Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Horse Lover's Companion Read online

  Big Wins: In 1973, just his second racing season, three-year-old Secretariat won the Kentucky Derby in 1:59.4 seconds, a record that still stands today. He then won the Preakness. It had been 25 years since Citation had won the Triple Crown, but after the Derby and the Preakness, the media, public, and racing aficionados believed that Secretariat would be the next one to do it.

  Finally, on June 9, 1973, before an audience of more than 60,000 in the stands, Secretariat ran what many people say was the greatest race of all time. He won the Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths (about 240 feet), and his time of 2:24 for 1½ miles set a world record that has yet to be broken. The week after the race, Secretariat was on the cover of Time, Newsweek, and Sports Illustrated. Today, he’s still ranked among the top 100 athletes (human or otherwise) of the 20th century.

  To read about more famous racehorses, turn to page 58 and 145.

  Silly as It Seems

  Incitatus may have been the most pampered horse in history—if only by a madman. The ancient Roman emperor Caligula loved horse racing, and the white stallion Incitatus was his favorite steed. Caligula appointed 18 servants to tend to the horse’s needs, and Incitatus lived in a marble and ivory stable. Oats with gold flakes were his regular fare, and he often wore clothes and jewels to official banquets held in his honor.

  Don’t Forget Your Corset

  Horses were a vital part of American history, so it’s no surprise that there are some looney laws about them. Some of these are still on the books.

  Maryland: It’s illegal for a horse to sleep in a bathtub unless his owner sleeps with him.

  Georgia: Horses can’t “neigh” after 10:00 pm.

  Washington: It’s illegal to ride an ugly horse.

  Nebraska: A man can’t ride on horseback without his wife until the couple has been married for one year.

  New Jersey: It’s illegal to pass a horse-drawn carriage on the street.

  California: Horses can’t mate within 500 yards of a church, school, or tavern.

  North Dakota: Every house within the city limits of Bismarck has to have a hitching post.

  Virginia: Married women who ride horses through the town of Upperville while wearing “body hugging clothing” can be fined up to $2.

  Ohio: Men may not “make remarks to or concerning, or cough, or whistle at, or do any other act to attract the attention of any woman riding a horse.”

  Iowa: It’s illegal for horses to eat fire hydrants.

  Louisiana: Horses cannot be tied to trees on public highways.

  New York: It’s illegal to open or close an umbrella when a horse is around.

  Tennessee: In Cumberland County, the horse speed limit is 3 mph.

  Texas: No one can take pictures of horses on Sunday. (The fine for doing so is $1.50.)

  New Mexico: Women who ride horses in public have to wear corsets.

  Arizona: Cowboys may not walk through the lobby of a hotel with their spurs on.

  Great Horses in Small Packages

  Here’s a look at some little horses who inspire big love in a lot of people.

  A Mini History

  Miniature horses have been around for centuries—their remains have even been found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs. But the first known miniature horse breeding program began about 400 years ago with the royal Hapsburg family. A short time later, the horses showed up as an attraction at the Versailles palace zoo in France. And in the mid-1800s, the French empress Eugenie used miniature horses to pull her carriage.

  But when the nobility in France and other parts of Europe fell on hard times because of peasant uprisings and rebellions, the royals didn’t have the money to maintain their tiny horses’ cushy lifestyle. The horses were mostly sold as pets, but some went to European traveling circuses, where the animals learned to do tricks. They also worked in coal mines, pulled peat carts, and plowed fields. And a handful of minihorse lovers kept refining or producing new breeds of small horses.

  The Big Mini Comeback

  By the 20th century, most of the world had forgotten about miniature horses. But that changed in 1962 when an Argentinean breeder, Juan Falabella, sold three of his rare Falabella horses (which resemble mini-Thoroughbred/Arabian horses) to President John F. Kennedy, who gave them as Christmas presents to his children. Soon photos of the little Falabellas grazing on the White House lawn appeared on the covers of news magazines, and interest in owning mini horses skyrocketed.

  Today, miniature horses are one of the fastest-growing types. The American Miniature Horse Association (AMHA)—the leading miniature horse registry—lists about 160,000 of them worldwide.

  But What Makes a Miniature Horse?

  They come in nearly all colors—though not all sizes. Full-grown miniature horses must be no higher than 34 inches at the withers. Despite their small size, though, they aren’t considered ponies because minis still have many horse characteristics: thinner manes and tails, lighter bones, and proportionally larger heads than ponies. A typical mini eats about a half a flake of hay (1½ pounds) and a cup of grain each day. They weigh 250 pounds or less and usually live into their 30s, though some have reached more than 50 years of age. As a breed, minis are friendly, gentle, and intelligent.

  They can have genetic problems, though. Most mini horse registries (including the AMHA) try to improve the lives of miniature horses by working to eliminate dwarfism from bloodlines. Although all mini horses possess some of the genetic markers for dwarfism, some breeders used to deliberately breed dwarfs to get the smallest horses possible. The practice is now discouraged because the dwarf gene causes painful deformities that cripple and even kill miniature horses. Seventeen-inch Thumbelina (officially, the world’s smallest horse) is a dwarf who only comes up to the shins of standard minis. Because her legs are proportionally smaller than her body and her head, she has to wear orthopedic fittings to strengthen her limbs.

  Minis to the Rescue

  Mini horses take on many of the same jobs and functions their larger cousins do. They make great pets, of course, and also compete in miniature horse shows where winners take home trophies and sometimes thousands of dollars. Minis are too small to be ridden by adults, so the owner usually walks alongside the horse. In a performance-class competition, people might run beside their horses while the minis jump small obstacles, or an owner might drive a cart pulled by the horse.

  Some minis even work as service animals. In 2003, the Texas Veterinary Medical Association inducted Buttons, an eight-year-old miniature stallion, into the Texas Animal Hall of Fame “because of the happiness he brings by visiting local nursing home residents and handicapped children in north Texas.” At 32½ inches tall, Buttons is small enough to walk right into the rooms of patients to cheer them up. In one case, an elderly woman who had refused to speak hugged Buttons, cried, and spoke enthusiastically about her love for horses.

  Pint-Sized Help

  Other minis act as seeing-eye horses for the blind. Cuddles, a seeing-eye horse from Ellsworth, Maine, wears leather sneakers to keep her from slipping on floors inside buildings. It’s all in a day’s work for the 24-inch-tall, 55-pound mini who guides her blind owner.

  And Rosie from Arizona visits schools for children with disabilities. The children, who might be intimidated by the size of a large horse, eagerly embrace Rosie. Properly trained, mini horses can help children with disabilities to stand and walk—they can even pull wheelchairs. Once the playthings of royalty, today’s mini horses are working hard to make a big and positive impact on the world.

  From Eohippus to Horse

  Before there were horses, there was eohippus. Here’s how the little prehistorian got its start on the long road to horsehood.

  Rhino Relatives

  Eohippus lived about 50 to 60 million years ago in the Northern Hemisphere and is believed to be the ancestor of modern horses, rhinos, and piglike mammals called tapirs. It was just two feet long and eight or nine inches high at the shoulder—about the size of a small dog. It had four hoofed
toes on its front feet, three hoofed toes on each hind foot, a long skull, and 44 teeth.

  Eohippus didn’t look like a horse at all. It had short legs, a short neck, pads on its toes, and an arched back. The animal made its home in European and North American forests, where its diet consisted mostly of leaves. Over time, though, the Earth’s forests started to shrink, and grasslands spread. So eohippus wandered out into the open and started to nibble on grass.

  Evolving Eohippus

  Plants have to evolve to survive, too, though, so over the next few million years, some of them developed strategies to prevent them from being eaten. In particular, one of eohippus’s main food sources, the “lallang” grasses, developed jagged grains of sand called silica in their leaves. That wore down the eohippus’ teeth, so some of the horses died off. The ones who had bigger teeth with thicker enamel lived long enough to reproduce. In turn, their offspring developed longer faces with stronger jaws to make even better use of those big, strong teeth.

  But while the horses were out there out on the wide-open grasslands, they were easy pickings for predators. So the animals had to be speedy to survive. New generations were longer-legged, faster, stronger, and had fewer toes, until they evolved into the look and size of modern horses.

  Dig It

  In 1841, an English paleontologist named Richard Owen found the first evidence of eohippus: a tooth and part of a jawbone. He suspected it was a horse ancestor because of the tooth, but others initially thought the fossils belonged to a monkey and concluded (incorrectly) that England must have once been a jungle. Over time, though, other scientists figured out that they didn’t come from monkeys at all, but from small horses.

  Then, in 1867, American paleontologists dug up the first complete eohippus skeleton in western Wyoming. A few years later, scientist Othniel C. Marsh named the creature eohippus (or “dawn horse”). The Wyoming find finally revealed a true picture of the horse’s earliest relative.

  Take a Cab, Not a Horse

  Drunks can cause a lot of chaos when they’re horsing around.

  But He Stops at Red Lights!

  In June 2005, Millard G. Dwyer—a man from Kentucky with a history of DUIs in vehicles and on horseback—was caught riding his horse drunk again. This brought Dwyer’s total number of incidents involving both alcohol and horses to three . . . in less than two months. This time, he was weaving around the road, holding up a long line of traffic, and nearly falling off his Tennessee walking horse, Prince. Lieutenant Allan Coomer said, “Usually after the first arrest a lot of them will learn, but this guy was back out there again.”

  Dwyer, however, argued that his horse was accustomed to walking along roads and could carry him home safely without guidance—the horse even knew to stop at red lights. “He said that the horse had a mind of its own and had been in complete control of the situation,” Coomer recalled.

  Fall-Down Drunk

  One night in 2007, in Culpepper, Virginia, Eric Scott Kyff and Lauren J. Allen—both drunk and on horseback—stopped at a 7–11 store. The pair captured the attention of off-duty police officers (and bystanders) when Kyff urinated outside the store. When the onlookers protested, Kyff angrily mounted his horse and tried to run them over. He and Allen eventually fled on their horses, but police cars were already on the way. A chase ensued, with cop cars chasing the suspects on horseback. But Allen soon fell of her horse, and Kyff was thrown off when he ran into a utility wire. The two faced charges of public intoxication, obstruction of justice, and riding on a highway after dark without proper reflective material.

  The kicker: This was the duo’s second arrest that year for saddling up while intoxicated. The first time, they wanted to ride their horses home to avoid driving when two officers confronted them. Both horses and humans were held overnight—the humans in jail and the horses in front of the police station across the street.

  Using Beauty as a Battering Ram

  Melissa Byrum York was arrested in 2007 after police received an unusual report: The intoxicated woman was riding her horse at midnight on the streets of Sylvania, Alabama. “Cars were passing by having to avoid it, and almost hitting the horse,” said Police Chief Brad Gregg. When Officer John Seals attempted to stop York, she refused to dismount. Instead, she used her horse to batter Seals’s police car. York then tried to flee on foot but got her shoe twisted up in the stirrup, leaving her attached to her horse, where she was easily arrested.

  York was charged with seven counts, including DUI, resisting arrest, assault, attempting to elude police, and animal cruelty. (At least one charge—assault—was dropped after authorities decided a horse could not be considered a deadly weapon.) Gregg reported, “From what I’ve heard, the horse was in pretty rough shape after all this . . . [York] was pretty hard on the horse.” Luckily, there was a safe place nearby for the animal to stay. Deputy Brian Keck owned a pasture and took custody of the horse for its protection.

  Horse Talk

  “Be wary of the horse with a sense of humor”

  —Pam Brown, writer

  “Horses and children, I often think, have a lot of the good sense there is in the world.”

  —Josephine Demott Robinson, circus performer

  The Name Game

  When it comes time to name your horse, choosing the right one can be tricky.

  Registration Tips

  If you want to register your horse’s name, you’ll need to get all the rules from the breed’s registry. Some breeds require that you use part of the sire and dam’s names. Others, like Austrias’ Haflinger, have to start with a particular letter. And most limit the number of letters. Be sure to submit several possibilities because most registries don’t allow duplicate names. (The registry will make the final choice.)

  Get Creative

  Many people like to choose something unique for their horse’s name. That’s where the “Horse Name Generator” at ultimatehorsesite.com comes in. The site claims to have more than one million possibilities. Here are a few fun ones:

  Frosted Gold

  Anaconda Pirate

  Tinted Whiskey

  Photosynthetic

  Mighty Serenade

  Gingerbread

  Blotched Doughnut

  Flame-Throwing

  Doodle Implosion

  Conclusion

  Horse Myths

  Since antiquity, horses have fired the human imagination. Here are two horselike creatures from ancient Greece.

  From the Centaur of the Earth

  The legend of the centaur—a creature with the body of a horse and the torso of a man—probably arose when cultures that did not ride horses were invaded by warriors who did. From afar, the horse and rider might have looked like a half-man/half-horse monster, and over time, people created myths to explain them.

  According to the ancient Greeks, centaurs were a powerful race of beings who served one of two functions: some were teachers, but others were followers of Dionysus, the god of wine. As such, many of them were fond of drinking and debauchery. (Their penchant for kidnapping maidens represented man’s bestial and violent nature.)

  The centaurs’ origins are murky. They were descended from Ixion, who tricked and killed his father-in-law. Because his crime was so heinous, none of the gods would allow him to atone for his evil deed.

  Zeus took pity on him, though, and invited him to dinner on Mt. Olympus—where the ungrateful dinner guest immediately set about seducing Hera, Zeus’s wife. When the king of the gods got wind of the plan, he made a double of Hera out of clouds. According to some stories, the fruits of the relationship between Ixion and the cloud were the centaurs. Other legends claim that the centaurs were actually the grandchildren of the pair. Either way, one (Chiron) was different from the rest. Chiron was a wise and skilled medicine man who served as a tutor to many of the Greek mythical heroes. Chiron was also immortal, but when he was accidentally wounded by a poisoned arrow, he suffered so much from the wound that he gave away his immortality to a god named Promethe
us (best known for bringing fire to mankind). Chiron was then able to die peacefully, and his descendants were the wise, academic centaurs.

  Modern Myth: The centaur character has appeared in everything from the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings series to John Updike’s 1964 National Book Award winner, The Centaur. NASA even named its high-energy rocket Centaur. The rocket sends communication satellites into space and is referred to as “America’s Workhorse in Space.”

  Pegasus of My Heart

  The winged horse Pegasus was the son of the sea god Poseidon and the snake-haired monster Medusa. He (and his twin brother, the giant Chrysaor) sprang from Medusa’s neck when a hero named Perseus severed her head. (In another version of the same story, Pegasus and Chrysaor sprang from the drops of blood that dripped onto the ground from Medusa’s severed head.)