Great Grays

Milton
Horse & Hound recently ran Milton: 12 fascinating facts about our hero. Check out the first picture. That’s how horse should use his shoulders over a fence. Found courtesy of the Facebook page for Equestrian Legends – Book

My favorite Milton quote from his biography:

Sometimes I get so carried away on Milton I ask him to do something that is almost impossible, but he’s so good he manages it. Then I try it on another horse and I find myself upside down. Milton by Gail Newsum [Kenilworth 1991], p47.

Gem Twist
My brush with greatness was down in Florida. Wandering the barn aisles at a Tampa show, I saw a gray horse standing toward the back of his stall. A nice enough Thoroughbred but nothing remarkable. He looked tired and a little grumpy. He could have been some kid’s 3′ hunter recovering from long day of outside-diagonal-outside-diagonal courses. Then I spotted the nameplate.

Local Hero
I was tailgating at a steeplechase with a friend who owned a gray. In her honor, my friend bet on any gray in a given race. The grays he backed didn’t always win, but they always finished ahead of whichever horses the rest of us chose. By betting color, he won every race in our betting pool.