Equestrian Consciousness Raising

I'm working through a mass of information, inspiration, and thought. I was lucky enough to have a friend of a friend come to stay at my farm to give some clinics in balanced riding, saddle fitting and ground work. To say the least, this encounter has provided food for thought on a number of fronts. I'd like to clarify something first: I've had horses for about twenty years now, all of them in Egypt. I took proper riding lessons from about the age of eight to twelve and all the riding that I've done since then has been without proper supervision other than 18 months of informal dressage lessons that I took with a friend about 13 years ago. I've been out of touch with virtually all the equestrian trends in North America for as long as I've owned horses. At the same time, my academic background in social psychology and interest in animal behaviour has been very useful in helping my horses to teach me about them. Perhaps other people might not have found so much revelation in this learning experience, but then other people aren't writing this blog.

One of the basic points that really knocked me over was the fact that horses were never made for people to ride them. That may seem truly elementary, but to a genetically horse-mad person like myself it was like a bolt of lightning. Our clinician, Zsuzsu Illes, was explaining the theory behind saddle construction to a group of us with a drawing on one of my horses. The back of the horse is like a suspension bridge, to quote Zsuzsu, created to carry the belly of the horse underneath the spine. The musculature of the back is there to provide locomotion to the horse, not to carry the sometimes considerable weight of a rider. The saddle is intended to spread the rider's weight across the back so as not to harm the horse.

Every so often one runs across an idea that knocks the years of experience for a loop. The thought that horses were not created to be ridden was one of those. Oh, I know that horses were domesticated over centuries and that riding as a discipline has developed over the centuries, but somewhere inside my soul was a horse-mad little girl who "just knew" that horses existed to be ridden. In fact, when examined seriously and without the madness, the concept that riding a horse is a somewhat unnatural act has a lot of evidence and induces wonder at the kindness of these large creatures who willingly place themselves at our beck and call. But I recall watching my last crop of youngsters starting out to carry riders. They'd been introduced to everything but a steady pressure on their backs and they were very calm for experiencing their first time under saddle. However, their steps were tentative and it was clear that one of the issues was one of balance, not so much their own alone, but that of the rider on their backs.

Recalling the horses' concerns for their ability to balance with a rider on their backs, and the design of saddles that rest on the muscles for the locomotion for the horse, the realisation of the importance of saddle fit hit me like a truck. Up to that point, the question of saddle fit had been something that I would skirt gingerly like an angry snake. In a country where virtually every saddle has been imported by someone who never had a chance to try it on a horse, what were the odds that all of my saddles would be shown to cripple my horses? Very scary thought. But Zsuzsu put my fears to rest to the extent that she could.

I have about 19 riding horses (and some youngsters still not under saddle) and about 10 saddles. Ideally, each horse and rider would have a saddle that is perfect for the combination of the two. But I have many people riding my horses so the best that I can do is try to have each horse have at least one saddle that fits him/her relatively well. After spending a couple of days trying saddles on horses, I can say that I have one saddle that doesn't fit anyone at all, and a number of horses who can use a variety of saddles with varying degrees of success. The trick to this lies in the gazillion pads that we already had on hand and the three new ones that I bought from Zsuzsu. Almost none of my saddles are perfect, but with the right combinations of pads, we reach a decent level of comfort. Considering that three of the saddles were expensive American custom fit endurance saddles (the saddlemaker fit the horses herself on a visit here years ago), one might hope for at least three horses with a perfect fit, but horses, just like us, change shape over time and now these saddles don't fit perfectly.

As we moved on to the riding clinics I found more saddle fit revelations. I was aware of pinching, rubbing, and so on as issues in saddle fit but I hadn't thought about the way that a saddle could balance or unbalance a rider. As the clinic photographer I had plenty of time to notice and think about the issues that Zsuzsu brought up. Like myself, the riders who came were people who had either bought new saddles in the hopes that they would fit existing horses or they were people who had found used saddles that more or less fit their horses. The fit could be fiddled with the right kinds of pads, but in many cases the effect on the rider of a saddle that wasn't really the right one for the horse or the rider was unfortunate. A jumping style saddle could affect the balance pulling the rider's knee forward until the heels were no longer under the hips, creating an imbalance. If the seat of the saddle was too small, or tipped the rider either forward or back, the same thing could happen.

