In 1947 a Quarter-Horse mare, Barbara B, raced against a famous Thoroughbred in a quarter-mile dash. The purpose was to prove the superiority of the Thoroughbred. But history only repeated itself. The Quarter Horse won!
Short racing has not changed much since colonial days. The track is nearly always a straightaway, and there is seldom a mechanical starting gate. The Quarter Horse jumps out from a standing position, and there is no crowding at the turns, for there are none. Each horse stays in his own lane or he is disqualified. At the start of the race the horses are often recalled again and again, and only an animal with a good disposition could keep up his eagerness to go.
Admirers of his placid disposition like to tell about the mare that pulled a washerwoman’s cart down in Texas. The mare was a full sister to Kingfisher, a most C.A.Q.R.H. If she had wanted to, she could have flown through the streets, pitching clean shirts high into the air. Did she do it? No! She obeyed the traffic laws and stopped at each customer’s house, nice as you please. As her brother became more famous, horsemen trailed the cart begging to buy or trade for the mare. But the washerwoman refused to sell. “I ain’t a-going to do it,” she flatly pronounced. “I raised up this filly foal on a bottle and she thinks I’m her mammy. If I lets her go, I’d only spend the cash and then where’d I be? Back scrubbing clothes again, and no horse to tote ’em.”
For nearly three hundred years the Quarter Horse has been a distinct type but not until 1941 was he recognized with a stud book of his own. Now he is no longer just a type, no longer just a poor man’s race horse. He has his own registry like other breeds. At last that bulldog tenacity has won! And, with little fox ears pricked, he goes on in the tradition of his forebears—race horse and cow pony both.
The Palomino
FOR YEARS THE WORD PALOMINO spelled one thing, C-O-L-O-R. The goldest color in the world. But today, besides the emphasis on color, the Palomino is accepted as a breed.
To reproduce Palominos is such an uncertain venture that a tingle of excitement and apprehension hovers over the marebarn at foaling time. For only a few of the colts turn out to be golden. Even if both parents are Palomino, the youngster may be a colorless creature with glassy pink or blue eyes . . . an outcast! When this happens, the stable owner turns away, heavy-hearted, wondering why in the world he ever wanted to raise golden horses.
But even in his disappointment he knows why. He is a prospector, searching for gold, hopeful of finding a sire and dam that will always stamp their offspring with Palomino gold. This bonanza is still a dream, but each year it seems nearer reality. Breeders are learning that when one parent is bright chestnut and the other Palomino, a golden colt may well be expected.
Sometimes outcroppings of gold appear quite by accident among Arabians, American Saddle Horses, and Quarter Horses. These Palomino foals come as a happy surprise—a gold premium! They can be entered in their own registry, just as if they wore the sedate gray, bay, brown, or black of their ancestors. And for good measure they can be entered in the Palomino Registry, too.
The name “Palomino” whets the imagination. Some say the word comes from the Spanish palomo, which means a white pigeon or a man dressed completely in white. Others point to the Spanish word palomilla, which means a moth or a milk-white steed. Palomino breeders disagree with both; they insist that a Palomino is not a white horse. The only white about him is his mane and tail, and white stockings or socks perhaps, or a white blaze.
Only in the United States is the name Palomino used at all. In Mexico, golden horses are Ysabellas in honor of the Spanish queen; in Peru they are Bayos for the color, bay; and in Spain they are simply Caballos de Oro, Horses of Gold.
The Palomino came to America by way of Spain—from the royal family of Palomina. They were wine makers for the king, and they used golden grapes to make their wines. They were noted too for the beauty of their royal horses, described as “tawny creatures with manes and tails white as milkweed floss.”
Just how the golden horses reached America is a mystery. Storytellers give many versions. The most romantic is the legend of Don Estaban, a wealthy wheat grower of Old California. One year at harvest time, when extra horses were needed to thresh the wheat, he called his peons together. “Ride into the hills,” he commanded. “Gather in many horses. And to the one who brings me the most beautiful steed I will give a bagful of silver.”
