From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1992:
Harmony With Horses. By Maurice Wright.
J.A. Allen Horsebooks (1 Lower Grosvenor Place,
Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 0EL, United
Kingdom). 1991. 127 pages. Inquire for current
U.S./Canadian price.
If more of us understood the generous and willing
spirit of horses, fewer horse people would approach them
as “a gladiator, not an educator,” as horsetamer John
Solomon Rarey put it nearly 150 years ago––and fewer ani-
mal rights activists would attack the use of horses for work,
pleasure, and performance. Strangely, however, despite
the prominence of horses in human culture since prehistory,
understanding horses hasn’t been a priority even for many of
those most involved with them. There was a gap of nearly
2,000 years between Xenophon’s instructions to cavalry
masters to treat horses gently, without whips, and the 1550
publication of Federico Grisone’s book on horse training,
which emphasized dominance, and became the basis for
many of the myths, misunderstandings, and downright cru-
elties afflicting horses today. It was only within the last few
years, for example, that the veterinary profession banned
“firing,” the medieval practice of applying hot irons or
caustics to an ailing horse. Tail-docking is still commonly
performed.
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