HORSE SENSE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 488, 29 October 1948, Page 18

HORSE SENSE

THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER. By Major P. R. Goldingham. Allen and Unwin. ERE is a book that could usefully be put into the library of every pony club in New Zealand. It is reasonably priced-11/3-simply and clearly written, and very copiously illustrated. A first glance may suggest that the.standard of the illustrations is far below that of

the text; but a closer look reveals all sorts of charms: here is a girl dressed neatly in hacking jacket and jodhpurs, collar and tie, black bowler; she is demonstrating how to

lead and how not to lead a pony. Ihe girl-perhaps minus the bowler-could easily be a member'of any of New Zealand’s 20 pony clubs; the pony, with its crooked blaze and its winter coat, could just as easily be the Toby or Robin or Nigger living on a New Zealand farm. And so with most of the dozens of photographs throughout the book, they show horses and riders with a welcome air of familiarity and a comforting look of ordinariness not usually found in the magnificent pictures in the high-priced manuals on the horse: And the tone of the illustrations is the tone of the whole book-simple, friendly, sensible, Major Goldingham hardly uses words like equitation; but "riding for the fun of it" means, in his book, fun for the horses as well as fun for the rider. In a perfectly offhand way he will drop a hint#I have never seen mentioned in any other book: the first and last mile on a journey will be walked "the last by you on foot, with loosened girths, if your horse is at all hot." Everyone has the glib rule "walk the first mile and the last"; but who else tells you to use your own feet? He suggests that the most important grooming tools are a bundle of hay and a bent nail-which should remind all young riders that they do not examine feet often enough, and _perhaps introduce to others the old army cleaning device of the hay wisp. (But perhaps I should mention here that. the hay wisp is a good deal more warming for the groom than a body brush or a dandy brush.) Major Goldingham does not belong to the group of writers who tell the reader to stand by to see that the groom is doing his work properly, he takes it for granted that he is writing for young people who do their own hard work-for the love of it. Patience is his watchword with the horse; balance is his watchword for a rider. In a book full of good sound horse-sense, the only misfortune seems to me to be the lack

of an index.

J.