All About Horses -1: All About Horses., #1

By Cindy Crank

Stories about cowboys and their horses, rescues, famous horse people, amazing feats, rags to riches tales, wartime heroes, champions, greats and near greats, legends and beloved favourites!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cindy Crank
• Release date: Apr 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9781513069210

Cindy Crank

Cindy Crank is a former competitive rider who grew up with horses and learned to ride at an early age crediting her Grandfather with a love of all things equine. She has spent the last thirty years as author and journalist for countless magazines - mostly horse sport - and as horse sport media specialist. She presently writes a blog about horses and history for a major Canadian horse sport publications group.  

Book preview

ALL ABOUT HORSES- 1

TRUE TALES, FUN FACTS AND AMAZING STORIES.

Stories about cowboys and their horses, rescues, famous horse people, amazing feats, rags to riches tales, wartime heroes, champions, greats and near greats, legends and beloved favourites!

CINDY CRANK

Published by

CINDY CRANK

COPYRIGHT@2018

Table of Contents

The Good Old Days

Sidesaddle History: Elegance with a Fascinating Past.

British Mail Coaches Launched by The Theatre.

London’s Hyde Park: The Ultimate Meet & Greet.

Victorian Funerals

Montreal Sleighing Memories: When Winter was King.

The Mail Must get Through.

Transport in the Victorian Era.

Pomp & Ceremony

The Queen’s Household Cavalry

The Saga of The State Coach Britannia

All The Queen’s Horses.

Racing: The Sport of Kings

Battleship: Sailing to Victory Across the Ocean.

Red Pollard and Seabiscuit: Inspiration during the Depression.

Northern Dancer: The Super Horse that Nobody Wanted.

Place Your Bets! All about the Kentucky Derby & the Famous Hats!

Remembering Secretariat: The X Factor of His Success.

Moifaa: Tall Tale Winner of the Grand National.

Cowboys & Indians

Cowboys & the Great Texas Cattle Drives.

Death Valley and the Borax Mule Trains.

Special People, Special Horses

Bless the Grooms.

Stroller: Four Legs and a Pair of Wings.

Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty.

Horse Whisperers: The Origins, Societies and Secrets.

The Newfoundland Pony.

The Sand Pounders: The U.S. Coast Guard Mounted Patrol.

Horsepower: Horses helping Horses and People.

Emily Davison and the 1913 Epsom Derby Disaster.

Federico Caprilli: The Forward Seat from a Forward Thinker.

The Fire Horses of Yesteryear.

The History of Rocking Horses: From Basic Boards to Collector Items.

War Heroes

Warrior: The Horse the Germans Couldn’t Kill.

Princess Louise: Canada’s Equine War hero.

Knights and Horses of the Middle Ages.

The Unsung Heroes Who had no Choice. The War Horses of WWI.

World Events

Unique, Bizarre & Memorable Olympic Equestrian Moments.

The Poo Conference of 1898 & the World Crisis of Too Many Horses.

Triumph over Tragedy

Prodigioso: The Everglades Horse who overcame physical abuse, neglect and a fear of humans to triumph in the show ring and in our hearts.

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You will see the height of horses in this book written as 16 or 15.2 hh. (hands high) A horse is measured in hands, and each hand is considered 4 inches. Therefore, a horse who is 16 hands would be 16 x 4=64 inches.  A horse who is 15.2 hands would be 15 x 4=60 inches plus 2 = 62.

The difference between a horse and a pony is size. A pony is not a baby horse, both are of the same species, Equus caballus and come from the exact same family tree. A pony is considered anything under 14.2 hh (14 x 4=56 plus 2= 58 inches or 1 47 cm).  A horse is 14.2 hh and over.

Ponies often tend to be mischievous and devious, but many are ideal as pets and for riding by smaller children.

The Good Old Days

Sidesaddle History: Elegance with a Fascinating Past.