I ride horses a lot. It's how I make my (and my horses') living. But I have never really thought as much about how I ride as I did during those two weeks with Zsuzsu. It was rather like surviving a mental tsunami. When she and I went out for a ride for fun, I started laughing about half an hour into the ride and told her she'd ruined riding for me because now I was thinking about all the things that I was doing wrong. I was only partly kidding. Nothing could ruin riding for me. It's my sanity, my joy, and I'm most alive when I'm in the saddle...to say nothing of the fact that only there do my arthritic knees not bother me. And it wasn't a bad thing to bring myself back to the consciousness that my horses were not created to carry me, although they do so very willingly, and that it is therefore my responsibility to make their work as pleasant and painless as possible.

copyright 2009 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

The World Is Smaller Now

A couple of months ago I was contacted by the Longriders Guild, an organisation of people who do long distance horse treks, exploring our world in an old fashioned way in this age of cars and planes. To become a Longrider, one has to complete an authenticated trip of over one thousand miles on horseback, no mean accomplishment. I'd love to be one, but I don't really see it in the cards at this point. I've followed the Guild on their website for a number of years and have corresponded with riders who have traveled through Egypt. Basha and CuChullaine O'Reilly have built a phenomenal data base of riders who have accomplished these long rides through history and the present, created a publishing company for books about equestrian travel, manage a marvelous source of information for prospective travelers, and along the way get to do some traveling themselves...planning a round the world trip on horseback in the near future.

The Guild's reason for contacting me recently, since I'm not a Longrider, was to get my take on an event that they had been consulted about by a company that specialises in adventure tourism. The Adventurists, a British tourism company, has previously specialised in signing up people who were willing to buy a trashed out car in one part of Africa to make their way in a quasi-rally to another part. Since the company makes a serious show of NOT supplying support for the people who sign up...after all, the danger is all part of the fun, don't you know?...this is a "vacation" for the seriously addicted to adrenaline. But this winter, The Adventurists decided to branch out a bit and to offer a new holiday...a thousand mile horserace in Mongolia! They were looking to the Longriders Guild for help and support. My initial response was that these people were utterly out of their minds. How were people going to care for the horses? Did they realise how small Mongolian ponies are? A car enthusiast can fix a radiator if it breaks, but no one can fix a lame or sick horse. I really couldn't believe that they were serious.

Needless to say this support was not forthcoming. The situation that has been set up is that about 25 participants have paid roughly $5 thou each for the privilege of being landed in Mongolia where a charity who will receive a hefty donation has apparently rounded up 800 Mongolian ponies for the use of the participants in a thousand mile race across the Mongolian steppes. When the Guild first told me that the Adventurists were planning this, my return email suggested was that it was totally insane and being an optimist, I couldn't see how this would ever get off the ground. The course is utterly littered with landmines..figuratively speaking.

I live in Egypt and take horses trekking in some relatively inhospitable areas, from a horse's point of view, so some of the problems that I could see with the plan were those of language (how are these travelers going to communicate with anyone that they might meet or need assistance from? Each one is traveling alone and in competition with the others.), terrain (the area is without roads, signposts or even many settlements and Mongolia isn't precisely known for its balmy climate), experience (experienced horsemen look at an "opportunity" like this and laugh while walking away...most of these people are novices). And finally, my experience seeing what can happen in long distance races for a cash purse made me pray that the project would never get off the ground. Back in 2000 to 2002 when the UAE was making a huge push to introduce the sport of endurance racing to many of the countries in the Middle East and North Africa, there were many races for sizeable purses in countries where the locals had no idea of what was involved in traveling on a horse for a distance of over about 10 miles....and many, many, many dead horses during and after the races.

