RE: was Dates - How the Arabs treated their horses

["Maryanne Stroud Gabbani" <maryanne@ratbusters.net>]

I've read some of Carl Raswan's books and in one of them he describes how he
went to Saudi Arabia via Damascus to search out good blood stock. He was
given a stallion to ride on his searches and arrived back in Damascus
somewhat discouraged as many of the horses he saw and even bought were on
the skinny side. He would send them back to Damascus to wait for him. When
he got back, he couldn't believe the change in the horses from having a
steady diet, but the biggest surprise was that the best horse he found was
the stallion he'd been riding throughout his journey. On the whole, Bedouins
don't mistreat their animals...they live in too close contact with them and
are too dependent upon them. I find more mistreatment of equines and
anything else, the more urbanised the people.

Maryanne Stroud Gabbani
Cairo, Egypt
maryanne@ratbusters.net
www.ratbusters.net

-----Original Message-----
From: Irene M Burnett [mailto:renieburnett@juno.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2001 2:43 PM
To: RideCamp@endurance.net
Subject: RC: was Dates - How the Arabs treated their horses


Shelley, You're right about the Bedouins not mistreating their horses.
If you are looking for some authentic information about how the horses
were treated and handled, here is where to look.  Just the facts, Ma'am,
not a bit of Romance.

Read any thing you can get your hands  on by Carl Raswan;  he lived and
rode and fought with the Bedouins, books he wrote, to list a few:  "Black
Tents of Arabia", "The Arab and His Horse", "Drinkers of the Wind" and
"The Raswan Index".  He and Richard Pritzlaf were very good friends and
Mr. Raswan also worked with the Kellogg Arabian ranch.  The books were
written about early 1930's to mid and late 1930's.  I am looking at
photographs right now, and although the horses are lean, they are by NO
MEANS starved looking.  At times, Mr. Raswan states, food was Not in
abundance for man nor beast, and sometimes the horses were fed a  mixture
of barley meal, dry dates, grasshoppers and seeds from wild herbs and
grasses.