A Little More Blanco

All gray horses start out dark and then go "white" as they get older. Blanco, one of the two horses who portrayed Shadowfax in the Lord of the Rings movies, looks like he may have had a blaze and four white socks when he was a baby. If you look closely at the photographs, the skin appears pink down the middle of his nose and above his hooves, but the rest of his skin is dark under the white hairs. It would be very interesting to see his baby pictures.

The woman with Blanco at Equine Affaire is Cynthia Royal, who, I guess, purchased Blanco when he went on sale in 2006. I did a Google(R) search and found reference to an asking price of $40,000. Not bad for an animal which some sites describe as an Andalusian/Thoroughbred cross rather than a purebred Andalusian.

Demero, the other horse which portrayed Shadowfax, died of melanoma in 2003. Many gray horses develop melanoma at an early age because their color gives them less protection against the sun, I think. Many times the tumors can be removed, but the owner of a gray has to be alert to the danger.

Cynthia Royal is planning to use Blanco in a Las Vegas show featuring at liberty horses. Here is a link to a video of her with Blanco. This falls into the "don't try this at home" category. Working barefoot with horses is a DUMB IDEA. One of my trainers lost her toe when she was a kid because her horse stepped on it while she was washing him/her down. So it's a better idea to wear proper shoes unless you want to have a rude awakening from your fantasy ride. I'd also add that you shouldn't be on a horse without a helmet (I wouldn't dream of it), but I understand that a helmet also gets in the way of a fantasy. Some people don't value their brain as much as I do.

A few years ago, a show called Cavalia came to L.A. It featured a lot of big gray horses, a lot of liberty work and it was just magical. I was lucky enough to get a back-stage tour with other people from Pierce College when Ron Weschler, the professor in charge of the equine program, made the arrangements. It was up close and personal with a lot of really well behaved and pampered stallions--virgins, said our tour guide. They don't travel with mares, which makes things easier. It's not a cheap evening, but I can't recommend it enough if it's in your neighborhood. Here's a link to Cavalia.

I'm most impressed with the fact that Blanco can be left standing by himself and he will stay. In a couple of the photographs below, you can see that he's not tethered. I probably wouldn't do this with my horse in a trafficked area, but Blanco handled it very well. I think they did a great job of desensitizing him on LOTR.

Celebrity Horses at Equine Affaire

I felt like I had a whirlwind visit to Equine Affaire in Pomona, California on Saturday. Usually, I go to do some shopping along with watching some of the clinicians. My time was really limited this year because I could only go one day and I had to get home in time to take care of the Arab prince and change to go to a concert.

But once I saw the schedule, I knew I couldn't leave the fairgrounds before 4 P.M., giving me the opportunity to see presentations of two of the "Celebrity Horses" present at the event. If they had celebrity horses in past years, I must have missed the notice. Or maybe they weren't from a couple of my favorite horse movies.

The notice that clearly caught my attention was that one of the horses who portrayed Shadowfax in the Lord of the Rings would be in attendance. I'm still not sure how he came to be owned by someone in the States when the LotR:TRotK extras video indicated that Blanco was in happy retirement in New Zealand, but there he was.

I decided against carrying my digital SLR because of the weight, but I almost always have my point and shoot Nikon S1 in my bag and that camera is not so good for shooting still photographs, but it isn't bad as a little video camera. So the first video above of the gray horse is Blanco as he's led back in to the exhibit hall to show off some of his tricks. He's a well-trained liberty horse, as the LotR video showed, and a really sweet Andalusian.

The second video, of the black horse, is TC Bey Cedar, the stallion who portrayed Al Hattal in Hidalgo. He's a stunning Arabian, a son of the famous Bey Shah, black except for a coronet ring of white on his back left foot. He's tall for an Arabian at 15-3, which, with his lovely personality, is how he got the gig for the film. He's got a gorgeous head, which I don't think you really see in the film (I watched it again on Saturday night) because it is somewhat obscured by his tack.

Both Blanco and TC Bey Cedar demonstrated rearing on cue. A way to teach this move was demonstrated by the trick training clinician. I'm not so sure it's a great idea to teach this trick to the average horse and TC Bey Cedar's trainer kept saying to people it is a trick best left to professionals. Rearing is somewhat less controlled than the airs above the ground moves of classical training. Personally, I'm happier when Ace keeps all four of his feet closer to the ground. I'm not even thrilled when he decides to do "the flamingo" where he bends one of his front legs and holds it up for quite a while when I'm sitting on his back. I usually wonder what it is he's trying to tell me is bothering him.

I must say I was disappointed I didn't run into Viggo Mortensen. It would have been cool if he dropped by to visit two of his equine co-stars. Cooler yet (well, nothing would be quite as cool as running into Viggo, I suppose) would be an appearance by T.J., the paint that played Hidalgo and whom Viggo now owns and keeps somewhere in nearby Topanga.

The other neat thing about this year's Equine Affaire was that the horse on exhibit at the Region 2 Arabian Horse Association booth turned out to be a close blood relation to my boy. I noticed the animal's name (I think it was All Flame) and immediately thought, hmm, sounds like it could be. Then I saw the pedigree--a Bask Flame son. Bask Flame is Ace's maternal grandfather. So the chestnut horse on display was Rocky's (Ace's dam, Flames Sirocco) half-brother (technically, a half-sib in the horse world comes from the same mother with a different sire, and different mothers mean a designation of "same sire," but I'm a human) and Ace's half-uncle and they did bear a familial resemblance. Ace has more chrome (white markings.) I did wonder whether Cody had inherited the hot Bask Flame personality that Rocky got or whether his dam had cooled him down. Since Cody's owned by a 12 year old girl, I'm guessing the latter. Cody's actually a few years younger than Ace.

I didn't do any shopping worth mentioning, unlike the years when I've come home with new riding pants or helmets or DVDs. I spent $5, on a 2007 Breyer Christmas ornament to give to a friend. Cheap date.