Emails have been flying back and forth for a number of months while we all waited for The Adventurists to suddenly regain sanity regarding this race, but this has not happened. Apparently the race is on, the participants have ponied up their entrance fee (to use an unforgivable pun) and possibly the biggest equestrian disaster to hit the news in recent time is in the offing. No efforts have been made for this to be sanctioned under international rules with the appropriate supervision by stewards and vets. In a serious endurance race, it is required that horses pass a veterinary check at the beginning, the end, and at stages throughout the race, generally not more that 25 miles apart. The horses' condition is of the utmost concern and if the horse is not fit to continue the rider and horse are disqualified. There are NO veterinarians involved in this project at all. A group of relatively inexperienced riders are on their own.

I would suggest that you go to the website linked to the title of this post to see the research that the Guild has conducted in their efforts to convince The Adventurists that while dropping off clueless auto enthusiasts in uncomfortable places might endanger the humans involved, they have no right to endanger the horses of Mongolia in this way. There are a number of petitions that can be signed, letters that can be sent. We are all hoping that someone with a degree of sense will block this madness. The world is a smaller place now and we are all responsible for it.

Read http://www.thelongridersguild.com/mongolia.htm




copyright 2009 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Window Shopping

The EAO, Egyptian Agricultural Organisation, is the inheritor of the Royal Egyptian Stud and a repository of bloodlines for the Egyptian Arabian horse. Roughly four hundred horses share big shady paddocks under the eucalyptus trees in Ain Shams, just outside of Heliopolis, an area that once was farmland but now, like much of Cairo, is crowded with apartment buildings. The horses there can trace pedigrees back a couple of hundred years to the deserts of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq. Much of the original blood stock was collected during military campaigns during the 1800's, during buying expeditions of the same time, or as gifts to the Egyptian monarchy.

After the revolution, the new military rulers of Egypt were not convinced that a national stud was a necessity and the private studs were considered decadent. Some of the horses in private studs were dispersed to to carters and carriage drivers, only to be discretely bought back by friends of the original owners so as not to lose the valuable bloodlines. Eventually, the new rulers of Egypt were persuaded that the horses were part of the national heritage, but the budget for the EAO has never been generous. During the 60's and 70's many of the best horses at the EAO were bought by foreigners who were establishing stud farms in North America and Europe. At some point I'm not sure when, it was decided that horses at the EAO would only be sold at auction to ensure that local breeders would have an equal chance (depending on their budgets of course) to purchase as the foreign breeders would have. Sometimes the auctions are only stallions, sometimes mares, and sometimes both are represented. This January the sale was for both mares and stallions.

I wasn't in the market for horses, not having anything like the budget for these bluebloods, but some friends wanted to go and watch the auction for a while, so we all packed into the jeep to window shop. The auction attracts horse lovers of every type. Men, women, locals, foreigners, wealthy breeders and much less wealthy stable owners...everyone gathered around a large paddock to watch mares, stallions, fillies, and colts showing off for the crowd while bids flew. Some of the horses were destined for the race track, some for breeding farms, and others for family farms where they would be trained for riding.

The prices ranged from about 15 thousand Egyptian pounds (about USD 3 thousand) to over 200 thousand Egyptian pounds that I saw bid for a lovely chestnut mare in foal to one of the EAO stallions. She was one that I would have loved to have added to my herd, but it was not to be. The event was covered by Egyptian television with a jeans-clad interviewer wandering the grounds talking to buyers, breeders and EAO officials for the camera.

