Global Horse Culture

Freio de Ouro 2010

The Freio de Ouro (Golden Bit) is a huge annual competition for the Crioulo breed in Brazil. Competitors and breeders from throughout southern Latin America come together in Esteio, a city in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, for a best of breed competition and associated auctions and expositions. The Crioulo is the main breed found in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, and is also bred in Argentina, Uruguay and Chile (in those Spanish-speaking countries it is called the Criollo). Argentina and Uruguay in particular share a strong horse culture and breed bloodlines with Rio Grande do Sul.

New film explores Escaramuza

A new film, currently in production, takes an inside look at the world of Escaramuza. Escaramuza means "skirmish", and the riding combines an unsettling blend of pretty girls in fancy clothes riding sidesaddle with fast-paced, heart-pounding drill team maneuvers. It is really a unique tradition!

I spoke to filmmaker Robin Rosenthal about the making of the film - read on below to see what she had to say about how she got into the world of Escaramuza and some of the challenges she and her husband faced in making the film.

Escaramuza: Riding From the Heart is looking for financial support to complete the editing and marketing of the documentary. The deadline for pledging your support is July 16th! Even small amounts are helpful. You can view the trailer and find out more about pledging to help support the completion of this unique documentary by using the widget below:

More Thai Cowboys

I posted a while back about cowboys in Thailand. Here's a little video showing some scenes from the area. Very cute!

May we all still be riding at 100!

This is the trailer for a charming documentary about cowgirls. You have to love the great attitude and life experience of these ladies - one cowgirl featured in the trailer is over 100 years old and still riding!

There's more about the film, including photos, comments from readers, and stories about more cowgirls, at the filmmaker's blog.

Virtual horse shows: no travel, low cost, but with real judges and prizes!

Rod Miller was raised with horses. He's worked with Reiners for nearly 20 years, including spending 6 years as a judge at competitions all over the US.

Judging opened his eyes to something he hadn't really noticed before. "I found that each year when I went back somewhere to judge many of the beginners from the years before were not there. I started to think about why and didn't like the answers I was getting, for example: 'It was to expensive,' 'I can't compete against people who can pay the best trainers, and buy the best horses,' and 'my horse isn't good enough for the new level I have to show at and I can't afford a new horse.'"  When he talked to people who were successful in the sport about the problem, they shrugged. "It's an expensive game," they said. "Not everyone can afford it."

Rod started thinking about a way to solve that problem, and came up with the idea of a Performance Horse Development program. The program would focus on the process of training that leads to a  competitive Reining horse, but would award the process along the way. As a standard, he defined what it means for a horse to be really "broke." A "broke" horse, by PHD definition, will "wait for its rider's cue, then willingly accept and follow that cue." Simple, no?

Liberty Work

Here's a neat example of liberty work, in this case performed by Rex Peterson and one of his horses, Tuff, who is used in a lot of movies. Rex uses whips to cue the horse, because on film sets he often needs to be at some distance from the horse, out of sight of the cameras. Tuff, and other movie horses, are trained in particular to go to and stand on certain "marks" (in this case a raised box, but it can be something small on the ground, too), and then go from one mark to another, or from the mark to the trainer. In a movie that would make it look like the horse was standing somewhere by himself and then came running towards the camera. Or, if the actor cannot ride well, the same technique can be used to make it look like the rider is galloping down the road under control of the rider, when in fact the trainer called the horse to come to him and the actor just hangs on and smiles!

You can read more about Rex's work training movie horses at this site. He's recently come out with some trick training videos, which yours truly was involved in producing.

More Thai Cowboys

I posted a while ago about cowboys in Thailand. Chrisada on flickr has some photos from a ranch in that region. Here's one, and there are some others on Chrisada's photostream.

Old Cowboy Pictures

I borrowed this book, Cowboys: Images of the Old West: Book of 30 Postcards, from a friend - it's quite nice. Each page is a postcard that can be torn out and mailed, although who would want to tear up such a neat little book! It's small and affordable, so it makes a great gift. Each page is a photo or reproduction of an old poster, with a brief description of the subject on the back. Some of the featured people were cowboys famous from the movies or rodeo circuit, others are unknown guys working on ranches in the Old West. It's an interesting little book.

Vaqueiros...no, not vaqueros!

In the northeastern part of Brazil, encompassing several states, is a harsh, dry, poor area generally called the Northeast (Nordeste). There is a specific cowboy culture there, distinctive and unique, and completely different from the gaucho cowboy culture of southern Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. In the northeast, the cowboys are called vaqueiros - a Portuguese derivation of the Spanish word vaquero (from the Spanish word "vaca," meaning "cow"). The land has large areas of scrubby, thorny vegetation, called Caatinga, which has affected some details of the vaquiero style.

They are known for their distinctive style of leather clothing, necessary for riding in the thorny scrub. Pants, chest-protectors, jackets with very long sleeves, and special hand guards are worn, and horses sometimes wear chest-covering breast-plates, too. The hats and jackets are often decorated with intricate cutwork and stitching, as you can see a bit in this photo by Alexandre Severo (see more photos like this on Alexandre's flickr stream):

The vaqueiros are known for being proud and tough, and their horse-handling methods are said to be in the same vein. In this picture and this one, you can see the cavesson that is used in addition to the curb rein. It is usually made of metal, and sometimes serrated to make a rough edge against the top of the horse's nose. I heard about a good horseman in the São Paulo area (about whom I will post more later), who is making some efforts to offer workshops in the remote Northeast to educate the vaqueiros about gentler methods of horse training and riding. He said they tend to roll their eyes at the idea of something so "gay" as gentle horsemanship, but some are starting to listen.

Because of the heavy underbrush the vaqueiros work in, they do not use lassoes to catch cows, but have developed a method of running them down and grabbing them by the tail. This is not done just for work, but also as a sport, as can be seen in these action photos taken by Hugo Macedo. A variant of this type of cow catching has evolved into an arena sport, held at local rodeos, in which two riders gallop alongside a cow, one of them keeping the cow in a straight line, the other grabbing its tail and flipping it over onto its back before reaching the finish line. Tough sports from a tough part of the world.

Here is another flickr set that includes this super photo of a vaqueiro dressed up in finer tack and apparel - for a festival or parade, perhaps. This horse has the leather chest protector I mentioned. The photo set has other great photos showing tack, apparel and horses.

The horse of the vaqueiro is the Nordestino. Often gaited, having incredible stamina and resistance to heat and thirst. There used to be a breed organization, but last I heard it has become defunct, so the breed is not registered or regulated in any way. Here is a sweet-faced gray one.

Feria de Mataderos

Martina V. gets two posts today, because her photo set showing the Argentine festival "Feria de Mataderos" in Buenos Aires is super. She does excellent photography, and in this set you get to see lots of very ornate tack on horses and ponies, and some gauchos playing the stick-in-a-ring game that is found throughout Latin America. (Typically a tiny ring is hung on a cord, and you have to gallop under it on your horse while snagging the ring with a small stick about the size of a pencil.)

Anyway, enjoy more photos of horses!