Here you go: photos of white horses with their trainers or riders. I'm posting them in the smallest size, but if you click on a picture you will see the usual enlargement.
Can you distinguish the Percheron horses from the others? Percherons are the special breed raised in the Perche, an old French province in lower Normandy. They're draft horses.
1,3 and 7 are Percherons. I assume the others are Lippizaners? It's interesting that in the Perche and Normandy grey (which go dappled, then white with age) Percherons are the favoured colour, black is favoured in Belgium and the UK (used a lot for horse drawn hearses) and here in the Touraine they are almost always chestnut with pale mane and tail. I'd love to get one to graze the orchard, but it's sadly not practical for other reasons. I believe they also make nice saddle horses.
ReplyDeleteFor interested parties, here is a link in French:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.haras-nationaux.fr/les-haras-en-region/rechercher-un-haras-national.html
Thanks for the lovely horse pics.
ReplyDeleteThe percherons look superb. Never ridden one but in Limburg they had a [at risk] breed of heavy horse 'Limburgse trekpaard' which I was lucky enough to have had a ride on. It was like sitting in your favorite armchair. They are a beautiful strawberry dapple with light manes and very sweet tempered. In Suffolk we lived close the the Suffolk Punch 'haras'. Another lovely breed of at risk heavy horses.
Love this post then as I love horses perhaps that is not surprising. The Percherons are much heavy breed altogether but the ones I have handled have had the kindest of temperaments. Thanks for sharing these love,y photos. Diane
ReplyDeleteI noticed that some of them have darker manes and tails. Is that how one tells?
ReplyDeleteI had no idea Percherons were french, although their name certainly sounds french now that you have brought this to my attention.
ReplyDeleteWhen I lived in a Milwaukee, Wisconsin suburb, the Percherons were always used to pull many of the vintage Circus wagons in the famous annual Circus Parade. If I'm not mistaken, one of the largest was billed as a 16-horse hitch. Beautiful animals.
Mary in Oregon