilometres of internal roads within the picture-postcard park. "An unfortunate consequence of such a high volume...

Generations ago, horses were used to wage war. Now they're being used to heal the psychic wounds of war. In an trend still viewed as strange by much of the mental-health mainstream, some Southern Arizona counselors are using the beasts as co-therapists to treat troops suffering from combat trauma. "When I first heard about it, I thought, 'Are they kidding?' " said Army National Guard Staff Sgt. Richard Quinn, who returned from Iraq in 2007 with a brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. But after a recent weekend spent communing with Kairos, a hulking black draft horse, Quinn is a...

9:52 AM CDT, June 11, 2009 LaPORTE, Ind. - A judge has rejected a man's guilty plea in the killing of a Belgian draft horse, saying the case should go to trial because the man deserves time behind bars.

BATESVILLE, Ark. (AP) - Sheriff's deputies said a man used horse tranquilizers to try to drift off into sleep at a Batesville motel. Deputies said the man was taken to the hospital around 6 p.m. Tuesday. Inside his room, deputies said they found syringes and three bottles of horse tranquilizers. Deputy Anthony Carter said the man told him he used the drugs as many as five times that day to help him go to sleep.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- An official at a Florida pharmacy said Thursday the business incorrectly prepared a supplement given to 21 polo horses that died over the weekend while preparing to play in a championship match. Jennifer Beckett of Franck's Pharmacy in Ocala, Fla., told The Associated Press in a statement that the business conducted an internal investigation that found "the strength of an ingredient in the medication was incorrect." The statement did not say what the ingredient was. Beckett, who's the pharmacy's chief operating officer, said the pharmacy is cooperating with an investigation by state authorities and the...

WELLINGTON, Fla. -- Investigators have opened a criminal probe into whether someone poisoned 21 polo horses that died during preparations for a match in the sport's top championship in Florida, officials said Tuesday. The horses from a Venezuelan-owned team began collapsing Sunday as they were unloaded from trailers at the International Polo Club Palm Beach, with some dying at the scene and others hours later at stables or clinics. State investigators believe the horses died from an adverse drug reaction, toxins in their food or supplements, or a combination of the two. While state veterinarians run tests to determine what...

MIAMI - Twenty-one horses from a Venezuelan team competing at the U.S. Open Polo Championship died after collapsing before a match in Florida, officials said on Monday. The International Polo Club of Palm Beach said the Lechuza Caracas team was preparing its horses for an afternoon match when two collapsed and others began "exhibiting dizziness and disorientation." "From the reports I've received, they came out of their trailers and they were dizzy ... and began toppling over," said Terence McElroy, spokesman for the Florida Department of Agriculture. "It's my understanding that all of these horses have died, 21 in total."

(CNN) -- Fourteen thoroughbred horses dropped dead in a mysterious scene Sunday before a polo match near West Palm Beach, Florida, officials said. State and local veterinary teams are trying to figure out what happened at the International Polo Club Palm Beach in Wellington, Florida, as team Lechuza Caracas prepared to compete in a U.S. Open match. Two horses initially collapsed, and as vets and team officials scrambled to revive them, five others became dizzy, said Tim O'Connor, spokesman for the polo club. "A total of seven died on our property," O'Connor told CNN. Seven other horses died en route...

ONDON, April 15 (Reuters) - A stem-cell repair technique that has already been used to fix hundreds of injured race horses is to be tested for the first time in people with damaged Achilles tendons. Privately owned British biotech firm MedCell Bioscience Ltd said on Wednesday it would start clinical tests within 12 months and planned to run a larger confirmatory study at several European hospitals in 2011. Patients will receive injections containing millions of their own stem cells, which have been extracted and multiplied up in a laboratory, and can regenerate new tissue to repair damaged regions.

I Want Revenge is a horse on a mission. The son of Stephen Got Even has traveled across the country to get a head start on his compatriots back home. While they remain in California, content to scamper along on the synthetic surface, oblivious to the test that awaits them on May 2, I Want Revenge is willing to find out right now, once and for all, whether he will get hit by a dirt bomb or take to the loam like a kid to a sandbox. If it turns out to be the latter and he can defeat a...

Horses were first tamed at least 5,500 years ago, by peoples who not only rode them but milked them as well. Archaeological research has shown that the domestication of horses began at least 1,000 years earlier than thought, among the Botai culture that thrived in what is now Kazakhstan between 3700BC and 3100BC. A British-led team of scientists has discovered three lines of evidence that point to an equestrian tradition among the Botai, who lived in a region where wild horses are known to have been abundant. The findings, published in the journal Science, also show that the animals were...

Wagon Teamster is struck in route By Charles Edwards, February 10, 2009 Dear friends of Daotah; I just received a phone call from an East Coast Wagon Teamster, named Lauren, who let me know that at 11:27AM this morning, Mr. Bob Skelding ( http://www.wagonteamster.com") was struck by tanker truck while traveling through Scooba, Mississippi this afternoon on Highway 45. I contacted the local hospital emergency room to find out how Bob is doing, but am waiting for a call back. Initial reports are grim, as I was informed that all two of his Percheron horses were killed in the...

A New Hampshire man, who told a Dispatch reporter last week he was on a “journey of a lifetime” that brought him through nine states, dozens of towns and more than 1,700 miles, was in a wreck on Highway 45 today that demolished his horse-drawn recreational vehicle and killed two of his four horses. The wreck happened on Highway 45 South near Shuqualak on the Kemper-Noxubee county line. Bob Skelding, 49, was driving his team of horses on a stretch of roadway that had little or no shoulder. Two 18-wheelers traveling side-by-side crested a hill, and one of the trucks...

Chances are you've seen a blind person accompanied by a guide dog. But what about a guide horse, a service parrot or a monkey trained to help an agoraphobic? These are just a few of the nontraditional service animals that are used across the country to help people with disabilities and psychological disorders. As their uses are expanding, however, the government is considering a proposal that would limit the definition of "service animal" to "a dog or other common domestic animal."