Wild About Horses

  COPYRIGHT © 1998 BY LAWRENCE SCANLAN

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Published in 1998 by Random House of Canada Ltd.

  Vintage Canada edition published in 1999.

  Used by Permission

  Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There is a Season)

  Words from the Book of Ecclesiastes

  Adaptation and Music by Pete Seeger

  TRO © Copyright 1962 (Renewed) Melody Trails, Inc., New York, NY

  Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Scanlan, Lawrence

  Wild about horses: our timeless passion for the horse

  eISBN: 978-0-307-36422-7

  1. Horses – History. 2. Human-animal relationships – History. I. Title.

  SF285.S32 1999 636.1’009 C99-931177-8

  v3.1

  For my parents Bern and Clare,

  and in memory of their parents,

  Terry and Rose, Leonard and Gertrude.

  Lawrence Scanlan on Radish, left, with Skip Ashley on Spot. Wyoming, 1997. (photo credit ack.1)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Those who helped shape and inform and otherwise nudge this book towards completion are too numerous to name but I remain in their debt.

  Special thanks to J. D. Carpenter, Cindy Fisher, Skip Ashley and his wranglers in Lander, Wyoming, Carol Risbridger and all who rode with me in the high desert. Thanks also to Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence, Vicki Hearne, Maxine Kumin, Jan Whitford, Christina Salavantis, Jim Elder, Dick and Adele Rockwell, Vickie Rowlands, Barbara Whittome, Louise Dennys, Larry Ashmead, Allison McCabe, Kathi Bayly, Scott Richardson, Sharon Foster, Beverly Sotolov, and to horses named Luke and Radish and Mabe. My editor, Sarah Davies, and my partner, Ulrike Bender, both read the manuscript numerous times and I am extremely grateful for their diligence and care.

  Two prominent riders and trainers, one American, one Canadian, taught me a great deal about the nature of the horse-human bond in the course of my dealings with them. Monty Roberts and Ian Millar encouraged me, each in his own way, to try to fathom that bond. They believe, as I do, that however intricate and elusive and ancient that connection is, it is not one beyond words.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  CHAPTER 1: Heavenly Horses

  CHAPTER 2: Wild About Wild Horses

  CHAPTER 3: The Horse Through the Looking Glass

  CHAPTER 4: The Gentle Art of The Horse Whisperer

  CHAPTER 5: The Horse in Battle

  CHAPTER 6: The Wonder Horses of Hollywood and Literature

  CHAPTER 7: Sport Horse Legends

  CHAPTER 8: Epic Rides

  CHAPTER 9: My Kingdom for a — Pony

  CHAPTER 10: Horse Tales Tall and True

  Epilogue

  Further Reading

  Illustration and Photo Credits

  INTRODUCTION

  The best thing for the inside of a man

  is the outside of a horse.

  LORD PALMERSTON

  IN JANUARY 1996, the Canadian magazine Equinox devoted twelve full pages to a piece called “Why Humans Love Horses.” The writer had sought answers in history and mythology, sport, religion and literature. He had joined a cattle drive in the Albertan foothills to lend color and texture to his very personal exploration of the horse-human bond. In the end, he admitted that he, too, had a touch of horse fever.

  The writer, I hasten to add, was me.

  My aim then was to fathom that age-old love affair between humans and horses. But with the magazine article I had only begun to plumb the depths of the subject. While collaborating eight years earlier with the top-ranked Canadian show jumper Ian Millar on the writing of his memoirs, Riding High, I had begun walking the edge of the horse world. Like an ant treading the rim of a glass of water, I was never far removed from that world but never immersed in it, either. Mine seemed a useful vantage point — for several magazine pieces of the long and horsy kind (including one on Spruce Meadows, that Mecca for show jumping in Calgary, Alberta) and for a horse biography, Big Ben (that horse, a two-time world champion show jumper in the late 1980s, had dominated the sport into the early 1990s). By the time I sat down to write “Why Humans Love Horses,” the ant was peering over the rim of the glass and in danger of falling into the water. Or was it something headier, like wine?

