A VERSATILE ANIMAL

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 94, 14 February 1947, Page 6

A VERSATILE ANIMAL

STORY OF THE HORSE MANY STRANGE USES RACING IN ASIA WITHOUT RIDERS *" f In a recent issue of a contemporary, Bernard -Micksteed reviews a book which may be of interest to conutry reads. He writes:— After reading the first few thousand words of the book of the horse, I felt so up in the subject that I called on the family for questions and was at once struck down by my small son, who asked: “Well, why is a horse?” This is a fundamental question that none of the 33 contributors attempt to answer. But they do tell you a surprising number of things people have done with the horse since they found it wild and began altering it'to suit themselves. No one knows who was the first man to tame a horse, but there are pictures of horses in caves that are 50,000 years old, and in the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts in New York is a statuette of an Egyptian riding bareback that was made about 2500 B.C| Except that he has a wig on and no shirt, the rider looks very much like a stableboy of today.

Early Breeding t

The horse in the cave and the one from Egypt represent the two main types from which our horses of today are descended. The caveman’s horse was heavy boned and lethargic and lived in cold countries. The other was warm-blooded and lively. >By mixing the two, man—and nature—have produced the different types of today. In this book alpne there are 116 breeds mentioned and their names begin with every letter in the alphabet but U (unicorns don’t count).

X? Yes, the . Greeks had a horse called the Xanthos. Z? The Zapata. It comes from Spain. So does the Querriro. Before they thought of putting horses to’ work and using them for sport," people used them for milking and eating. > Nomads in Asia still milk them, and the Belgians still eat them.

In Iceland they had horse fights once, and in Asia one of the earliest forms of racing was done without riders. The horses were kept thirsty and trained to race each other to the nearest oasis. Part of the “sport” which backers are now denied was beating up the horse you didn’t want to win. There’s a record of one of these racesover a 14-mile course’for a stake of 100 camels. One punter with his shekels on the outside belaboured the favourite so hard that he paralysed his arm for life. We’ve gone a long way since then, especially in England. In 1912 we hanged a man for nobbling. For those who don’t know what nobbling is I’ll quote from the 13-page “glossary of equine terms” that “The Book of the Horse” contains.

This says that nobbling is maiming, poisoning or otherwise “getting at” a horse. Technical Terms You might be interested in some of the other words in the glossary because, in addition to milking the horse, eating it, riding it, racing it, driving it, working if, and altering its appearance, people have also build up a language round it. In horsey circles, for instance, a cocktail isn’t something you drink; it’s a horse that’s not a thoroughbred. A dog isn’t a dog, but a racehorse that fails to reproduce in public the form it showed at home. A roadster has four legs, not four wheels, and is notable for riding comfort more than speed. Then there’s the flapper, which isn’t a filly with hev mane done up in plaits, but a horse that runs at unauthorised race meetings. Just to show you what heights of self-expression horsey people can reach when they really let themselves go, here is an advertisement circulated in Epsom in 1820. “On Saturday next will be sold oy auction, the strong, staunch, sturdy, stout, sound, safe, sinewy, serviceable, strapping, swift, smart, sightly, sprightly, spirited, sure-footed sorrel steed of superb symmetery, styled Spanker.

“He is.free from strain, spavin, string-halt, stranguary, staggers, scouring, strangles, sallenders, surfeit, starfoot, splent scars and shambling gait. “He is neither spur-galled, sinew shrunk, saddle galled, shell-toothed, sling gutted, surbated nor shortwinded. He has neither sitfast, snaggle-teeth, sandcrack, nor scatter hoofs.

“He never slips, stalks, starts, stops, shakes, snarvels, stumbles or stocks in the stable and he has a showy, stylish switch tail.”

As a matter of fact I’ve left a lot of it out, but you’ll gather from what I have quoted that people who love horses are never at a loss for a word.

And of them all hunting people are, pex-haps the least inarticulate, for in a bibliography on this subject alone the book lists no fewer than 700 titles. When You Buy Does all this make you think that you ought to add'a horse to the list of things you need? Well, “The Book of the Horse” tells you how to buy one.

I bought a horse once. I got it off a cattleman in Australia for five bob. A £lO saddle went with it, and he wouldn’t sell them separately. When I’d paid the money I asked the horse’s panic and he said it was Boko, which was Australian for oneeyed. It wasn’t till then I noticed that indeed it had only one eye. I wouldn’t do a thing like that again because I know now the eyes are something you have to look at, as well as count.

If they’re too prominent it indicates a nervous temperament, just as it often does in a pop-eyed person. If they are too sunken it’s a sign of bad temper.

Another thing you have to look for is the angle of the shoulder blade. In a working horse this should be 65 to 70 degrees from the horizontal, btit in anything built for speed it should be no more than .55 degrees. > ■ If you glance at a horse, or even a picture of one, you’ll see why. In order to get up a good speed a racehorse has to throw its front legs well forward, which it couldn’t do so easily if its shoulder blades were perpendicular to the ground. A racehorse will cost you about £IOOO as a yearling. .Unless you really know what you are doing it is not the best kind of horse for a beginner, as the following figures will show. There are about 5000 racehorses in training every season, and the total prize money available is £750,000, which woi’ks out at £l5O per horse. And that is just about a third of what it costs to keep one horse in training for one season.

A thousand pounds is only the average.. At that price the breeder breaks about even. The record' for a yearling is 28,000 guineas—at the 1945 Newmarket sales.

If that’s more than you can go to at the moment, how about a nice line in carthorses? A pedigree Shire, suitable for work but not the show ring, will cost anything from £55 to £IOO, though a first class stallion might knock you back £2OOO. The Two Extremes ' But you would have something to show for your money, for a fullygrown Shire weighs more than a ton. At the other extreme there’s the Shetland pony. It’s so small that a man can lift it, yet it will carry two fully grown people on its back. And it’s a good long-term investment for a Shetland lives to a great age. Thirty is common, and there’s a story of one that reached a hundred. I am afraid I still haven’t answered the question: Why is a horse? And perhaps I’m putting my neck out mentioning it, but I’m beginning to believe that a lot of people think it was sent by Providence to give them something to write about.