The peons rode hard and fast, the promised silver already jingling in their ears. But in the roundup they could not pick out any one animal because of the dust the fleeing horses made. They were completely swallowed in dust, and later in the threshing their coats were all covered with chaff. It was a sharp-eyed Indian boy who spied the merest glint of gold in the dusty mob. He singled out the bright one, brushed him clean, washed his mane and tail, and presented him to Don Estaban. This one, the story goes, was the first true Palomino found in the New World.
Mexicans tell a different tale. On a quiet starless night two Indians, they say, stole into the hacienda of a Spanish grandee and spirited away a pure-white stallion and a chestnut mare. Almost a year later the mare escaped from the Indians and fled back home with a golden filly tagging at her heels.
Whichever story you believe, it seems that both golden creatures were remarkable for more than color. They had the prominent dark eyes and the underlying dark skin of the Arabian, and his graceful body lines as well.
Palominos flourished in numbers for a while, and then they began to peter out because they lost their Arabian look. Who wanted to ride a jug-head, even if his color did vie with the sun? The established breeds could furnish better riding horses, and color was only skin deep after all.
But was it? California, always partial to its gold, began to “breed up” the Palomino. Horsemen brought in chestnut and bay Arabians, Thoroughbreds, Morgans, American Saddle Horses, Quarter Horses, and bred them to their Palominos. They wanted to produce more than color, and they did. Today the dark eyes, the underlying dark skin are specifications for acceptance in the Palomino Registry, plus the golden color of course. And the color can vary only in the degree of its goldness—three shades lighter or three shades darker than a newly minted coin.
In time California breeders developed three fixed types of Palominos—the stock horse, the pleasure horse, and the parade horse. The stock horses are really glorified Quarter Horses, and Roy Rogers’ Trigger was the most famous of them all. They can do what any good Quarter Horse can do—help in steer roping and bulldogging, and race the quarter-mile to win. One golden stock horse could take a lasso in his teeth and rope a little dogie all alone. Another, Gold King Bailey, in race after race with Quarter Horses and Thoroughbreds, finished away out in front. He won so many times they nicknamed him Galloping Gold.
The pleasure Palomino often has American Saddle Horse blood in his veins. When he high-steps the bridle paths or hacks across country, his owner sits tall in the saddle, quite aware of the beautiful picture they make.
The parade Palominos, however, are the best known. In the Tournament of Roses on New Year’s Day they are, for many, more stirring than the millions of roses covering the floats. It is the Palominos that draw shrieks of joy from the children, especially when the sheriff’s golden posse marches by to the oom-pah, oom-pah of the bands.
Life for a parade Palomino is a gay round of music and excitement. He could enter a parade naked and still be beautiful. But instead his saddle is heavy with silver and gems until his coat and his trappings outshine one another. In action his tail is high-flung, his neck arched. He prances, he dances, he struts. He seems to know that his business is show business.
This new breed of Palominos has become so popular that horsemen from all over the world are going west to find them. A new gold rush is on! Men seek Palomino gold.
The Shetland Pony
THE STORY OF THE SHETLAND pony is a Cinderella story. Sheltie, as he is called in Great Britain, started out in life as a drudge. In the bleak and stormy Shetland Islands north of Scotland he was a m
iniature draft animal, a chunk. He looked like a drafter, with his blocky build, and he worked like one, patiently and all day long.
It was Sheltie who carried bulging baskets of peat down from the hills to heat the little cottages in the glens. It was Sheltie who carried sacks of seaweed up from the shore to fertilize the tiny farm patches. And it was Sheltie who worked in front of a small wooden plow while his thrifty master spread seaweed in the furrows.
Never was there another pony who filled so many needs. For long years he furnished the only transportation on the islands. Even though he stood but thirty-nine inches high, the people rode him wherever they went. If the cluster of shops that made up a “toon” was twenty miles away, or even thirty, they often rode him there without stopping! Sometimes the rider was a man, hard-muscled and big. Sometimes it was a plump woman whose skirt billowed out like a feather bed, and all that showed of poor Sheltie was his pert little head and his grand sweeping tail.