  My own horse fever I trace to my conviction that to write of horses I had to ride horses. I had taken lessons at Wilmarny Farm, the stable down the road from my rural Ontario home, for four years. Long after it made practical sense, I kept hanging around horses. Riding infiltrated travel: every trip taken or planned was an excuse to see new country from the back of a horse — Spanish coast, Costa Rican rain forest, Peruvian desert.

  I became a capable enough rider, though perhaps I flatter myself. During the Albertan cattle drive, I once found myself riding somewhat sidesaddle when that was never my intent. After the long day’s ride, I slid my sore carcass down the side of the horse — good form on an English saddle, bad form on a western one — and hooked the front of my nylon jacket on the pommel (the horn), which left me dangling helplessly a foot off the ground, a vertical appendage stuck to the horse’s side. Lightning, the horse I was glued to, reversed, prompting neighboring horses to ponder panic while I, oh hapless dude, did the same. I called to the rancher, who was, happily, close by. “Uh, Keith …” His large paws reached over and patiently lifted me down, like a coat off a hook.

  Wild About Horses allowed a more rewarding run at the horse-human question, and the writing led me deeper and deeper, pleasurably so, into the world of horses. The research took me on more rides — in badlands Wyoming, in backwoods Vermont, in high desert California — to gather stories, impressions, opinions. Objective research gave way to personal journey. The horse made incursions into my brain: the old railway path where I daily walk my dog, it dawned on me, would make a dandy place to ride. At the end of all this, I strongly suspected, stood a horse I would call my own.

  My horse-inspired treks took me into the heads and barns of wise and passionate horse people; took me into the rich literature on horses, where scientists, soldiers, showjumpers, poets, cowboys and jockeys all muse on what it means to connect with a horse. The horse in war, in legend, literature and film; the horse in human history — I pored over this vast territory. I bought and borrowed scores of horse books and stacked them in little piles on the floor of my study (eventually, each book issued Post-it notes like thin yellow fruit).

  I had come late to horses, had the convert’s zeal. I went on collecting the life stories of horses and riders, putting, as it were, faces and tails to names. If I was even to think of calling myself a horseman I had to know the stories: of Phar Lap, Ruffian, Dick Francis, Bucephalus, Wild Horse Annie, A. F. Tschiffely, Comanche. I had in mind a book that would mark my own trail of discovery as I learned the well-versed-horse-person’s vocabulary. For two years, I talked to horse people and gathered horse stories. Call me “The Man Who Listens to Horse Lore.”

  My research was shaped by my appetite for equestrian partnerships marked by intensity or eccentricity. I was fascinated by the notion of the epic ride, which led me to Aime Felix Tschiffely and his ten-thousand-mile journey on horseback in 1926. The plight of the wild horse led me to Wild Horse Annie, the woman who headed the charge to stop the slaughter. A minor obsession with tri
ck ponies brought me to wonder horses named Marocco and Clever Hans. My horse whisperer file grew to include John Solomon Rarey, who took the horse world by storm in the nineteenth century the way Monty Roberts has the twentieth.

  Out of all this came Wild about Horses, a book that considers our fascination with the horse from many angles. Clinical evidence and expert opinion help inform the book, but my investigation also happily took me into storytelling, where the truth is altogether more elusive, yet tidier, too.

  Consider, for example, the case of Colonel, a sorrel draft horse who lived on a farm in Minnesota in the early 1900s. (Note that I say who lived, not that lived. I’ll come back to this in the epilogue, but throughout the book I refer to a horse — and, indeed, to any animal — as he and she, not it.) In summer, children on the farm would hitch Colonel to a boxlike sled with room inside for about a dozen little ones. The huge horse with the blaze down his long nose would patiently stand for the harnessing, then turn to face the giggling crew, as if to say, “Everyone safely on board?” There were no reins — there was no need. The children would shout, “Let’s go, Colonel!” He would pull them across a wooden bridge that spanned a creek, but sometimes — out of mischief? — he would haul them right into the creek, where he would stop for a long, cool drink while the children squealed with delight as the cold water flowed over their legs.