We didn't stay for the entire sale. There were horses at home to take care of and the Cairo traffic wasn't going to be kind...it never is. As we left the stud we walked past the empty paddocks with the huge round feeding stands in the center and wondered about the futures of the horses we had been watching all afternoon.

copyright 2009 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Don't Ride to Giza

I have people contact me through my website all the time saying that they are coming to Egypt and have always dreamed of riding a horse "at the pyramids". I always write back asking "which pyramids?" although I know that they are referring to the big ones, the pyramids at Giza, The Pyramids. I point out that the last count I saw was that Egypt had about 120 pyramids and that there are much nicer pyramids for riding than those at Giza. I'm sure that Dr. Zahi Hawass, the head of the Supreme Council for Antiquities, would agree with me since he's certainly made it more difficult to ride a horse to Giza.

I live about ten miles south of the Giza plateau, roughly halfway down a line of most of the pyramids in Egypt. I can see the pyramids of Abu Sir from my garden, and a nice view of Giza across green fields (an amazing sight and one that is getting harder and harder to see daily) is available about 10 minutes away on horseback, weather permitting. The Step pyramid at Sakkara can be seen from a nearby vantage point from the fields, and even better there is a hill behind Abu Sir from which on a clear day you can see Giza, Abu Sir, Sakkara, and Dahshur...roughly 80% of the pyramids in Egypt. Of course we have to hope for decent weather and low pollution from the city, which is getting more infrequent also on a daily basis, but that's a different story. So my question is legitimate and my advice is usually that Giza is best seen by car and then riding be done in more horse-friendly areas.

I recently had a visitor from Costa Rica and he and I decided to ride to Giza from the farm to see what effects the Antiquities Council's new security measures had on being able to ride to the pyramids there. The ride up there isn't bad really, as long as you stay far enough away from the army base at Beni Yusef. They were having maneuvers or competitions or something that day and we rode north to the accompaniment of artillery fire, making a safe distance even farther as far as I was concerned. I had no idea what they were shooting....live shells or what?...and had no wish to find out. The horses were infinitely less concerned with the racket than we were, which was a relief. When we came within sight of the "closed" portion of the Ring Road, a section that was supposed to circle around behind the Giza plateau but that was never finished due to opposition from UNESCO and the Antiquities Council, we received our first unpleasant surprise. Although the road is just a dirt road, the traffic on it is heavy. Trucks, cars, dump trucks, you name it...they are all traveling on the road as if it were a standard highway. Many of the cars are those of the police so acceptance of this non-road seems to be fairly universal. The reason for the traffic lies in the incredible jam at the roundabout where the Alexandria/Cairo desert highway, the Fayoum highway, and Pyramids Road/Faisal Street all meet near the site of the new Egyptian museum. On a normal day a car can sit there for almost an hour, so it's no wonder that motorists have sought alternatives. To be fair, the government is building an extension to the Ring Road that will connect these areas without using the pyramids area, but it isn't completed yet and who knows if the traffic will lessen when it is done.

So after picking our way cautiously across the traffic, we entered the desert that leads to the plateau. This desert was at one time home to some weekend cottages for the well-connected but they have been bulldozed many years before. Unfortunately the clean-up never quite finished and there are areas where concrete floors still cover the desert sand and piles of rubble remain. As we made our way down the sandy washes towards the wall that now surrounds the Giza antiquities area we first began to be a bit uneasy. Dark spots on the sand in the distance attracted the horses' attention initially and then ours. Closer inspection revealed them to be the remains of horses lying in the sand.

I don't take inexperienced riders to Giza. It isn't such a tough ride as such, but the way that the clients of the Nazlit Semman stables careen across the sands pursued by whip-wielding grooms with little or no control of the horses makes me worry about the safety of my horses and clients. I warn people to assume that any horse heading for them has every intention of running them down...defensive riding is definitely the order of the day.

On this particular day, the riders were, for the most part, fairly calm, but the dead horses that we had to pass on our way in were evidence of the fact that plenty of others hadn't been. Horse carcasses lined the wash as we walked down towards the entrance to the stables area of Nazlit Semman. Most of them looked to be a week or so old at least, horses who had dropped in their tracks as they were on their way back to the stables and the bodies had been left for the kites, crows and desert dogs to dispose of. The Equine Influenza outbreak had been particularly fierce in this area this summer, hardly surprising since the horses live in crowded conditions and are usually in poor condition, and I suspect that many of the bodies we were seeing were horses who had never had the chance to recover before having to work. I know that my horses who were in good health before the outbreak took a long time to be feeling energetic and happy again. We let them rest for at least a month before any were ridden and then they were worked very gently for the next month...short hours, short distances, and slow speeds.

