@Impractical_Horsewoman. So awesome! I had pre-ordered and am now off to my Kindle to catch up on the latest Simon updates.
Thank you!
1 Like
Florian, the film was the first time I ever saw Lipizzans and The Spanish Riding School. It popped up periodically on TV in the '50s. My best horse friend and I piaffed and passaged all over the school yard the next day and things were never the same. Imagine our dismay when we volunteered to do a report on Spain so we could include the Spanish Riding School. Oh the disappointment.
Thank you so much for reading! I hope having a new horsey book brightens this wintery time of year, even if the book is set in summer!
1 Like
To the person or people who recommended the internet archive and the Jean Slaughter Doty books:
Darn you. Darn you all.
I just read The Monday Horses and The Crumb.
How is it possible that these books werenât more popular? Well written, extraordinarily accurate. Is it because they were too true to life?
3 Likes
A friend recommended this book and I love it so much. Not fiction and not training, the author writes about the horseâs evolution as well as several âfamousâ horses. Itâs such a great book for horse lovers.
My impression is that Summer Pony and Winter Pony were pretty well known, as well as her book on pony careâŠ
A thousand percent! Not only are the books incredibly accurate, but the character development and the three-dimensional characterization puts Doty (in my mind) up there with some of the best novelists ever to write for young people. Those books (and Dark Horse, which is also wonderful), are still instructive today about the horse industry, in a way a child can understand.
1 Like
I have read it and I donât think Iâve been on this thread (yet) but itâs great and well worth reading!
Also seconding this one!
To me what was most interesting, besides just the history, generally, is how he shows how the sport has evolved.
For those who havenât yet read them, The Monday Horses follows a tween as she takes a job in a big show stable and learns the ins and outs of the business. It deals with shamateurs, junior pros, drugging, killing horses for the insurance money, clients buying unsuitable horses, barn switching and trainer shopping and violating the green rule. It also has the protaganist getting caught up in point chasing and having competitive fever and a pretty accurate look at full time horse life.
The Crumb is similar, but a little darker.
Wonderful reads, and scarily accurate.
1 Like
They were VERY popular at the time.
There are only a few details in the books that date them - one is horse vans!
Another is outside courses. 
And a pony competing in hunters and jumpers at the same show.
Other than that, they are scarily accurate for todayâs hunter/jumper world
1 Like
Not having read the books I wouldnât instantly interpret âhorse vanâ as dated - I always thought of that as a British/Continental Europe and possibly Aussie/NZ thing rather than something tied to an era?
Interesting. In the US, at least on the East Coast, in the 70s and 80s, most of what you saw at horse shoes where the Frank Imperatore horse vans, painted in the barnâs colors:
Now, most of what you see is big pickup trucks and gooseneck aluminum trailers:
So to me, talking about horse vans puts the story in the 70 - 80s.
1 Like
My favorite horse story growing up-- I reread more times than I can count. No
longer in print, sadly.
1 Like
Midwest - born in early '90s, got into horses when I was 10 in the early '00s, rode western until I was 18, switched to English and got to a ârealâ barn (aka not a backyard place run by people of dubious knowledge levels) in my early 20s.
All Iâve seen - western or english, at the shows Iâve been to as either a participant as a kid in 4-H (rare) or as a volunteer (Iâve def. volunteered at more shows than Iâve ridden in) are pick up trucks hitched up to a trailer. Whether a stock trailer (probably much more common in western), smaller bumper pull, or goosneck. Type of trailer varies.
Iâve heard of horse vans but when Iâve heard about them itâs usually something in the UK/Europe, typically.
Seems this may be a combined generational and regional thing?
EDIT: I even worked at a race track in the late 2010s (that seems so weird to type haha) and even there about all I saw were horse trailers (youâd see some really old school trailers, some of the smaller not-as-fancy trainers, if it worked, they used it. I swear I thought once I saw one of those really old-school tiny two-horse trailers w/no roof but surely no one was still using THAT - though it had to have gotten to the backside somehow. Then on the other end of the spectrum were the huge ones used by professional transporters and the like).
EDIT 2: I have heard of Frank Imperatore though somewhere - possibly from hanging around on social media groups for horse-related history and stuff.
I actually rather like the dated bits now, as an adult, because itâs an interesting window back on that era, even though the personalities and issues are still so relevant today.
The most dated bit I recall from The Crumb was a young woman who has to be weighted to compete during a particular jumping class, because she was so light.
I remembered it so well, I even posted it on my Instagram after rereading the book (apologies for the link, not meant as spam).
Good catch, that kind of blew right by me. Along with a Gold Cup class with two jump offs.
Donât know when the stopped hosting the Gold Cup or when one jump off became the norm. I do remember when there was the weight requirement, and most of the photos of Kathy Kusner you can clearly see her weight pad. There was also a weight requirement for the jumping and endurance phases of eventing, too.
I am considerably older than you. I started riding in the 60s, showing in the 70s. Worked in hunter show barns in the 80s and 90s.
Iâll have to research and see when they did away with that.
ETA: Found it! " The minimum weight requirement was first dropped from show-jumping and in eventing was reduced from 75kg to 70kg for the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games and then abolished for eventing in 1998".
ETA2: They never stopped holding Gold Cup classes, I guess theyâve just been eclipsed by all the other big money classes.
1 Like
History lesson-
The five-year effort to change the weight limit in 3-Day Eventing was spearheaded by Carol Kozlowski (who is quite small). Outside of the Eventing world (were she is a past president of USEA) she is probably best known for competing the Connemara Pony Hideawayâs Erin Go Bragh at the Advanced level.
2 Likes
