Bathroom Readers’ Institute
San Diego, California, and Ashland, Oregon
Copyright © 2008 by Portable Press. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied incritical articles or reviews.
Some of the stories included in this edition have been reprinted or excerpted from the following Bathroom Reader titles: Uncle John’s Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader, Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges Into History Again, Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges into National Parks, and Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges into Texas.
“Bathroom Reader,” “Portable Press,” and “Bathroom Readers’ Institute” are registered trademarks of Baker & Taylor, Inc. All rights reserved.
For information, write The Bathroom Readers’ Institute Portable Press, 10350 Barnes Canyon Road, Suite 100, San Diego, CA 92121 e-mail: unclejohn@btol.com
ISBN 13: 978-1-607-10658-6
E-book edition: May 2012
Contents
Helping Hands
The Horse Whisperers’ Secrets
The Great Meddler’s Cause
Great Horses in Small Packages
To the Rescue!
Horses Are Therapists, Too
Good Grooms
Tack and Feed
Hay Is for Horses
The History of Horseshoes
Boot Camp
The Almighty Stirrup?
Saddle Up!
Island Equines
The Original Mistys
Born Free
Horses of the Dunes
Horses in the Wild West
The Bandit Queen
Rein ’Em In
Bad Boys (and Girls) of the Rodeo
The Wildest Show Behind Bars
Who’s Got Mail?
Fame and Fortune
Big Red2
Off to the Races: The Godolphin Arabian and Eclipse
Perfume and Ponies
Off to the Races: Citation and Ruffian
The Shoe
Horsing Around
You Know You’re a Horse Person When
Cowboy Jokes
Don’t Forget Your Corset
Training Day
Murphy’s Horse Laws
Dude, Where’s My Horse?
For Horse Lovers Only
Horsing Around
Horse Power of a Different Kind
Equine Intelligence
Conquer with the Mongols
Horsey Humor
Horsing Around the World
The Winners’ Circle
And They’re Off!
Royal Races
And the Trophy Goes To
“Where the Turf Meets the Surf”
Puzzles and Quizzes
The Horse Lingo IQ Test
Track Duty
Singing Their Praises
Horse Sense
Good Breeding
Tackle This!
Horses in History
From Eohippus to Horse
Horse Myths
The Little Iron Horses
Military Mounts
The Lucky Horseshoe
Unfinished Masterpiece
Mythconceptions: Pumpernickel
The Mongol Express
More Military Mounts
Life in the Pits
Did You Know?
Believe It or Not
Ask Away
More Believe It or Not
So You Want to Be a Jockey?
A Breed Apart
Mighty Mustangs
Lost Breeds, Part 1
Lost Breeds, Part 2
The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of Draft Horses
Clop, Clop, Clop
Przewalski’s Horses
Mixed Bag
Just the Stats
Lessons Learned
Take a Cab, Not a Horse
The Name Game
The Hidden Language of Statues
The King of Games
For the Record
Equine Expressions
A Nice Day for a Ride
Hold Your Horses
Tails to Inspire
The Will to Win
Inspiring Horse Tails
Donkey Down Under
Entertaining Equines
They’re Ponylicious
Canada’s Royal Horsemen
Rockin’ Horses
A Horse, Of Course
Answers
Thank You!
The Bathroom Readers’ Institute sincerely thanks the following people whose hard work and assistance made this book possible.
Gordon Javna
JoAnn Padgett
Melinda Allman
Amy Miller
Julia Papps
Jeff Altemus
Michael Brunsfeld
Dan Mansfield
Bonnie Vandewater
Art Montague
Debbie Hardin
J. Carroll
John Hogan
Julie Sartain
Kerry Kern
Lea Markson
Jenness Crawford
Megan Kern
Myles Callum
Sue Steiner
Katie Jones
Sydney Stanley
Monica Maestas
Lisa Meyers
Amy Ly
Kait Fairchild
Ginger Winters
Cynthia Francisco
Duncan McCallum
Bea and Sophie
Hey, Horse Lovers!
While we were working on the next book in our animal-lovers series, we caught sight of something amazing: a horse named Big Brown looked like he was about to win the Triple Crown. That hadn’t happened since a gallon of gas cost 63 cents and less than 10 percent of Americans owned microwave ovens. (That was 1978, when Affirmed won it.)
Big Brown ended up not capturing the historic title, but the hoopla and excitement reminded us of how much we love horses. So why not write a book about them?
That was all the folks at the Bathroom Readers’ Institute needed to start researching and writing, tracking down the most magnificent marvels in the equisphere and packing them into these pages. Here are some of the things they found out for you:
•Mr. Ed’s backstage secrets.
•How horses inspired the creation of the ASPCA.
•Why horses are mounted on the left.
•The history of saddles, stirrups, and feed.