Once in the stables area we discovered that the new security measures meant that we all had to buy tickets to the pyramids (before a little baksheesh had given entrance), and my groom, who was accompanying us on a training ride for one of the younger horses, was only allowed in once the police decided that he did not work in the immediate area. Only local personnel from a particular list are allowed in now. Once inside we rode up to the three large pyramids (and a number of smaller ones) enjoying the fact that the area was relatively uncrowded, but still not horse carcass free. However, the areas in which we could ride appeared to be rather restricted unlike before. It was not entirely clear what the rules were, since we got different versions from the various police guards and other horse people.

On our way back out we decided to cut the body wadi out of the route and head home through the countryside which took us past an area that seems to be used as a dump by the stables and local inhabitants. There we made our way past a man hauling a painfully thin dead white horse out to the desert on a wooden wagon and then past an area where a fairly recently dead chestnut horse marked a pile of at least six other bodies and a set of feet that protruded from a blackened pile of debris indicating that someone had used old tires to try to burn a horse's body nearby. It wasn't much of an improvement. Our spirits didn't really rise again until we'd made our way down to the familiar dirt roads of the countryside, having negotiated with a fair bit of difficulty the rush hour traffic on the road that isn't there.

For myself, I will be happy never to ride to Giza again, and my warnings to fellow riders about what kind of things will be seen are clear and blunt. It's much better to go there by car and avoid all of that. It would be even better to see someone help the poor horses who work in horrible conditions, but how that will happen is beyond me, unless the stables simply close due to lack of customers. To be fair, there are some very nicely kept horses there, but I have to wonder at their mental state. My horses find the experience of being in the presence of so much pain and fear quite unsettling. They can deal with chaos, cars, noise and traffic with complete calm, but the fear and pain unhinge them a bit and their relief at leaving the area is so clear.

copyright 2008 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Swimming In A Sea of Germs

About a week or ten days ago a vet friend of mine stopped by and dropped a bombshell. Egypt had been hit with an Equine Influenza epidemic that seemed to have originated in Alexandria but it was moving quickly throughout all the provinces...spreading like wildfire, to use a good summer analogy. Equine Influenza isn't a stranger to us at all. My four weanlings all came down with coughs and runny noses in late May. No one ran much of a fever and two of them graduated to antibiotics for sore throats, but no real harm was done.

As much as we might wish it otherwise, we do share the earth with a lot of creatures, some of which make us ill. Vaccines for horses are not produced in Egypt so most of the available vaccines are imported from Europe or North America. We get local tetanus and rabies, but that's about all. Having decided to educate myself about things medical for both my animals and my human family, I looked at the vaccines that were available here for horses and decided that my horses were probably better off not vaccinated. One of the problems involved was the fact that to facilitate shipping and get more money for the kilo shipped, most of the vaccines here are "five-way" or more...five vaccines in one shot. The research that I've done on the subject indicated that vaccines are better when they are given individually and over a period of time to allow the body to recover between blows to the immune system, since that is what a vaccine is.

We've all become so used to the idea of vaccination that none of really thinks about what a vaccination is. When we get a shot to vaccinate, we are given a small dose of a disease, one that we will recover from with no appreciable after effects within a couple of weeks, giving us immunity to the disease in question. But anyone who's ever carried a fussy baby after its first vaccination or who's had a yellow fever injection, will agree that this is a blow to the immune system that can leave a body feeling pretty ratty. I recall having to double up on some vaccines for a hasty trip to some unusually germy location and being sick as, well, a dog. Imagine how the horse must feel after a shot including five vaccines at once. No thank you.

