Re: artifice (was Desperado V)

["Susan Garlinghouse" <suendavid@worldnet.att.net>]

> So now you know how the show walking horsesare produced. Back in the old
days
> there were a few horses that had it up front and behind. So since then
it's been
> trick and soring to get them to do up front what a few could do.

Yup, way back before the "big-lick" horses were stopped from showing out
West (at least in my area), they used to show at the Fall Classic along with
the saddlebreds and Andulusians.  The TWH had to move like iguanas behind to
compensate for the stacks in front, yet I heard more than one big-lick
trainer insist the movement was natural (it undoubtedly was, but then why
make something so beautiful so ugly with such artifice?)

I came across an article in last April's JAVMA (Journal of the American
Veterinary Medical Association) written by the instructor of a veterinary
ethics course I'm currently enrolled in and it struck me as particularly
fitting to endurance riding and all equine disciplines.  Here's the last
paragraph:

"One can have racing without racing horses who are not biologically ready
and without drug abuse; one can have horse training which works with the
horse's nature and not against it, brutally bending it to our will (such
training is in any case more beautiful and elegant).  One can have horse
shows that celebrate and exhibit the horse's telos, not our skills at
abusive artifice.  One can enjoy the horse for what it is, and for what we
can perfect, genetically and environmentally, not for our unfortunate skill
in putting square pegs into round holes.  In conclusion, I would argue that
we should keep as our root metaphor what must surely have informed the
ancient vision of the centaur, the symbiotic entity of man and animal,
mutually interdependent, rising to heights neither could scale alone."

susan g