•Rowdy tales of rodeo’s rough-and-tumble riders.
•How to work a dude ranch . . . in Australia and Argentina.
•The ins and outs of reining.
•Why velvet hardhats have a bow in the back.
•The short, spectacular story of the pony express.
And of course, we couldn’t leave out horse racing. There’s the mighty Man o’ War, Secretariat the superstar, stories of grooms and jockeys, the number of roses in the Kentucky Derby blanket, and a lot more.
Whether you’re an experienced rider or just learning about horses, you’ll find plenty of facts, stories, and trivia about humans’ most useful animal friend. So settle down in the tack room and get ready for a great ride.
And as always, go with the flow . . .
—Uncle John and the BRI Staff
The Horse Whisperers’ Secrets
“And I whispered to the horse; ‘Trust no man in whose eye you do not see yourself reflected as an equal.’” —Poet Don Vincenzo Giobbe
When horse power drove the wor
ld, there was plenty of work for anyone who could tame a wild mustang or rehabilitate a horse who turned hostile. Most trainers followed traditional, and sometimes painful, methods that used force to “break” a horse and make it submit. But there were always legends about people who understood horses so well that they could gain the animals’ trust and cooperation through mutual respect. These legends went back hundreds of years, and often such horsemen were thought to have magical powers.
The Secret Method
In 350 BC, Greek philosopher Xenophon wrote On Horsemanship. His wasn’t the first text on working with horses—that honor goes to a Mesopotamian horse trainer named Kikkuli, who wrote a book around 1400 BC. But Xenophon’s work was the most comprehensive, and it emphasized training through kindness and reward rather than force. In modern times, a 19th-century Irishman named Daniel Sullivan rehabilitated dangerous horses using his own “secret” method: Sullivan stayed alone in a barn for a few hours with a vicious or terrified horse, and when he led the animal out, it would be calm and well mannered. No one knows Sullivan’s secret for sure, but some people noticed that when he worked with a horse, he faced the animal as if preparing to speak to it. So he earned the nickname “the horse whisperer.”
A “Rarey” Tradition
Sullivan died in 1810, but a few horsemen carried on his work. The most famous was John Solomon Rarey of Grovesport, Ohio. Rarey started taming horses on his father’s farm when he was 12 and worked out his own method without spurs, whips, or force. He became so successful that he gained a reputation as a man who could break the most difficult animals—he even tamed a team of elk. When word of Rarey’s “horse whispering” reached England’s Queen Victoria in 1858, she summoned him to Windsor Castle and asked him to tame her husband’s dangerous charger. Rarey spent some time with the charger in his stall. All was eerily quiet, so after a few minutes, the worried queen and her entourage peeked inside and saw the horse lying side-by-side with Rarey, who was using the animal’s hind legs as a pillow.
On the Road
With Queen Victoria as a reference, Rarey traveled the world taming horses (and even a zebra). His most famous triumph was the rehabilitation of Cruiser, a stud stallion who had killed two grooms. Cruiser wore an iron muzzle and had to be fed through a funnel so as not to injure the stable boys. But it took Rarey only three hours to make Cruiser docile enough that (the New York Times later reported) he could be “fondled like a kitten.”
Rarey became a celebrity. His book, The Complete Horse Tamer, was a best seller and explained his secret: Rarey painlessly hobbled one of the horse’s legs with a special strap he’d invented himself. Standing on just three legs quickly tired the horse so that Rarey could make it lie down. Then he gently overwhelmed and calmed the animal with strokes and petting and by speaking in low, soothing tones. The result was a horse who trusted and obeyed him.
“Zen Master of the Horse World”
More than a century after Rarey’s death, British author Nicholas Evans wrote The Horse Whisperer, a best-selling novel about a horse named Pilgrim who was horribly injured in an accident. In 1998, the book became a movie starring Robert Redford as Tom Booker, the horse whisperer who rehabilitates Pilgrim.
According to Evans, Tom Booker’s skill with horses was inspired by the accomplishments of real people. One was Rarey—in the movie, Booker uses the Rarey strap technique to gentle Pilgrim. But the primary inspiration for the book was a modern horse whisperer from Wyoming named Dan “Buck” Brannaman.
Like John Rarey, Brannaman started training horses at 12, and his methods don’t include punishment or pain. After watching Buck Brannaman help traumatized horses, Evans had these admiring words: “His skill, understanding, and his gentle, loving heart have parted the clouds for countless troubled creatures. Buck is the Zen master of the horse world.”
What Makes ’Em Kick?
According to Brannaman, part of his knowledge comes from hard-won horse sense. After being bitten, bucked, and run over, he decided he’d do better if he could understand what made horses tick . . . as well as kick. So Brannaman studied “natural horsemanship,” a tradition that takes its cues from a horse’s instincts and innate methods of communication.