Another issue is the nature of the influenza virus itself. The flu virus is one of the fastest mutating things on this planet. It is a true pain in the neck for vaccine manufacturers because every year (at least for humans) the decision has to be made as to what the latest version or strain of the flu virus is going to be in the yearly flu shot. If they guess well, the vaccine is a success, but if they don't, it isn't so useful and people still get sick. I don't know about the US, but we have viruses racketing all over Egypt all the time, both human and animal. We are a hub of travel for Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East and there is a huge pool of human and animal bodies to absorb the various varieties that are imported on every plane landing at Cairo International.

All it takes is a horse owner to say farewell to his/her pony before leaving on holiday while wearing a sweater or jacket that gets packed to be used while riding in Egypt, a sweater that has been sneezed on, and we have free shipping. So the likelihood of the particular vaccine matching the particular strain is not all that high. In fact, this seems to have been the case here because some of the horses currently sick are competition jumpers who are required to have had the shots for competitions. Either our vaccine was a bad match, or the horse wasn't really vaccinated or something else went wrong. In fact a vaccinated horse can still get sick, but he/she won't show the symptoms while still shedding the virus and infecting everyone else in reach. I don't know if I really want to have horses around who don't show that they are sick while being infectious. And then we have the problem that horses and donkeys actually work in Egypt and the economy would be hit hard if suddenly all the donkeys carrying food from the fields were told to stay home rather than work for a month or so.

So what do we do in an influenza epidemic? Some of us are keeping our horses at home as much as possible. In my case, they haven't been off the property since we got the news and as few people and cars as possible are coming in. I have broad bands of whitewash powder in front of the gates to disinfect people and cars entering. Visitors can come to the house but the horses are off limits and the paddocks are about 100 meters away and upwind. We are giving the horses herbs to help boost the immune systems and listening carefully for any coughing that might signal that the virus has landed among us. So far so good. I don't worry that I will have a horse drop dead of the virus, but having to nurse 25 equids (donkeys and mules can get this too) really doesn't sound like fun. The horses at the pyramids stables don't have it so easy. Reports from friends who know stables there are that the horses are working as usual, sick or not. The rates of sickness there are higher and there will likely be fatalities due to the lack of care for sick horses. Horses in the pyramids will also sufffer afterwards since the stable owners are unlikely to observe the rule of thumb that a day of respiratory illness should equal a week's rest afterwards. For a bout of EI, they would be looking at a 6 week layup, something that is hardly likely to happen there. It isn't an easy decision for any of us, but I guess it depends on how important your horses are to you.



copyright 2008 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Picking Up A Mule

I have a friend who is besotted with mules. A retired petroleum engineer who is still consulting with companies here in Egypt, Bill decided that rather than buying a fast car to prove that he's still young, he'd buy a mule. His first mule, Lula was a nice little grey hinny and he's been riding around the neighbourhood on her, to the amusement of the local children. In Egypt, mules are not considered appropriate for riding, but Bill is an American and mules are more than appropriate for riding in the US. I've been encouraging him in his fascination because my experience with mules has shown me how intelligent, steady and reliable they are, so he has found a very willing partner. Bill came to me a week or so ago and said that he'd found a nice jack mule and wanted to bring him to the farm. We arranged that I would go with him to meet the soon-to-be previous owner of the mule along with a groom to help with the transport and to try out the mule for riding and a vet to eliminate any extraordinary health problems.

So off we all went to Barragil, a neighbourhood that is in transition from rural to urban near Imbaba. It is not the kind of neighbourhood that most foreigners, or for that matter most Cairenes, visit for fun, but it wasn't nearly as bad as we'd been lead to believe that it would be. Bill and his driver had arranged to meet the mule's owner at a certain corner in the area so we headed there and eventually (nothing in Egypt is straightforward) we found him. Our vet, Karim, checked the mule's legs, chest and body looking for any unrepairable damage. We had no illusions that the mule would be in perfect shape, and he wasn't. Time being driven with a cart in a headpiece that included a thin piece of rope to apply pressure to his nose had left him with a scar across his nose. But this, we assumed, would respond to things like Vitamin E capsules applied to the area to heal it. His lungs were clear, he had no tendon issues and he trotted out cleanly without trying to kill the groom sitting on his back.

