Marion, who also competes in womens roping, has been raising quarter-horses and paints for the past six years and has been showing horses for over 20 years. Her suggestion for anyone starting out in the horse ring is to find a breeder or trainer with good horse sense and a horse thats good and gentle. One thing you probably would not expect to see at a horse show is a mule, but there she was. She said in training a horse to saddle, its best to take a lot of time and patience, and lunge the...

You have to evaluate what the horse has done and what he can do whether he is tracking properly. His daughters had riding horses, and he had learned to love them when he was growing up. If the owner s horse wins, he gets 60 percent of the claiming price, plus the purse, and can even reclaim the horse later if it shows promise. Skip Cheesman loves horses, but he lets a jockey do the riding. When they re not racing, they are looking for horses to buy and races to run. Cheesman said he buys...

He confirmed, however, Plough's reputation as a major fan of horse racing and betting and said Plough often visited tracks in the region during the decades when they were friends. Kanter, who described himself as a longtime friend of Plough's before the firing in March, said he doubted that the judge did any betting through the county computer. That allowed dozens of visits to gaming and gambling Web sites and services that updated information about horse racing. The head of Thistledown...

Concerns about the impacts of gambling prompted two South Okanagan elected officials to oppose an equine horse racing facility in Osoyoos Thursday. Osoyoos has also received widespread support for the facility from the central and north Okanagan regional districts and the Southern Interior Local Government Association (formerly the Okanagan Mainline Municipal Association), where Premier Gordon Campbell agreed to wear a pin stating his support for the facility. Osoyoos has also received...

The club moved the competition to Tampa about 15 years ago because a suitable space for running and jumping horses is hard to come by anymore in Pinellas. The competitors range in age from 2 to 75, and riders compete in the explicit style of show hunters and jumpers. Horse lovers bring their riding skills to compete in Tampa. She shovels stalls, rides for an hour and a half three times a week, and feeds Honey pellets and grain and carrots. She's been on horses since she wore diapers. And...