The Stable Yard Is Silent
The hundredth anniversary this summer of the First World War has reminded all of us of that terrible conflict. In England, James Barclay, ex-MFH, tossed and turned through the early morning hours one night this month. Thoughts of the war, the carnage that took its toll on his family members and many horses, and what those years meant to a way of life that was so much a part of the Barclay family ran through his head. He got out of bed, sat down, and wrote this poem. At 6:30 am he finished writing. Twenty minutes later the South Wold Foxhounds came up his drive on summer exercise, making his world right once again.
The stable yard is silent, no equine friends, no ears twitching over the doors.
Where have they gone? They have gone to Europe to fight a war.
Will they be back to graze the summer pastures green?
Will they be back to see the autumn mist and hear hounds running?
Will they be back to enjoy the fifty minutes across the grass?
They and their Masters have gone to defend our freedoms.
In mud and wire they toil, no end in sight,
But the thought of hounds running and their cry deep in their veins,
Make our horse and human friends dream, dream of
A cold winter’s night, hacking homewards with the moon up high.
Male or Female Rider: Does It Matter to the Horse?
Does the sensitivity of a woman rider improve the way a horse performs? Or does the strength of a male rider produce better performance? According to scientists at Veterinärmedizinische Universität (Vetmeduni) in Vienna, the horse doesn’t care. Scientists there recently published a paper describing how they arrived at their conclusions. Eight horses, eight male […]
A Miracle of Love and Hope…And a Horse Named Logan
Scout and LoganOur dear friend Scout (Vicki) Valentine can breathe thanks to a miracle. The miracle that skilled surgeons, with God’s help, can take the working, useful lungs from a person who has left this life and place them in a person whose work on this earth is not done. The further miracle that the timing of the donor’s passing coincided with the hour of Scout’s greatest need.
Scout received her new lungs in the very early hours of June 8, 2013. The journey to that day began nearly two years earlier when Scout developed a nasty cough. It was diagnosed as pneumonia and treated as such. It seemingly was on its way to resolution until several months later when it became apparent there were some lingering symptoms.
Over the next several months diagnostic tests were run and Scout fluctuated between feeling normal and feeling just a bit off. The “off” didn’t stop her from being active. She continued to run several days a week and take riding lessons which she had begun in 2010. She had made her debut in the hunt field in early 2011 at a Red Rock Hounds joint meet in Santa Ynez and had become quite hooked on riding.
A Horse Did That
Each summer, before Saratoga gets rolling in August, the advance teams arrive and get to work. Here’s what it was like for Joe Clancy. Lucky there was a horse around to help.
OK, breathe.
As usual, I spent the first two days of the meet hassling through any number of issues including—but by no means limited to—computer networks, the Internet, advertisements, articles, photography, housing, office space, bicycles, paper racks, paper boxes, a new printer.
Then came distributiongate and what now seem like days (but merely hours I guess) of telephone calls and discussions and wonder and angst. In the end, it all worked out. The computers communicated with everything. The ads showed up. We finished the first paper, we weathered a storm.
Maryland Celebrates its Equine Past with Tours
Maryland has a rich equine history that includes Thoroughbred breeding and racing, a part in the birth of the U.S. Cavalry, and foxhunting. To celebrate that history, the Horse Industry Board of the state’s Department of Agriculture in concert with the Maryland Historical Society have created a free history tour in eleven parts on […]
They Just Don’t Get It
Karen L. Myers photoThere are numerous unrelated constituencies roiling the pot in the New York City horse carriage controversy, and all of them—from stakeholders to politicians to the news media—express strong opinions on one side or another.
There are the animal rights activists who don’t believe animals should work, real estate developers who see big profits in renewing the stable property for higher-income use, politicians elected with the help of large donations from those who would ban the carriages, carriage drivers who are threatened with loss of livelihood, tourists and romantics who feel that iconic images of New York City should be preserved, and true horse people who are saddened to see any traditional horse activity lost to contemporary life. It’s the latter group that is the least understood.
NYC Mayor’s Horse Carriage Ban Faces Opposition
The city council votes are insufficient thus far to ban horse-drawn carriages in Central Park. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio had vowed two days before his election to end that romantic tradition in his first week in office. Twelve weeks later, such a bill has yet to be introduced. Animal rights activists claim that […]
“Dr. Joe”: An Appreciation
“Dr. Joe” Rogers, MFH / Douglas Lees photoDr. Joseph M. Rogers, who died March 8 at his beloved Hillbrook farm near Hamilton, Virginia, was of a rapidly disappearing breed of Virginians whose financial resources made possible the pursuit of a mission to preserve the countryside before it passed from reality to a lithographic memory.
These Virginians did not keep score with coin. The acquisition of land was not an egotist’s pursuit, and its preservation was not a beauty contest. Land was acquired and cared for because it represented an irreplaceable resource. That it provided the setting for pursuit of agricultural business and field sport was a cherished benefit, not a root rationale. To do otherwise, he believed, was to leave God’s earth to the vagaries of the marketplace.
“Dr. Joe,” as he was known by all, was at heart a man of that earth. He admired a craftsman who could build a proper four-panel fence or shoe a horse as much as he respected a man who made his fortune in business. In many cases, more so. He took pride in being able to train one species of canine to be capable of pursuing another much craftier, quicker, and agile species—a sport called foxhunting, in which the hunted had nearly insurmountable advantage over the hunter. It is a picturesque sport, photographed, illustrated, written about, and otherwise memorialized. But it was also a lot of hard work when you were in charge of bringing the show to the field.
The Clipper that Stands in the Stall at the Top
Illustration by Lionel EdwardsNot long ago we polled our readers and were pleased to find that the great majority of you enjoyed reading the classic foxhunting poems. Here’s one such classic that to me best expresses the pride, gratitude, and love the foxhunter feels for that one special horse—the most generous, the most reliable, the most gentlemanly of all we’ve had—that takes us over the day’s obstacles and brings us safely home.
Go strip him, lad! Now, sir, I think you’ll declare
Such a picture you’ve never set eyes on before,
He was bought in at Tatt’s for three hundred I swear,
And he’s worth all the money to look at, and more;
For the pick of the basket, the show of the shop,
Is the Clipper that stands in the stall at the top.
In the records of racing I read their career,
There was none of the sort that could gallop and stay,
At Newmarket his sire was the best of the year,
And the Yorkshiremen boast of his dam to this day;
But never a likelier foal did she drop
Than this Clipper that stands in the stall at the top.
Field Hunter Championship of North America Is Scheduled
The 2013 Field Hunter Championship of North America will be held in Virginia from Monday, September 30 to Sunday, October 6. Competitors will hunt four days, with fixtures at Keswick Hunt, Casanova Hunt, Snickersville Hounds, and Piedmont Fox Hounds. The Finals will be held on Sunday, October 6 at Glenwood Park. The final day at […]