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Thanks to Valerie Durbon Photography for this photo of the exuberant entries in the sidesaddle race at the Loudoun Hunt Point to Point at Oatlands Plantation, Leesburg, Virginia, April 2015. Devon Zebrovious on Quest (far left) won.

When I researched the history of sidesaddles I believed I’d be writing about the mechanical changes to women’s saddles or so-called saddles: a tweak here, a foot board there, an extra horn tacked someplace else...simple stuff! Well, my eyes were opened wide.

The history of the sidesaddle unearths a load of social and political issues with the sidesaddle itself becoming a much-disliked symbol of the social, political and equestrian domination of the fairer sex that women were ready to fight and ride against. These ladies of the late 19th and early 20th century, and indeed some famous one’s centuries before, refused to bend to the wishes of men and the emancipation of women, the suffragette movement, and the right to vote were key issues.

Before the 14th century, the first sidesaddle was a pillow strapped to the back of a man’s saddle. This was called a pillion, and the woman had to sit sideways on the horse and was led by a man or boy. Later a saddle with a foot rest and back rest were developed called a planchette and this too had my fair lady sitting sideways. Later a horn was added, and the famous Catherine de Medici is credited with adding a second horn for stability also offering the rider the ability to face forwards. The leaping horn was added in the 1800s by Frenchman Jules Pellier and this allowed ladies to enter the hunting field and to jump.

When Central Asian women wanted to ride for fun, sport or for war, they rode astride like their comrades and brothers while the Mongolians, Hawaiians and the Comanches viewed their ladies riding astride with pride. Greek toga attired men were stunned at the daring exploits and riding abilities of ‘amazon’ lady riders who wore pants and rode astride!

The free-thinking Wife of Bath from Canterbury Tales made lengthy journeys astride in Chaucer’s time with whip and spurs around the 1200s and Joan of Arc rode astride in armour. When Princess Anne of Bohemia traveled to England to wed King Richard II in 1382 she was transported in a chair-like affair that was based on a packsaddle design. There was a wooden plank to support her feet and she could grip the mane if needed. As author CuChullaine O’Reilly FRGS noted in her article Sidesaddles and Suffragettes – the fight to ride and vote, The reins, both of personal power and individual equestrian control, had been taken away by men who now restricted a woman’s political and equestrian destinies.

Over the next two centuries the sidesaddle became the accepted and proper method of equestrian travel for women; riding astride was not something a lady would do. In fact, it would have been considered a punishable offence. However, not everybody subscribed to sidesaddle riding and Catherine the Great of Russia, (1729 – 1796) who didn’t care two hoots what people thought about her, rode astride and ordered her court ladies to do the same.

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Rhonda Watts Hettinger riding Der Freischütz (Isaac) in the Heard Cup Division at the New England

Hunts Championship Hunter Trials, either 1995 or 96. Photo credit: Rhonda Watts Hettinger

With the approach of the 20th century, change was in the air. The liberated lady riders from the Western USA were turning their noses up at their Eastern New York sisters who still rode sidesaddle in Central Park saying: Not one of us would tolerate the old-fashioned sidesaddle. In 1913, England’s Queen Mary tried to ban woman riding astride in Hyde Park. The women of the American West bristled with opposition and the LA Times wrote: God Save the Queen from starting any more fool notions.

Initially it wasn’t the suffragettes who caused the first wrinkle in the fabric of the status quo. It was the Female Long Riders on both side of the Atlantic...those ladies of adventure who make today’s endurance rides pale by comparison. Let’s look at three of these women who chose to ride like a man and helped break down the social and equestrian barriers one ride at a time.

In the fall of 1910, Two Gun Nan Aspinwall rose astride from San Francisco to New York in a split skirt and shod her horse along the way. Upon arrival she rode her horse into an elevator and went up to the top of the highest building in the city at that time.

Alberta Claire was another power packed lady who rode 8,000 miles throughout the USA ending her trip in New York. She said she associated her right to vote with her right to ride astride. Teddy Roosevelt met her in the Big Apple, praised her and urged that women be given the vote.

