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[RC] 100 mile horse characteristics - rides2farwhat would you say about the horse, which at > some point in his career, made you say - this horse is a hundred > miler. His motivation was endless. I'd always wanted to do a 100 myself, but hated to think of doing it to a horse...didn't want the horse to hate me. Kaboot wanted to leave with every horse that left camp, even after he finished the 50 if there was a 100 going on. Once I gave too many probiotics and gave him a gassy colic at the 80 mile mark of a 100. He lay down and got up a couple of times and I walked him, but the vets didn't recommend any treatment. It passed after an hour or so and he ran circles on the picket line every time another 100 went through camp. I never had to *squeeze* to keep him moving on down the trail even on his first 50. He was always in a hurry to get somewhere, and he had no clue where or how far it was. Or, is it more of the any horse can do a hundred miles with proper training and a smart rider? My first Arab was a 7mph horse...not especially motivated, a bit of a dead head after the first 12 miles. If you didn't squeeze him forward he eventually just started sort of trotting up and down instead of forward. I sold him to a junior after 500 miles and she did another 600 or so on him and then did a 100 at Biltmore which he finished just fine. He's not a horse I'd have enjoyed doing a 100 on, but he didn't seem to have any trouble doing it. I am willing to bet that there are a few characteristics that are common to most 100 mile horses, that show up early in a career, that make aiming for a hundred mile ride within the grasp of it's rider. ] I only have experience with these two 100 milers, but as far as Kaboot goes, he was not as Cindy likes to have especially easy to rate at the start of a ride. He was a handful, but though he was doing his imitation of a runaway I don't think his brain was ever fried. He could always eat. In one of his last 100's he was flying along on the first loop and grabbed some tall grass as banked into a turn. He was never going fast because he was scared, he was just mad that other horses were getting to go faster than him. Not that many really good 100 mile horses are especially thin...though Vali HiFayzena, (one of the best) was. For the most part they seem to be a little heavier bodied and have room to carry some groceries along. Right now I'm in the market for a 100 mile horse (maybe 2 since Josie & I may get in a custody dispute over just one) and I'm trying to figure out what to look for in a 100 mile horse. So when doing the webcast I really looked analytically at the horses at Biltmore. If you haven't looked at the photo gallery from the Biltmore Webcast go back and look. I tried hard to get ya'll good conformation shots of the biggest dogs. I'll tell ya, Super is a very middle of the road guy...nothing to the extreme. Val's horse Shadon, and her backup "Iron Man" seemed to be more like Pierez than the tall Bearcat O'Reilly types I thought she was going to. Wave is substantial but not extreme. Timmy the same. Seems like Rita's horse was a tall one more like Bearcat. I'm short. I'll take Super. I have come to love the look of a well turned neck...not a show horse neck but the neck of a horse who has been taught dressage, (look at the photo of Dinah Rojek's horse). For a while right after the Pan Ams Melissa Crain sent Charbiel (silver medal winner) to live with us and Josie saw what it was like to ride a horse that was light and carried himself well. Melissa is a very good rider and you could tell it by the way Charbiel carried himself. I want to put that neck on our next horse. I look at Kaboot and I'm not sure he could have had that neck. The chiro showed me that he has big glands on either side of his neck that are sort of tight and he's restricted when he bends there which might explain why he's so violently opposed to a bit with leverage. I'd take another Kaboot, but I'm really looking for a horse with the ability to bring that nose in. So, we're shopping...and then we want to take dressage, and it may be 2 or 3 years before we get any 100's so I won't be able to tell ya'll how this works out for awhile. But having only done 2 LD's I have no idea what they might be. Well, Melissa said she picked Charbiel because she liked the way he threw his feed tub in the air. I think a lot of us ended up with the horses we ended up with for reasons no better than that. Angie ________________________________________________________________ The best thing to hit the Internet in years - Juno SpeedBand! Surf the Web up to FIVE TIMES FASTER! 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