But Sheltie bore his burdens as patiently as he bore the weather. Drizzle, drizzle, drizzle. Wind, wind, wind. What did it matter? His wild mop of a mane made a shield for his eyes, and his long shaggy hair made a good raincoat. Rain-and windproof, he faced the brawling blast of the gales and the spindrift of the sea.
Sheltie worked as a pit pony, too, in the mines of England. Here he pulled coal cars through the long cramped passageways, his lungs breathing coal dust and hot stuffy air, his ears deafened by the tumbling lumps of spilling coal. Some of the pit ponies never, in all their lives, came up for a breath of clean, fresh air. And they could never rear up in play without butting their heads against the low roofs. In fact, a pit pony forgot how to play. He just worked the days around and slept the nights around, and lived and died in the pits.
But at last a happy day arrived. The mines were electrified, and there was no longer the need for a pit pony. At last roads were carved through the rocky hills of the Shetland Islands, and trucks came to replace the pack pony.
Now a happy thought came to the islanders. Why could not their husky little drafters become children’s ponies the world over? For answer, they hoisted the squealing creatures aboard steamers by means of slings and cranes, and off the ponies sailed—far across the sea to America.
At the end of the journey a curious thing happened. All in a twinkling life for Sheltie was transformed. It was as if some magic wand had touched him. The wand had five pudgy fingers that tippeted lightly over his shaggy coat, then wriggled deep into the thick warm fur beneath. Wide, ecstatic eyes looked long into his own. Small palms reached out to cup his muzzle. And suddenly in the touching it seemed that two long-lost creatures were restored to each other.
Children everywhere claimed the tiny pony for their own, and Sheltie basked in happiness. From a workaday drudge he became a fun-loving playmate. No door was closed to him, for he taught himself how to slide bolts, open gates, rattle latches. His long lips became expert in plucking caps from children’s heads or handkerchiefs from pockets. And always these little tricks ended in a rousing game of tag.
As for work, there was none! A canter over the countryside with a lightweight child on his back was no work. Or pulling a basketcart of children to a picnic. He liked picnics. To him they meant cool streams with forget-me-nots growing in tasty clumps along the banks, and a tossed apple core to munch for dessert.
As a child’s playmate Sheltie no longer needed to look like a chunk. In fact, a child could ride more securely if he were able to clasp the pony with his knees. With that in mind breeders began to develop the American type Shetland, slimmer of barrel but no taller.
And so with the years there came to be two types of Shetlands—the slender American and the English draft. While the English type is usually solid black, brown, or bay, the American is often piebald. Children seem just as eager to adopt one as the other.
Parents, too, are completely won by the Shetland’s gentle charm. And they have found that the way to keep him gentle is to make certain he is neither overfed nor mistreated.
To understand the care and keeping of our present-day Shetlands, we need to peer into their past with pony-like curiosity. Picture those lonely Shetland Islands—so lonely that when the Romans discovered them they named the group Ultima Thule, or the edge of the world. Picture the wind, lashing and pounding the land so that trees grew dwarfed or not at all. And picture the rocks whipped bare of soil except for a thin layer in the glens. The people had to work so hard to wrest a living that they needed a sturdy little beast to work with them. It was the Sheltie that became their farmhand. But in return for his labors there was little the people could give. All they could do after the day’s work was to throw him a bit of hay or turn him out to the coarse grass. And if the spring was slow in coming, there was often no fodder at all except heather or prickly seaweed left by the tide. But one thing the Shetlanders did give their ponies in abundance, and that was comradeship. Their low graystone cottages had but one door, and when the wind lashed into a fury and the sea battered at the rocks and went up in funnels of spume, then man and pony hurried through the same door and found warmth and comfort around the glowing peat fire.
It needs only a little imagining to see that our Shelties, too, will thrive on the same treatment—the simplest of fare, the daily canter, and the open door to our hearts.