Ella Sykes, a British Long Rider made her way across the deserts of Persia and stated that it wasn’t the Muslims who almost slew her; it was the sidesaddle that nearly took her life on several occasions.

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Two Gun Nan Aspinwall. Thanks to http://cowboylands.net/blog/

Inez Milholland can also be credited with leading an equestrian and political revolution. She was from a wealthy American family and became a lawyer, political activist, suffragist, and speaker. She galloped through Hyde Park in London astride and bucked many of the trends of the male dominated society in which she was born.  She made three rides astride in 1912 through New York and Washington backed by thousands of determined women who would not give up despite being attacked, spat upon and scorned. Her final ride in New York ended in a rally witnessed by 150,000 people. The female vote would happen seven years later in 1920.

By the 1930s more and more women were riding astride. One Washington newspaper wrote that after the death of Inez Milholland at the age of 30 even society ladies had become, full-fledged straddlers.

Today there is a huge surge in popularity with riding sidesaddle and it is, without a doubt, one of the most elegant classes at horse shows, hunt races, or in the hunting field.

British Mail Coaches: Launched by the Theatre!

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The public postal service in England first got the go ahead in 1635 when post-boys carried the mail between posts to a local postmaster who took out the letters for the region and sent the boy onto to the next post. However, these youngsters were all too often targets for thieves, and the lure of cool ale and a roadside rest on a hot day made mail delivery unpredictable at best.

Enter John Palmer, a theatre owner in Bath, who had devised a quick way of moving his actors from one theatre to another and thought his system might work for the mail. William Pitt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was farsighted enough to believe in Palmer’s idea and an experimental coach took off in a cloud of excitement and dust from Bristol on August 2, 1784 at 4:00 p.m. and reached London 16 hours later, beating the previous time by 22 hours! By the spring of 1785 mail coaches from London served the towns of Liverpool, Leeds and Norwich and eventually Dover, Portsmouth, Poole, Exeter and Holyhead just to name a few.

The coaches and drivers were under contract and the guard was the only Post Office employee on board.  He carried two pistols and a blunderbuss and looked resplendent in an official red coat complete with gold braid and blue lapels topped by a black hat with gold band. He carried a long horn to warn other road users, and the toll keeper who let the mail coach pass through at no charge. At the villages where the coach did not stop, the sound of the horn alerted the postmaster and the mailbags were thrown to the ground as the coach galloped by while the regional bags of mail were flung up to the guard to be taken onwards. While the guard took his horn blowing seriously in larger towns and cities, along country roads, they developed melodies and tunes to pass the time and enliven spirits. Still today at horse shows the mail coach horn blowing competition is a favourite!

The advent of the mail coach was the epitome of village excitement in those days and people gathered to watch the coach arrive or leave; they were finally connected to the world beyond!

The coach driver had to handle coach and horses at blistering paces in all conditions. Often, young men bribed the coach driver to let them take the reins. So exciting was driving these massive vehicles with super horse power that with the demise of the mail coaches, four- and six-hand driving clubs were formed. The coachman’s role, once seen as that of mere driving servant, was now the ‘thing to do’ amongst the male gentry with a need for speed in competitions and a wish to be seen driving a stunning coach with matching team.

Initially, mail coaches allowed four passengers to ride inside and soon after an additional person was permitted to ride next to the driver. Later two more sat behind the driver when an extra seat was added but the guard’s place was sacrosanct, and nobody was to sit beside or near him and his precious cargo of mail.

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Science Museum, London - Old Mail Coach c1820 was used between London and York.

One of the few genuine surviving mail coaches. Credit Danie VDM

Riding in a mail coach was not for the faint hearted. The roads where rutted, rough and muddy quagmire slowed progress in poor weather requiring the gentlemen to get out and push or, get out and walk up steep hills to save the horses.  The coaches galloped on at a furious speed scattering all in their path and inn stops were just for changing horses every 10 miles. Some lengthy routes saw the need for 100