5/31/2008
After a few stallions came down with horse flu and a good six months off the road the travelling Spanish horse show El Caballo Blanco (meaning The White Stallion) is in Port Macquarie this weekend complete with flamenco guitarists and dancers.
These horses, without a doubt, are some of the most beautiful creatures in the world. They're like horse royalty, and breathtaking to watch. They perform the oldest dressage in the world and can be worth millions of dollars but for riding master Rene Gasser, his horses are priceless. He loves them says they're like his kids.
This is Pasha, a 14-year-old Arabian stallion. Rene is from Switzerland but has lived on and off in Australia for the past 25 years. This kind of work has been in his family for a good six generations.
Rene reckons he can get any horse, including the Australian stockhorse, to do the Piaffe or any other move. Piaffe is a move where the horse does a highly collected trot in place. The horse just needs to have good bones and a good brain.
If you'd like to train your horse to do the Piaffe tune into the Rural Report on Monday at 6:40am and Rene will give us some tips on how to get started. He'll also talk about the joy of lifting the tails of 25 stallions, three times a day to check their temperature during the horse flu outbreak.
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3 comments:
For Thomas and Henry,
Thomas you can not alway take newspaper interviews as fact, ask Henry who was a publicist. And Henry there are a thousand examples of someone doing a dozen acts bad, and a few of someone doing a few act's great. Circus history is mucking through the self serving paper, and coming close to a valid answer.
I quickly settled into life on the road, and the busy routine of setting up, training, performing, pulling down, travelling, and setting up again, made the weeks fly past. Before I knew it, we had toured right up the Queensland coast to Cairns and back down again to Coffs Harbour. Hopping from town to town and performing three times a week, we travelled some three and a half thousand kilometres in total, sometimes covering eight or nine hundred k in one travel day. Each week we had a new home, a new town to explore and new pubs to hang out in and life was all fun.
In Coffs Harbour, we were hit with bombshell. The tour was originally planned to continue south through NSW and Victoria ending in Mt Gambier in South Australia but business was not going well. Rene’s wife Barbara explained that the overheads of keeping the show on the road were too high. While the show had done very well in the previous entertainment centre tour, the ‘tent tour’, as it was dubbed, did not seem to be drawing the crowds. So the decision was made to end the tour and go straight to Melbourne where the company would set up a base to work on the next show, which would become ‘Lipizzaners with the Stars.
Rene originally envisioned the show as an outdoor spectacular called ‘Lipizzaners under the Stars’. Planning was well underway as such when it began to prove too difficult and costly to get off the ground. “The overheads and the risks involved with an open-air performance are simply too high,” Rene explained in a staff meeting. As the show was supposed to open in early winter in Melbourne, the odds of being rained out were considerable. So, the show was rescheduled to take place in entertainment centres as a safer option.
Wade
My wife and I took my 8 year old niece to the Gala in Lafayette Louisiana,Aug 2 ,2014. It was in the Cajundome. It was an emotional experience for me,because I love the beautiful horses. Rene's love and acumen is obvious. He is a distinguished man. He is just awesome. I wish I could spend a few days with his team ,to be with the horses,if I have to shovel that's fine. It was for my nieces 8th birthday. She is taking riding lessons on English saddle. She loved the show. I wish the best for all of Renes people and horses. such beautiful horses. I will never forget this show. Thank you Rene.
Wade Lafayette ,Louisiana
I had just that privilege. I worked with Sony Gasser as the MC for the horseman from Snowy River and Frank Gasser in both Circus Royal doing a number of acts and behind the scenes with his Spiegeltent show La Soiree. I now live in Paris and my job is primarily caring for young children. Not a day goes by that I don't think of that totally accepting family. I agree with Rubicon forman. He is a distinguished man from a distinguished family
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