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Thursday, May 17, 2018

Lusitano Horse part 2/2 Standard and characteristics of Lusitano

Standard and characteristics of Lusitano
This week I’m bringing you an article where I summarize all the characteristics of the Lusitano horse.

This is a medium sized horse, with rounded shapes, that has a silhouette inscribable in a square. The breed average is 155cm in females and 160cm in males. This height is measured at the withers with the hipometer when the horse is 6 years old, age of the majority.
The most frequent coatings are grey and bay, and can exist in any other color except piebard.
The temperament of Lusitano is noble, generous and fervent, but always docile, suffering and victorious. It is a horse that gives everything he has for his rider, always wanting to show that he is the best at what he is doing.

It has a quality of movements envied by any other race. Having naturally agile and high movements, projecting each step forward smoothly and very comfortably for the rider.

Due to his wonderful temperament the Lusitano horse has natural aptitude for concentration and reunion exercises like those demonstrated in numerous high school shows. It also has an overwhelming courage and a unique enthusiasm in the ginete exercises, like, hunting, bullfighting or cattle management.
Related to the morphological characteristics, and beginning with the head, it is well proportioned, of medium length, thin and dry. The face is relatively long and in profile there is a slight convexity (called a carved chamfer). His eyes are big and alive, looking at us expressively and confidently. The ears are medium length, thin, and immensely expressive.

The Lusitano possesses a medium-length neck, closely bonded to the head, broad and powerful at its base, well inserted into the shoulders showing power.

The withers is prominent and extensive, in a smooth transition between the back and the neck, always slightly higher than the rump.

The shoulder of the Lusitano horse is long, oblique and well-muscled, like the breasts.

The back of the lusitano horse is well directed, tending towards the horizontal, serving as a smooth union line between the withers and the croup, which is short, broad, muscular, slightly convex, well connected to the rump. The whole set of the back, croup and rump form a continuous, round and perfectly harmonious line of beauty and unique elegance.
The rump is always strong and rounded, well proportioned, slightly oblique, of equal length to width, with a convex profile, harmonic, and slightly revealing hips, giving the croup and the Lusitano an enviable elegance and beauty, along with the evidence of a power and force controlled by the temperament of the Lusitano.
The tail follows the curvature of the rump, with silky, long, shiny, and abundant mane.
To conclude, the muscular, dry and wide limbs, possessing the necessary support for a well of power and strength, with about 500kg of abundant muscle.


Thursday, May 10, 2018

Lusitanos, Bullfights and Selection


Lusitanos, Bullfights and Selection
This week I’m going to continue my dissertation about our dear Lusitano. This time, I’m talking about a subject that’s kind of a taboo in our society these days... "Bullfights", hated by some, loved by many, are subject to criticism and praise, debates and discussions, rivalries and passions. But what leads me to write about bullfighting is not the controversy it causes, but the passion I have for our beautiful Lusitano horse.
All the characteristics, morphological and of personality, described in the previous article result from a secular selection. Horses of the Kings, Lusitanos could only be noble horses. Selected for war and fighting, they could only be brave and suffering horses. Portuguese horses, they could only be victorious.
The current Lusitanian for having an "easy command" allows the bullfighter to perform his functions as a rider based on the three main rules of a fight, Parar, Templar e Mandar, concepts that would only be associated with bullfighting on foot if there were not such an antique selection of our horse.
The Lusitano is able to insert himself with ease in the performance of several elements of “high school”, exercises of high difficulty, with a very light contact on the hand. We’re talking about exercises such as, isolated or tempie flying changes, pirouettes at one time, passage, piaffer, half-passes, and all that inserted in a circumference of short diameter. All this comes from a very important feature that I have not yet mentioned, the EQUILIBRIUM.
Bullfighting has, as the most truthful moment, the “frontal luck” and the lusitano horse can do it in an exemplary way, with the inclusion of the bases of the bullfighting: Parar, which means, fundamentally, to stop, wait and give primacy to the opponent's attack; Templar, which consists in imparting a sense of slowness, achieved through the cadenced and impelled gallop of a superb amplitude allowing variations of rhythm; and Mandar, which is to impose trajectories until the moment of the meeting. A meeting that the Lusitano horse allows to be realized slowly, with expression on the body and the face, which demonstrates his virile, fighting and victorious personality. 

Photo taken by Frederico Henriques - in the photo Paco Velasquez and Duelo da Broa.

READ MORE ABOUT HORSES - https://animalix9.blogspot.pt/2018/04/lusitano-horse.html  

These characteristics corroborate the thesis that the selection must always follow the objectives of functionality and maneuverability, and here, the talent of the Portuguese breeders has proven to be remarkable. They have often selected for functionality in their dream of obtaining the ideal horse for the requirements of the users.

The bullfighting was thus the laboratory of creation by excellence of the Lusitano, in which there was always a perfect symbiosis between the riders and the breeders. This narrow and important selection allowed us to obtain a horse of a unique beauty, unequaled generosity, magical souplesse, and with an enviable quality which has led our horse to international arenas, competing among the world’s best and achieving historical results as the 12th place in the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, a result achieved by the Lusitano Rubi AR, from one of the oldest studs in our country that has always selected based on the functionality and the aptitude for the “high school” exercises executed by the magnificent riders of the Portuguese School of Equestrian Art.

And that’s it, this week we finish the sequence of three articles related to the Lusitano. We’ll sure be back to him since the Lusitanos are the horses we work with more often!





Written by Pedro Miranda
Translated by Raquel Quaresma
Lusibraid

Sunday, May 6, 2018

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