The Welsh Mountain Pony
BLUE RIBBONS, RED RIBBONS, YELLOW ribbons, white ribbons! In show classes for ponies, sometimes there is more than one kind of champion—the blue-ribbon pony and also the boy whose pony just misses.
For one hurt second the boy blinks back his tears, pretending he doesn’t care. And then in a flash he really doesn’t. He remembers the time his pony carried him down the slippery sides of a stone quarry until they stood in the very bottom of the cup, then up and up again to the dizzying rim above the whole wide world. And he remembers the day his pony jumped across a deep ravine and all the others balked.
Remembering all this, he strokes the sleek neck, swings astride, and bravely trots his pony out of the ring behind the winner.
The judge, with a deep sigh of relief, mops his forehead. “There go two champions,” he mutters to no one at all, “the light gray Welsh and that thoroughbred boy astride the dark one!”
More and more, big shows and small ones are offering classes for the best ponies, and more and more the finely made Welsh is coming out of obscurity to carry away the blue ribbons. He is frequently the graduation mount for the boy or girl whose legs have grown too long for the Shetland.
Who would suspect that the ancestors of this delicately made pony were half-wild refugees, hiding in the craggy mountains of Wales, escaping one enemy only to meet another?
First they were hunted and tracked down by the sheep herders, who looked upon them as thieves of the juicy grasses belonging to their sheep. Often the herders would capture a band, kill off the colts for food, and throw the scraps to their dogs. These sheep dogs were strong as wolves and, once having tasted pony meat, they hunted the little fellows themselves, stealing up on them silently without the least warning. A mare would be grazing peacefully and suddenly she would look up to see a snarling dog ready to leap at her foal. In a flash she was between them, springing at the killer with her forefeet, then driving her young one into a gallop through narrow passes, up a steep scarp, leaping from ledge to ledge until at last they were safe in the folds of the mountains. Tiny colts only a few weeks old had to learn to take their first jumps to save their lives. Some were strong enough to escape; when they did they became nimble and wondrously wise.
But the sheep herders and their dogs were only small annoyances. The law was a bigger enemy. It reached out from the throne of England and shoved the ponies deeper and deeper into the mountains. King Henry VIII, with a gesture of his jeweled hands, decreed that “little horses and nags of small stature must be eliminated from the common grazing grounds.” As a result many ponies were killed and others fled into the mountain fastnesses. Here they found a quiet tableland high
above the grazing grounds, and although the rocky soil furnished scanty herbage, the air was clean and clear, and sparkling cold drinking water bubbled down the mountainsides.
Yet even here they were attacked. Now winter was their enemy, biting with the sharp fangs of wind, howling into their ears, spitting hail and sleet at them. Sometimes the herds had to sneak down into the valleys to find food.
But hardships strengthen. And so it was with the ponies. Those that survived developed hoofs as flinty as the rocks they climbed, and hocks and haunches like steel springs, and lung and heart room to send them traveling like will-o’-the-wisps.
No! Enemies did not stamp out the spirited Welsh pony. They only made him stronger, hardier, wiser; and, above all, they preserved the purity of his blood. By not mixing with other breeds he has remained distinct.
There is a fineness about the Welsh pony, a kind of nobility in his bearing as if he knows that in his veins flows the blood of the Arabian. It shows in the refinement of his head, in his dished face, his “pint pot” muzzle, even in his color. Never is there a piebald or a skewbald among the true Welsh mountain ponies. They are bay, brown, or chestnut, with grays predominating, just as in the Arab.
At first people wondered how the blood of the horse of the desert found its way into the Welsh mountains. Then as they began to ask questions, it became clear. In faraway times had not the Romans invaded Wales? And was it not likely they had brought with them the spoils of their campaigns in Africa—the desert ponies that satisfied their eye for beauty and their need for quick flight? For four hundred years the Romans had occupied Wales, importing more and more Arabian horses which mingled with the native wild herds. Their offspring became pack ponies for the Romans, but they did not look like pack ponies at all. They had the elegant form of the Arabian, and they were fleet of foot like the Arabian—in truth, they were diminutive Arabians.
Album of Horses Page 8