The Tack Room - A City of Horses

You can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the girl. I have brought the country to the city with a hot stable, the sweet smell of straw and molasses, and horse ownership in a concrete forest. This is horses in Sydney’s CBD, so welcome to The Tack Room...

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The Tack Room - April 2007

Are the Faces of Fortune Changing for Horses?

April 29th 2007 16:00

Anna Sewell, author of Black Beauty

It all started with a novel that became a classic, or at least that’s what they say. Not that there weren’t good horse people in the centuries before this one but there were obvious bad ones. So when Anna Sewell released Black Beauty in 1879, she single-handed altered the fate of every horse to come.

It’s been a long time since 1879 and we’d like to think that much has changed for horses and we’d be correct. It has. It would be hard to find a team driving under the bearing rein, even harder to look the other way on an emaciated thoroughbred. Such things that would have been seen on the streets we shared with horses are now either few or behind closed doors.

Yet I can’t help but feel that these doors are everywhere, and disguised. Many, many years ago I witnessed a horse wearing a roller with side reins for hours each day in what his owner deemed an acceptable and effective aid to ‘fixing’ the horse’s head into the correct outline – a lesson in how to forever disengage the quarters! In Bathurst last winter I had an eye-opening introduction to the cutting horse circuit – hobbling – proving that old habits, even the disgraceful ones, die hard. And racehorses… well, they are dying harder every day with faster track times over shorter distances, un-natural living conditions and all the associated risks they endure because they were born a thoroughbred.

During the last weekend of March I joined over a thousand others at the Horsley Park to listen to Pat Parelli. His methods in natural horsemanship have penetrated millions of riders and owners around the world - truly a phenomenon. And while the Parelli package is laced with money generating marketing strategies his message is sacred. He is sending saddleries into recession with his emphasis on minimalism. So, Parelli and Monty Roberts and others like them have demonstrated there is no need for the bearing rein and any good rider will tell you that a horse will come into a contact with the

Draw reins

correct engagement regardless of tack, but people still, for example, buy draw reins.

Any sport engineered by aesthetics will bear question marks, so showing would be no different. It annoys me to see show horses with four and five rugs on in the warm Australian autumn, with full hoods and tail bandages as owners endeavour to prevent winter coats from growing. In my part of Sydney riding school horses are granted ten days off a year, and work seven days of every remaining week. At an Irish horse fair several years ago I watched my friend sell her wonderful 24 year old gelding Tom to naïve owners under the auspice that he was 14. I still wonder how he fared with another lifetime of work through years that should have been punctuated by retirement.

If only every horse human relationship were this perfect...*

I like to think that the movement of horses from industry and necessity to optional pleasure has been successful, and in the last 60 years it has. In the UK alone there are 6 million registered riders, a healthily fantastic magazine industry dedicated to them and very spirited, very successful welfare organizations protecting them. Australia is not so motivated, though its riders are no less devoted. And while the world is smaller thanks to technology, its secrets are still easily disguised.

In Spain this month it came to international light that fighting bulls are taunted to gore a tied, blindfolded horse to death in preparation for the evening battle with the matador (‘battle’ in that the thousands in the stands share agreement that the bull has no chance). The UK-based International League for the Protection of Horses (ILPH) had no idea of this practice and has taken the case to the EU. I have a feeling that there are many closets around the world that are like this one – full.

It is unfortunate that we must write and read about these things. It would be nice to say that horses are held in the highest stead today, as high as the horse who wins a good race and his people are pleased. It would be nicer if his people stayed pleased with him for the remainder of his life, but it is a sad reality that when it comes to horses the word commodity rings true. Anna Sewell, they say, started it, and thank god that she did because I am sure things are better for horses today, but were she immortal she would have plenty left to do.

Author's note:
I choose to keep the issues on The Tack Room relatively positive. The world is full of negative press because negative press makes money and the more sensational the better, so I put weight behind positive press. This post however comes in the footsteps of the previous post on the unnecessary death of another wonderful 3yo racehorse and the chilling but absolutely truthful post on Nickoftime's Sanity Corner that I stress any concerned animal lover should not only look at, but read with concentration.