  Colonel seemed to know when someone had pitched out. Perhaps he heard the sound of a tiny body tumbling into the grass; perhaps he felt the load lighten a touch. He would stop, his massive head would swing around to survey matters and he would proceed only when all were safely seated again. When Colonel had his fill of baby-sitting, he would head back to the barn, and no amount of cajoling from those in the drag box could dissuade him when his mind was made up.

  It was the custom then to stable the horses all winter long. But in the spring, when the smell of new grass wafted in, the plow horses would grow restless. It became a ritual to release the horses all at once. Everyone on the farm would gather as the great wing gates to the pasture were opened and halters were slipped off the horses in the barn. Down by the open gate with the farm folk would stand Colonel — no mere horse, after all, but one of the family.

  In the anticipation preceding one such ritual, no one noticed that four-year-old Eleanor was on the other side of the gate. The moment that the farmers slapped the flanks of the horses inside the barn to begin the stampede was the moment that Eleanor chose to cross in front of them. Everyone froze.

  Colonel surged forward, bent one knee and knocked the little girl to the ground, then straddled the now screaming child and faced the herd. An instant later the other horses thundered round the great horse, the way water skirts a boulder in a brook, and galloped on to the pasture. Colonel leaned down and nuzzled the child, then stepped back as Eleanor’s mother took her in her arms.

  What I like about the story is how it captures the two towering aspects of horses: their danger (the draft horses would have trampled the girl, without malice, in their mad dash for new grass) and their generosity (the one huge horse created a living shelter).

  The story of Colonel comes to me from a friend, who got it from a woman in New Mexico, who heard it firsthand from Marie, younger sister of little Eleanor. The story is like that lucky penny — to be found, put in horse-mad people’s pockets and then passed on.

  What to make of that story? Is it a story about the horse as guardian angel, anecdotal proof that human affection for horses goes the other way, too? Or would a scientist cast a cooler eye on the incident and put it down to instinct or herd response? The more I pondered humans and horses, the more questions I had.

  Meanwhile, evidence from many quarters was telling me that interest in horses was more widespread and more intense than ever.

  Book publishers certainly knew it. The Horse Whisperer, a first novel in 1995 by the British writer Nicholas Evans and inspired, in part, by the life of the American horse trainer and gentler Monty Roberts, was followed two years later by The Man Who Listens to Horses, the life story of the same Monty Roberts. (As luck would have it, I collaborated with Monty and contributed the introduction and epilogue to the book. To live for a time at his horse farm in California was an enriching experience and it took me deeper yet into the land and language of Equus.)

  No one could have predicted that a novel about a horse gentler (the film, starring Robert Redford, came out in the spring of 1998) and a gentler’s autobiography would grip audiences as they have. Where both books converge is in their insistence that the horse, or at least connecting with a horse, has healing power. Readers in great numbers seem interested in horses as sentient beings capable of memory, feeling, sorrow and joy.

  Readers of modern literature have rediscovered the horse in the writing, too, of the American author Cormac McCarthy, whose career turned a corner in 1992 with the publication of the novel All the Pretty Horses. Set in outback Texas and Mexico in the early 1930s, this brilliant novel reads at times like a paean to horses. Along with its sequel, The Crossing (the second in a planned trilogy), it describes long journeys on horseback, and must have touched some deep chord, for it has won two major prizes and sold five hundred thousand copies — a staggering figure for a literary work.

  When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals, published in 1995, seemed to usher in a raft of books — many of them about dogs — that celebrated animals as fellow creatures. Other contemporary books have argued for animal minds, animal souls and, of course, animal liberation. Convinced there is more here than meets the eye, we have grown increasingly fascinated with the inner lives of animals.

