Finland’s Hobby Horse Championships

400 contestants at a sports arena in Finland show jumped, barrel raced and pranced in a dressage competition. They just didn’t do it with live horses. The highlight the event came as Marie Karkkainen of Finland scored the country’s new hobby-horse high jumping record, leaping over a bar set at 1.41 meters (4 feet, 7…

Virginia Tech Graduate Takes Love for Horses Around the Globe

Hanna Bartnick loves horses and adventure — and she got to combine the two in her academic career and beyond at Virginia Tech. To get to graduation, Bartnick took a winding, grinding journey where she worked hard and got her fill of adventure along the way, traveling across continents on horseback. The journey is encapsulated…

Obesity Epidemic in Horse and Ponies

The ongoing problem of obesity in equines is not a recent one, but the increase in affected horses and ponies, mostly found in the leisure industry in some industrialized countries, had now become a globally recognized welfare concern. Should show judges shoulder some of the blame?