My German horse magazine

I am sometimes in culture shock when I read my German horsie magazine. (This is an example of a new way of horses to pull tourists around. Note the easyboots on the horse on the right.)


There was that time they had the two-page spread of a horse penis with a woman's manicured hand holding it (an educational article, nothing weird). And then the picture of the month being a horse peeing. Germans are totally at ease about bodies and their functions. I'm learning that.

But some of the stuff I want to report in this blog and I assure you the editors of the my magazine do less research than I, so they'll never find out I'm reporting back to America. I admit I chose a very simple magazine, one that translates to "Freetime Rider."


Here are some oddities I found the last couple months of reading "Freetime Rider." They are a whole 'nother realm from what I've seen in my lesson stable.

1.) Western is huge. At first I found that odd this being Germany.  I wonder what they pay for chinks here, cuz they are the ultimate.(Sorry I did not capture chinks in the pic.)

2. ) Horse Whispering is huge. Monty Roberts is the man.  His be-nice halters appear in all my catalogs. 

3.) This photo shows an ad for horses coughing in Wintertime. What they are selling has nothing to do with beer so I have no idea. Maybe it's part of German culture that beer helps with colds.

The coughing cure they covered included a recipe for the cough-cure that included a cup of molasses - is that....per day? I hope if German horses have coughing issues, sugar sensitivity is not a problem.

4.) I love this one, Offenstall is becoming huge. Offenstall, or Laufstall, or Aktivstall, is a way of keeping horses that meets their physical and emotional needs. What we call "Paddock Paradise" - where they got the idea. Made in the USA. Natural horsekeeping. They tell how to separate food, water, salt, a rolling spot, shelter, and a hay station. And how to build slow-feeders and track systems for the summer.

These progressive systems normally include a microchip that lets horses into computer-operated grain feeding chutes that allow a horse its grain meal in several portions per day without hassle from other horses. Horses must learn to use this and not be pressured by others, which I hear could be a problem.

I used to think that great technology came from Europe. Now I appreciate German cars and guarantee systems. I am now aware tht American technology/ideas affects German horse culture more than any other. I am barely keeping up with it, and I hope to learn more. I have a very limited view, but slowly it's expanding.

Here is a 200Euro tool that we use every day, it is mechanized to help you. It vibrates to shake the bedding through (won't work with straw, what most people in Europe use), and alleviates the need to shake the manure fork yourself. I think this can either be a help, or a health hazard when you do 10 stalls a day.

This is a daily package of your horse's mash(?). Smartpak? It says "Heat up the water at your office or home and it will be ready after your ride." It makes it easier to mix your daily mash because it comes in pre-determined package sizes, a single serving size. I think it would save the time of scooping the mash ingredients into the bucket. Bravo Marstall, you win marketing points with me (but I can scoop out of a 25 kilo bag myself, and even when I boarded and lived in Ballard, Seattle, I had a little Tupperware of beet pulp under my bed). Maybe if people don't have Tupperware??

The magazine always has a breed feature and this month it was the Toeltende Traber - the gaited American Standardbred. I was annoyed at first that they could get this mixed up - IMO Standies are trotters or pacers but not gaited. Well, I was wrong. The Germans have used the American Standardbred to create a breed that racks and slow gaits and all that (what I know nothing about, I admit). I watched the videos and realized that the gaited breeds descend from the American Standardbred, so why not develop a German variant..uhhh...but why do they call them, "Gaited Trotters"? I am still confused about that. Standies are called "Trotters" here, the harness racing horse we know. But if they're gaited, they don't trot, or at least they are not advertised as such, because they're gifted with more than that.Gaited horse people please enlighten me. (It irritates me that the photo shows a horse trotting, because I know that they can to much more than that now. It must have been a budget constraint that they not actually photograph the gaited "trotters".And it stands to reason that Standardbreds contribute to the gaits, this breed was the core of the American gaited horses.

I love that German magazines are showing them as "The BIG alternative to Icelandics" (that is the title above the trotting horse in the image.) Yah, Standardbreds are big. I'm actually looking for a small one for my husband, in brown, small, so if you know of one in the Cologne area....