As I’ve mentioned before one of my favorite parts of the Vermont 100 is watching the horses. The owners take such good care of their animals, at the Tracer Brook Aid station they stop to let the horses cool off in the stream. Here’s a little photo story I put together.

Sometimes it takes the horse a little while to want to enter the water.

Water is pretty cool on the feet after the hot ground.

But it tastes so good. It’s a genuine Vermont Spring.

This bay looks like it’s sticking out it’s tongue to the crowd.

The riders have sponges attached to a rope that they lower to soak the horse and cool it down.

But this guy had his own idea about splashing to cool things down.

The riders try to push the horses into a deeper pool.

Not so bad eh buddy?

It actually looks quite refreshing.

Next time I’m feeling overheated I’ll just remember how relaxed the horses looked in that chilly stream.

Last weekend we traveled to Vermont so Adam could run the Vermont 100. As did last year I blogged about the horse race run at the same time on the same course on my FillyRunner blog.

I wanted to share some of the pictures I took of these amazing animals that were more portrait like.

This fellow just came back up from a soak in the stream. He was still a very stunning dark bay.

This is my favorite picture from the day, I just love this horse’s bridle.

This was actually part of a series of three pictures I took. In all three a different horse has it’s head turned. I think they were looking for treats.

It took the rider a bit to convince her horse that it should go into the stream. But once he was in, he didn’t want to leave the stream. He actually kept pawing the water.

I loved how each horse had it’s own hair style. Some had manes cropped short. Others had braids. And others just had long flowing manes.

Arabians have such beautiful little heads, and some have such a beautiful metallic sheen.

Most of the horses were grays and bays. I did see a stunning blue roan pinto arabian on the first day, but I didn’t get a picture of it. I never saw it on the course.

Despite fewer horses, I still loved looking at each and every one. I guess there’s still a little horse obsessed girl in me. If only I had the time and money to make owning one possible.

My neighbour has a few dozen horses. Many of them are beautiful Percheron draft horses that actually get used to pull sleigh rides, hay rides and to plow fields.

From our yard we can only see one of his fields and our puppy Cooper finds them fascinating. A few weeks ago a mare and her foal were in the front pasture when we were leaving for a walk. I happened to have my camera with me and a new lens, so I snapped a couple pictures. Cooper sat down as the foal started walking towards us.

Mom of course wouldn’t let her baby head towards a strange dog without protection. So she started walking towards us too.

She came right up to the fence to say hello.

What a beautiful animal.

After a quick pet from me (Cooper did an excellent sit-stay while waiting) she realised that I wasn’t going to feed her. So she headed back up the hill.

The foal wanted to investigate us more, but wasn’t going to risk mom’s wrath.

He’ll be a nice solid horse someday too. But right now he’s all legs.

Right now the pasture contains three gorgeous mares who occasionally take to sprinting around for the fun of it.  Not a bad view in my opinion.

The horses run their own event during the run: The Vermont 100 and Moonlight 50/75 endurace ride. I guess the original 100 mile runner started on horseback. For the second year in a row his horse had come up lame the day of the one day event. Rather than miss the race he decided to run it. The horse event had a 24 hour time limit, a requirement to earn the silver belt buckle. The runner Gordon Ainsleigh, ran the rugged Sierra Nevada course and earned that buckle. A tradition was born. There are now 25 ultramathons of 100 miles or more, but I think the Vermont 100 is the only one that continues to combine horses and runners.

Most of the horses were Arabians or Arabian mixes. This lead to amazing horses with beautifully refined heads. I mean arabians are known for having large intelligent eyes and some of the most chisled heads in horsedom.

And they are fast, and they have endurance. This is the first horse to make it through the Pretty House handler aid station. The winning horses finish in just over 12 hours. That includes several mandatory holds. Fast, with stamina, smart, loyal, as well as gorgeous I can see why Arabians were so cherished.

As a kid I usually got stuck with the Arabians in riding class. I was a giant as a kid, I wanted to ride the biggest horse. Instead I got put on the beautiful but moody Arabian that needed a strong rider. I think they were usually just so smart that they were fed up of dealing with kids that didn’t know what they were doing.

Looking back I wish I had taken advantage of riding a horse that needed a good rider. I just wanted to be on a 16 hander instead of the barely 14.2 arabian.

I did however love a gray horse when I was a kid. I didn’t care that every bit of mud showed.

So many of the horses were grays. I guess grays are common in long distance arabians or something but we did occasionally see stunning bays, chestnuts and blacks.

Of course the riders look like they are having a blast too. Although all the jarring must become very tiring after a while. Did I mention that the riders can change out but the horse must remain the same.  This drew some comparisons in our conversations to the riders being more like the pacer, with the main athlete being the horse. But the riders are quite the athletes too.

My husband tells me that the combined event is enjoyed by both the horsepeople and the runners. Well a lot of the horsepeople didn’t seem to be bothered by our constant photography of them (aka their horses, I doubt they realize how many of their heads I chopped off trying to get the perfect shot of an amazing arabian facial structure.)

See you would think I could care less about the rider. But with a horse that pretty how could I notice there was someone on the back.

I think all the spectators stood in awe every time a horse would come through.

Some of the horses almost seem to find the event relaxing… or I just caught him as he was blinking. Someone asked a horse trainer if the horses enjoy doing this.  The trainer responded that if the horses didn’t enjoy it the event would kill them. They need to enjoy it to have the heart to keep going.

Some of the riders were obviously out there for the ride and not the race, so they took their time to cool off their horses in a brook.

As a spectator (who loves photography), I have to say that the horses definately add an enjoyable aspect to the race. As for the runners, I wonder if the horse errosion of the trail and occasional poop causes additional challenges. But Adam didn’t seem to mind.