Natural horsemanship encourages trainers to “listen to horses” by understanding the animals’ herd instincts and body language and then use that information to communicate in a way the horses understand. A “natural horseman,” for example, will use the horse’s herd instincts to maintain leadership. With the trainer acting as the head of the herd, he gains the animal’s trust and cooperation. Brannaman, who himself was abused as a child, especially likes to work with mistreated animals. He’s sensitive to their psychology and uses “patience, leadership, compassion, and firmness” to help them overcome their traumatic pasts.
Buck Brannaman has also become a motivational speaker teaching others to use horse-whispering techniques to help troubled children and adults. Teaching horse whispering as a philosophy, Brannaman says, “For me, these principles are really about life, about living your life so that you’re not making war with the horse, or with other people.”
The Ancients
Horses first appeared in cave art about 30,000 years ago. The animals weren’t domesticated then, but they were clearly a part of life for early humans. Even though there’s a lot of disagreement about when horses were domesticated (and very little solid evidence), most archaeologists believe that horses began living with people in Eurasia around 6,000 years ago.
You Know You’re a Horse Person When . . .
Think you’ve got horse fever? Here are a few warning signs.
•You lean forward when your car goes over speed bumps.
•You yell at the kids, and the horse’s name pops out.
•“Stopping by the stable” takes a minimum of two hours.
•You tell the guy at the service station that you’ve got a leak in the “near hind” tire.
•You feel a sharp spot on your back teeth and wonder if they need to be floated.
•You find hay in your bathrobe.
•You cluck at your car when it goes up hills.
•You know more about your horse’s ancestry than your own.
•You carry a hoof pick in your purse.
•You’ve been banned from the laundromat.
•You refer to your shins as “cannon bones.”
•After it snows, the first thing that gets shoveled is the path to the manure pile.
•You spend hundreds of dollars to compete in a horse show for a 98-cent ribbon.
Just the Stats
Get to know horses by the numbers.
¼ to ⅜ inch
Length a horse’s hoof grows in a month.
1 hour
On average, the amount of time it takes for a foal to stand up and walk after it’s born.
2
Blind spots for a horse: directly behind, and directly in front.
4 inches
One hand.
9 pounds
Weight of a horse’s heart.
10 gallons
Amount of saliva a horse produces every day. One horse can also drink about 10 gallons of water and eat 15 to 18 pounds of hay each day.
18 feet
Longest horse mane, grown by a mare named Maude.
20 to 30 years
A horse’s average life span.
36
Number of teeth adult female horses have. Adult male horses have between 40 and 44.
100°F to 101°F
A horse’s normal body temperature.
335 to 340 days
Length of the horse’s gestation period. On average, colts spend a week longer in the womb than fillies.
350 degrees
A horse’s field of vision. Horses have the largest eyes of any land mammal. Their vision is monocular—each eye acts independently. (A human’s field of vision is only about 140 degrees.) Horses have sharper vision than dogs or cats.
58 million
Number of horses living in the world today. At 8 million, China has the largest population. The United States is fourth with about 7 million horses.
The Bandit Queen
Here’s how horse theft became the family business for one of the Wild West’s most notorious female outlaws.
The wanted poster read “Cattle and Horse Thief,” listed her aliases as “unknown,” and identified her crime (among others) as heading a band of rustlers in Oklahoma. So began the legal trouble for Belle Starr, nicknamed the “Bandit Queen.”
The Makings of an Outlaw
Ornery was in her blood. Her father, John, ran an inn, and her mother, Eliza, was related to the infamous Hatfield family—of Hatfields and McCoys fame. Starr was born Myra “Belle” Shirley in Carthage, Missouri, in 1848. Young Belle went to a fancy private school in Carthage where she learned Latin, Greek, math, and even how to play the piano.
The Shirleys were Confederate sympathizers (John Shirley owned several slaves), and one of their sons was killed during the Civil War. Belle aided the Confederacy during the war, too—the teenager spied on and reported back about Union troops. It was during this time that she made her first illicit connections: she met outlaw Cole Younger, his brothers, and Jesse and Frank James.
Becoming the Bandit Queen
Eventually, the Shirley family moved to Texas, where Belle married a farmer named Jim Reed. The couple had two children: Pearl (there are rumors her father was really Cole Younger) and Ed. There wasn’t much money in farming, though, so Jim Reed began working with the Youngers, the James brothers, and a cattle-and horse-thieving Cherokee clan called the Starrs. Over the next three years, Jim Reed robbed stagecoaches, killed at least one person, and went on the run with his family. The police suspected Belle was in on the crimes, too—she started gambling in saloons, wearing a Stetson, and carrying pistols, which added to her outlaw image. But there was never any direct evidence that she helped her husband. Still, when Jim was killed by a sheriff’s deputy, Belle took his place in the Starr clan. (She sent the kids to live with relatives.)