His feet, happily a fixable item, were in pretty bad shape. He had three shoes, each of a different type and the hoof of each was a different height. How he could work in any degree of comfort was beyond me. But I'd already arranged with the farrier to come and do something about the trim of his feet. At our place he wouldn't be needing shoes at all. We don't work on asphalt. One of the interesting things about his initial shoeing was the fact that there were pads in place on two of his feet rather randomly, pads constructed of old tires.

Once the inspection was over to our satisfaction, the problem remained of transport to the farm. A pick up truck was rented and it was backed up to a small hill alongside the roadway. Unfortunately the hill was a hill of garbage, and quite reasonably the mule, who we'd found was called Antar, was quite unwilling to use it to launch himself into the pickup. The groom outsmarted him by tying a scarf over his eyes so that he couldn't see what he was walking on, and he was quickly loaded into the truck. Throughout all this we never collected a crowd of more than about half a dozen spectators, practically a record for foreigners doing something weird in Cairo.

In due course, we all arrived at the farm where Antar was more than happy to be unloaded. It was dinnertime when we arrived and the horses couldn't have cared less about Antar's arrival with the exception of Lula, Bill's hinny. She ran up and down the large paddock calling to him as if to say "Look, everyone. One of my kind. I'm not alone. I have family." Antar, on the other hand, was more interested in getting into a clean paddock filled with rice straw and a huge bathtub of clean drinking water. We've tried him under saddle and he's a gentleman, brave of heart and willing to cross large puddles, and he seems to have no real vices. I think that Bill did quite well.

copyright 2008 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Some Horse Sense

In all fairness to one of my anonymous commenters who is convinced that New York's carriage horses are truly abused, most people, especially people in cities, really haven't the foggiest idea about horse care and what constitutes abuse. Horses are large, long-lived social animals who were designed to move constantly and eat constantly, sustaining themselves on food that is not especially high in nutritional value by our standards. They mature slowly, being physically ready for riding only after four years, and mentally mature at about seven years...though some of them never really make it, if you ask their long-suffering owners.

For a horse to be raised and housed in a stall, staying there for most of the day, is roughly akin in abuse terms to raising and housing a child in a walk-in closet. No amount of ceiling fans, automatic waterers or high quality grain is going to make up for the loss of movement, activity, and mental stimulation from being outdoors. Visitors to my farm usually come to ride the horses and even so are often surprised (sometimes happily) to see my horses living outdoors 24/7 in a large paddock all together. This does mean that the more playful youngsters might be sporting the odd scrape from a wrestling match (after all, they have teeth and hooves, right?), or they might be dirty from rolling or sleeping in the sand, but they are happy and healthy. They love to go out for rides in the desert and farming areas, they enjoy being ridden and are well aware of the fact that the humans call the shots. While ponying a group of horses to a neighbouring farm the other day, I dropped the lead lines of two of my geldings. If they were miserable, abused horses, this would be their chance to make a getaway, but instead all it took was a "Well, come on and catch up!" from me to have them walking up to me to collect the lines.

Until recently there was a riding stable near Central Park. It's closed now, and closing it, while not such a great thing for the people who loved to ride the horses, probably wasn't such a bad thing for the horses themselves. They were housed in a stable in an apartment building and had to walk through the streets to get to the park. I don't think that riding horses in cities is such a great idea. I know that the police do so in New York and other large cities, mostly in park areas, and I can see the logic there. The police riders and horses are well trained for their jobs and know what they are doing. The average pleasure rider is much less well-trained, especially for urban riding. But the closing does mean that most people's idea of horses is pretty much what they find in FAO Schwartz.



copyright 2008 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani