The Horse In America

From the Pryor Mountain Mustang to the Tennessee Walking Horse, North America is home to an amazing variety of horses. In this lavish, photograph-filled guide, Judith Dutson provides 96 in-depth profiles that include each breed’s history, special uses, conformation standards, and more. You’ll learn about homegrown favorites like the Morgan, Appaloosa, and Quarter Horse, as well as exotic imports like the Mangalarga Marchador and the Selle Français. Take a continental horse tour without ever leaving your home.

The “insightful [and] even-handed” (Outside) story of a heroic animal whose existence is in danger. The wild horse, popularly known as the mustang, is so ingrained in the American imagination that even those who have never seen one know what it stands for: freedom, independence, the bedrock ideals of the nation. But in modern times it has become entangled in controversy and bureaucratic mismanagement, and now its future is imperiled. In Wild Horse Country, Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times reporter David Philipps traces the rich history of wild horses in America and investigates the shocking dilemma they pose in our own time.

An amazing variety of horse breeds roam North America’s vast and geographically diverse landscape. This detailed portable handbook celebrates the unique qualities of 96 regional breeds, from the sleek muscles of racing thoroughbreds and the stoic power of draft horses to the easy gait of pleasure horses at your local farm. Fascinating facts about each horse breed’s size, talents, and suitability for various types of work are accompanied by full-color photographs in this fun and informative reference guide.

• An insightful and meaningful reader about relationship training methods between man and horse • Features an overview of how horses came to live with Native Americans and the impact on their lives • Provides philosophies and techniques for relationship training methods • Also includes Native American stories and legends about their special relationships with their horses

Tells of the transformative period in the early 16th century when the Spaniards introduced horses to the Great Plains, and how horses became, and remain, a key part of the Plains Indians' culture.

Presents an illustrated examination of the role of horses in Native American culture and history, providing information on the depiction of horses in tribal clothing, tools, and other objects.

On October 20, 1923, at Belmont Park in New York, Kentucky Derby champion Zev toed the starting line alongside Epsom Derby winner Papyrus, the top colt from England, to compete for a $100,000 purse. Years of Progressive reform efforts had nearly eliminated horse racing in the United States only a decade earlier. But for weeks leading up to the match race that would be officially dubbed the "International," unprecedented levels of newspaper coverage helped accelerate American horse racing's return from the brink of extinction. In this book, James C. Nicholson explores the convergent professional lives of the major players involved in the Horse Race of the Century, including Zev's oil-tycoon owner Harry Sinclair, and exposes the central role of politics, money, and ballyhoo in the Jazz Age resurgence of the sport of kings. Zev was an apt national mascot in an era marked by a humming industrial economy, great coziness between government and business interests, and reliance on national mythology as a bulwark against what seemed to be rapid social, cultural, and economic changes. Reflecting some of the contradiction and incongruity of the Roaring Twenties, Americans rallied around the horse that was, in the words of his owner, "racing for America," even as that owner was reported to have been engaged in a scheme to defraud the United States of millions of barrels of publicly owned oil. Racing for America provides a parabolic account of a nation struggling to reconcile its traditional values with the complexity of a new era in which the US had become a global superpower trending toward oligarchy, and the world's greatest consumer of commercialized spectacle.

The rescue of the last diving horse in America and the inspiring story of how horse and animal rescuer were each profoundly transformed by the other—from the award-winning animal rescuer of retired racing greyhounds and author of the best-selling Adopting the Racing Greyhound It was the signature of Atlantic City’s Steel Pier in the golden age of “America’s Favorite Playground”: Doc Carver’s High Diving Horses. Beginning in 1929, four times a day, seven days a week, a trained horse wearing only a harness ran up a ramp, a diving girl in a bathing suit and helmet jumped onto its mighty bare back, and together they sailed forty feet through the air, plung­ing, to thunderous applause, into a ten-foot-deep tank of water. Decades later, after cries of animal abuse and chang­ing times, the act was shuttered, and in May 1980, the last Atlantic City Steel Pier diving horse was placed on the auction block in Indian Mills, New Jersey. The au­thor, who had seen the act as a child and had been haunted by it, was now working with Cleveland Amory, the founding father of the modern animal protection movement, and she was, at the last minute, sent on a rescue mission: bidding for the horse everyone had come to buy, some for the slaughterhouse (they dropped out when the bidding exceeded his weight). The author’s winning bid: $2,600—and Gamal, gleaming-coated, majestic, commanding, was hers; she who knew almost nothing about horses was now the owner of the last div­ing horse in America. Cynthia Branigan tells the magical, transformative story of how horse and new owner (who is trying to sort out her own life, feeling somewhat lost herself and in need of rescuing) come to know each other, educate each other, and teach each other important lessons of living and loving. She writes of providing a new home for Gamal, a farm with plentiful fields of rich, grazing pasture; of how Gamal, at age twenty-six, blossoms in his new circumstances; and of the special bond that slowly grows and deepens between them, as Gamal tests the author and grows to trust her, and as she grows to rely upon him as friend, confidant, teacher. She writes of her search for Gamal’s past: moved from barn to barn, from barrel racer to rodeo horse, and ending up on the Steel Pier; how his resilience and dig­nity throughout those years give deep meaning to his life; and how in understanding this, the author is freed from her own past, which had been filled with doubts and fears and darkness. Branigan writes of the history of diving horses and of how rescuing and caring for Gamal led to her saving other animals—burros, llamas, and goats—first as company for Gamal and then finding homes for them all; and, finally, saving a ten-year-old retired greyhound called King—despondent, nearly broken in spirit—who, running free in the fields with Gamal, comes back to his happy self and opens up for the author a whole new surprising but purposeful world. A captivating tale of the power of animals and the love that can heal the heart and restore the soul.

Beginning with a brief history of the breed, this book offers detailed advice on locating and selecting a horse, as well as stabling, feeding, grooming, and otherwise taking responsible care of the animal. Also explained are the American Quarter Horse's many uses: from informal trial riding to barrel racing, cutting, and reining; from Western horsemanship to show jumping, dressage, and racing. The American Quarter Horse is the indispensable guide for anyone interested in owning and riding America's favorite horse.