HINTS ON HORSE SCIENCE FROM “HORSE’S MOUTH”

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 69, 28 November 1949, Page 5

HINTS ON HORSE SCIENCE FROM “HORSE’S MOUTH”

Ace buckjump rider Ken Huntly and his wife, famous horsewoman Beryl Riley, were taking it easy after the first night of Barton’s Circus in this district at Taneatua when a pressman walked in on them the other morning. The little lady had some unkind things to say about Taranaki weather before everybody started talking horse. It appears the persistent drizzle of the cowcocky’s paradise had soaked into her bones a bit and left a lingering stiffness that didn’t help much in handling horses. Hands Make Horses

As she and her husband both pointed out, in riding, balance and light hands are ail-important. In fact, they say, hands make horses, and Mr Huntly even goes so far as to claim there is no such thing as a natural-born bad horse.

He means, of course, bad-natured horses. After years of admiring and handling some of Australia’s best show horses, both poked a bit of fun at some of our “ngatis”, Beryl Riley expressing real regret that horseflesh should be alio wed. to sink so low. But they gave New Zealand credit for having some good class Hunters, fine thoroughbreds and a few. tough buckers. Man-Made Outlaws But,' getting back to ill-natured horses, and Mr Huntly’s claim that nature doesn’t provide any. He says men make th’fem. That’s how buckjumpers happen. A young horse gets mishandled in his early education, and tosses a few riders. Gradually he builds himself a reputation and, while doing it, learns a few more tricks until he can shift some good men. By then it’s too late. He’s a man-made outlaw, soured in the first place by wrong treatment and then encouraged in his outlawry by his own successes. Every time he wins he’s a tougher guy to handle. But still, this internationallyknown horse trainer believes there is no such thing as a horse a man with patience, good hands, a real love of horses and an uriderstanding of how they think cannoit tame. But, t he says, a good horse must be allowed to do his own thinking. Horse That Thinks

Take Paint, for instance, Beryl Riley’s stunt jumper. He has to fthink fast and clearly. And can he? It’s not long since that horse was so badly tangled <in a wire fence that he nearly had his fetlocks sawn off. The Huntly’s got him as a common-or-garden saddle horse for the price of a scrub pony. But Paint had brains. And now ‘ there just isn’t any money that will buy him. Mrs Huntly turned down a £6,000 cheque before leaving Sydney on, this trip. A horse that can jump up to 7ft sins high, leap with his rider through a ring of sword points only 3ft 4ins from "each other, dive through a barrel sloped up from 3ft at the take-off end to sft, do stunt jumps on a theatre stage only 45 feet across can earn more than £6,000 in quite a short time, even if it were not for the fact that he’s one of the family and therefore above price.

Training Jumpers Talking of Paint twisted the conversation to the training of jumpers, a topic of lively local interest. Here were two experts, riders of world class, trainers of sensational jumpers. What’s' the secret?

Well, it all gets back to light hands, and intelligence—in both horse and rider. The Huntly theory is that horses remember things, and they don’t like getting hurt. So the idea is to set the learner at something solid, something like a pile of logs, something that hurts if he hits it and high enough to make him lift. Light, loose rails, bits of string, ropes, knock-down hurdles, were all waved aside. “Let a horse know he can knock ’em. over without getting hurt,” said Mr Huntly, “and he’ll even get so he likes to hear his hoofs tapping the rails. Let him get a solid bump and plough his nose in the dirt once and he’ll never make the same mistake again. But, in the long run, whal he can do depends on who’s on top of him.”

And that, we believe, is a fine compliment to Paint and Beryl Riley.