Additional detail on this post's information can be found at various sites, including:
The International League for the Protection of Horses
Pat and Linda Parelli
Nickoftime's Sanity Corner (viewers are advised that the contents of this page are incredibly upsetting)
The British Horse Society

*Photo of horse woman silhouette entitled "Horse and woman..." by Salih Güler[

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The Great Horse Books

April 14th 2007 17:09

Equestrian books gather creases and dust in the lives of most riders. Like shoes you simply cannot have too many. Each delivers new evidence of your need for horses; each reiterates that your horse is your life. There are thousands of books available for each equestrian discipline across the horse world, but a rider should know what she is seeking. Jump technique or lateral work instructionals abound, as do the volumes that followed the natural horsemanship revolution.

But there are a few very special books that feed and nourish the horse tragic, so here is a select group that may parallel your life...

Dark Horses and Black Beauties was written by author Melissa Holbrook Pierson and sent to press in 2000. It occupies the greatest stead in my library. Anecdotes and recollections fill its 254 pages with every reason why horses and women exceed expectation. Beautifully written and magnificently presented, my copy of this book is studded with subtle sepia images of women and their horses that offer pictures (as if you needed any) of a special relationship between she and beast. Carry this book with you everywhere; it will strum your need for your horse.

Few biographies are as well written as William Nack’s effort to storytell the life of an American thoroughbred legend. Secretariat: The Making of a Champion was first published in 1975 and again in 2000, the year it fell into my hands. As detailed as it is entertaining, the book reads like a novel and is the type of book easily commanded by non-racing minds – not an easy feat for its specialist genre. While the racing industry is given much depth here, it appears to me that Nack was dedicated in his subject. Secretariat is given personality and colour, the reason this novel crosses the borders that it does.

I hesitate to sing the praises of racing novels. The genre is so specific that often it is only the racing enthusiast that can enjoy the read. Yet there are two stories that earn the right of mention. Ruffian: Burning from the Start and Michael Wilkinson’s The Phar Lap Story compete with any sports novel ever published. Their subjects, separated by 40 years, are two thoroughbred champions not dissimilar – both fated from the beginning, both massively unbeatable and both tragically killed before their potentials had even been encouraged. These books are very sad, and while written very differently they offer a very real insight into the horses behind the champions that they were.

Kelly Marks is the UK-based right-hand woman of horsemanship flagman Monty Roberts. In recent years she published an excellent volume called Perfect Partners that instructs the horse owner on achieving a perfect understanding with their horse. Marks’ ideologies are superb, but most of all achievable. This book, to me, is essential to the rider - there is little to be achieved from horses without learning their language.

There must be imagination in every list of favourites and in this one the honour goes to a wonderful publication called Hollywood Hoofbeats: Trails Blazed Across the Silver Screen. This book is marvellous in its timeline of horses in Hollywood, from the great westerns to modern blockbusters to every horse movie you ever grew up with. Author Petrine Day Mitchum was ruthless in research. The detail is overwhelming – the reporting honest and eye opening. True horse lovers crave to know everything about horses. This book certainly adds a new and unexplored chapter to the volume.

Several months ago I embarked on a quest to find the most decent, most detailed book on horse breeds. I hit wall after wall. Most publications of this genre were children’s pictorials, featuring only the most common horse and pony types. I turned to the internet where I found Bonnie L. Hendrick’s International Encyclopaedia of Horse Breeds. This publication, of 1996, is far and away the most comprehensive piece of research I have come across – ever. Every breed ever registered (bar a handful by the author’s own confession) is presented here in as much detail as is available. While it is not flawless (Hendrick’s pictures are published in black and white and the entries are listed by alphabet rather than by a much more convenient country list) the encyclopaedia is a fantastic reference book, and at the time of writing the best of its class...

Remember that there are millions of books that, if I asked you, you would tell me I'd forgotten. I have The Black Stallion in my library because of childhood, because I should have it in my library and because it is the stuff of dreams. I have Black Beauty for all these reasons too. I have obscure books that you will never have heard of and I have them simply because they are about horses, or there is a horse in them. I have The Riding Instructor's Handbook because I teach. I have The Veterinary Handbook for Horse Owners because I am a horse owner.

This post is a very small homage to great horse books. There are thousands of them – those that educate, those written to amuse, to school. I have left so many favourites aside that merit mention but not necessarily greatness and, like good jeans in your wardrobe, you can never have too many!

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August 2007

1 Posts

May 2007