  At the same time, a new wave of adults has come to embrace riding: in the past five years the Canadian Equestrian Federation has grown steadily each year from 8,255 members to more than 11,000 — evidence of a growing number of competitive riders. There exist more than 630,000 horses across Canada and some 78,000 riding establishments. In thirty-three countries around the world, 500,000 children belong to Pony Clubs and the number is growing.

  In the United States, the ever-expanding horse industry contributes more than $15 billion to the economy. The numbers are staggering: 14,000 sanctioned horse shows annually, close to 300,000 young people involved in 4-H and pony programs or Pony Club. The number of horses in America has grown from 6.6 million to 6.9 million in the past year.

  In many areas, demand for good riding horses has pushed up their price. Guest ranches all over North America are enjoying unprecedented business as “cappuccino cowboys” (or so their genuine counterparts sometimes call them) indulge their fantasies. There exist some five hundred dude ranches in America, and interest in both ranch vacations and in starting dude ranch operations is up dramatically.

  Even in Hollywood horse fever is raging. Billy Crystal had never ridden a horse before starring in City Slickers, a thin comedy about urban men on a cattle drive; smitten, he bought the horse he rode in that film. Kiefer Sutherland starred in The Cowboy Way and later took two years off from acting to compete in rodeos. Robert Duvall in his other life is an accomplished show jumper.

  From Vanity Fair to advertising, from children’s literature to the boom in equine art, the horse is ubiquitous. There are more horses in North America now than there were in the 1800s when horses powered the family farm. At the turn of the century, horse numbers declined dramatically as the world mechanized, and that trend might reasonably have been expected to continue until the horse became little more than an ornamental species. But the trend did not continue. Today, there are 60 million horses around the world and the number is once again growing.

  Horse fever still rages. For many of us, the attraction to horses amounts to an obsession.

  My best answer to the question Why do humans, or some of us anyway, love horses? is the book you hold in your hands. In the Epilogue I will come back to that question. Perhaps by then both of us will be a little wiser and better informed about the great tribe of riders and horses, as well as what stirs the
passion — “the right magnificent obsession,” as the poet and horsewoman Maxine Kumin calls it — that draws us to them.

  CHAPTER 1

  HEAVENLY HORSES

  And, behold, a pale horse; and he that sat upon him,

  his name was Death.

  BOOK OF THE APOCALYPSE

  We had no word for the strange animal we got

  from the white man — the horse. So we called it

  šunka wakan, “holy dog.”

  LAME DEER, SIOUX MEDICINE MAN, IN

  Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions

  “WHAT’S BRED IN the bone will not out of the flesh,” a thirteenth-century proverb has it. In at least some of us, the love of horses is indeed bred in the bone — an ancestral seed seemingly passed on from generation to generation, as genuine as blood marrow, as clear to the eye as an insect locked in amber.

  In a family, even one living in the tangle of a city, far from stables and pastures, a particular daughter or son may simply, inexplicably, be born with a longing for horses. Poll any classroom, urban or rural, and ask children to name their favorite animal: bet on the horse coming out on top.

  A horsewoman I know “rode” brooms as a toddler; Ian Millar, later a world champion equestrian, “rode” his piano bench as a boy. Growing up in Ottawa, Ontario, young Millar watched desperately for rent-a-ponies in the neighborhood and followed westerns like a hound on a trail. Maxine Kumin, the poet, seems also to have been born horse-mad, and as a child would give camp blankets and lumps of sugar to passing cart horses in her suburban Philadelphia neighborhood. She prayed for, “lobbied mightily for,” a pony.

  I stand in awe of that intrinsic drive and I wonder: Where does horse fever come from? How far back can we trace its roots? The literature on myths and legends suggests that our memory of horses is of a collective, almost universal, sort.