Wild About Horses

by Lawrence Scanlan

  The Pony Express would only last a year and a half. Fast ponies were no match for the telegraph line in place by October 1861. A postal system using ponies had been a good idea, though hardly new. In ancient Persia twenty-four hundred years ago lived Cyrus the Great — the so-called King of the World, so vast was his empire. He may have been the first to establish a system of conveying royal messages by setting up posting stations fifteen miles apart.

  A Greek traveler named Herodotus who saw the system operate was much impressed. “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from swift completion of their appointed rounds,” he wrote. His words would be adopted as the unofficial motto of the American post office, and are still etched in stone over the pillars of its New York City headquarters.

  Genghis Khan, the fierce Mongol ruler, set up something similar — a courier system employing twenty thousand horses and ten thousand relay stations to keep in touch with the far-flung reaches of his empire. The ponies he used were grass fed and small, rarely more than thirteen or fourteen hands high.

  Even a three-legged pony, it seems, has the wings of Pegasus. At the end of my day at Ardmore Stud, I bade farewell to Dick and Adele Rockwell. Standing in an entryway full of pony tack, I looked back at the Rockwells, the two of them framed by the door leading into the pink room. They might have been standing on a little rise, with one of those red-sky-at-night-sailor’s-delight sunsets behind them. They had just told the story of Ariel, and it seemed a fitting end.

  In 1960, a foal — the first to a pony mare called Ardmore Airborne — broke her right front leg above the knee when she was just three weeks old. Dick insisted to the veterinarian that some attempt be made to save her. At the time, it seemed a bold and reckless move.

  In the clinic, Dick acted as the vet’s surgical assistant as they anesthetized the foal, pulled the leg bone apart, inserted a pencil-sized pin into the marrow and fitted the foal with a walking cast actually designed for a Great Dane. Dick then had to change the dressing twice a day and lift up the foal to nurse at the mare. In time, the foal learned to lurch to her feet but needed Dick’s help to settle back to the ground for rest. Eventually, the little pony devised her own method: she leaned against a wall and slid down. The smart pony by then had a name — Ardmore Ariel.

  But the pin later began to protrude, forcing the vet to remove it, bandage the leg and confine her to her stall for three months. The leg muscle atrophied, and when the foal finally got the run of the pasture, she was not a pretty sight. As Adele looked on, the pony fell trying to follow her mother down a steep hill. Fell repeatedly and pathetically.

  “We’ve done the wrong thing,” Adele said.

  The vet, however, held out hope that at least some leg muscle would return. Ariel did indeed learn to walk, trot, even canter in an odd sort of way. When Ariel was two, the Rockwells turned her out. After seeing her mother and other mares in a nearby pasture, she galloped toward a high fence, tucked up that wonky leg so it lay across — not under — her body and jumped the fence. Her mother greeted her effusively and licked her all over, especially that troublesome limb, as if to ask, “How’s the leg?”

  In her lifetime, Ariel would give birth to sixteen foals, twelve of them champions. She was finally put down in 1983 at the age of twenty-three when the hoof on the left front leg, the good one, began to cave in from years of compensating for the bad one.

  In the years before she died, Ariel’s older sister, Ardmore Skyborne, would chase the other ponies away to let Ariel drink in peace. “I’ve never seen a horse show such compassion,” said Adele. But then, Ariel and Skyborne were not horses. They were ponies.

  CHAPTER 10

  HORSE TALES TALL AND TRUE

  The goat is a devil, the sheep is an angel,

  the camel is a pilgrim, the horse is a hero.

  TURKISH PROVERB

  THE HORSE ON his way to the slaughterhouse is on a journey of no return. But not always.

  On November 29, 1988, a transport truck towing a pup trailer on a Toronto freeway accidentally discharged part of its cargo — a bay Standardbred gelding en route, with thirty-seven other horses, to a cannery in Quebec. The horse — later named Lucky — landed on his feet in more ways than one. He skidded along the pavement, stick-handled across three lanes of traffic at the height of rush hour, then leaped a barrier and crossed nine more lanes. All astonishing, because Highway 401 at Yonge Street ranks among the least horse-friendly strips on the planet.

  After numerous close calls, the by then dazed horse had sustained only cuts and bruises. Two horse-wise drivers came to Lucky’s aid: one man calmed him while a policewoman fashioned a rope halter, and they led him to safety. Lucky received veterinary treatment, and, better, a new lease on life when the Humane Society convinced his owner to hand him over. Eventually, the horse was adopted.

  Thus did Lucky cheat the knacker. But the horse who dodges death or ignominy to become a champion — this is altogether too Disney-esque, too Walter Farley-ish, for words. Or is it? Let this chapter full of tall tales and near lies about horses begin with an absolutely true tale. Let it begin with the impossible story of Snow Man.

  In February 1956, Harry de Leyer, owner of a small stable on Long Island and riding master at the Knox School for Girls, drove to the weekly horse auction in New Holland, Pennsylvania. On that bitter day, the skies shrouded in cloud, de Leyer sought a steady Thoroughbred school horse, but he had arrived too late. Only the dregs remained: fifteen sorry horses, bought for $60 each by a pet food manufacturer, were being loaded into a butcher’s van. For someone like the Dutch-born de Leyer, who grew up with horses and loved them, it was a sad parade.

  But from his position at the bottom of the ramp leading into the van, one horse caught his eye. A dappled gray. There was something about the lively tilt of the ears, something in his step — “a kindness in his sad eyes” is how de Leyer put it to me. The driver was packing them in tight, head to tail, and into that darkness de Leyer shouted.

  “Hey, I’d like to see that horse.”

  “You crazy?” replied the driver. “He’s just a horse, just another farm horse.”

  But the driver did as instructed and led the big angular gray back down the ramp and into the light, where the horse was revealed in all his misery. The burrs, the mud caked on the long heavy tail. The bite marks, sores and manure spots. The missing shoe, the crease across his big chest from years of wearing a heavy collar and pulling a plow.

  As he was being looked over he opened his eyes briefly, then closed them again. He was led back into the truck, but not for long; the driver would drop him off at de Leyer’s farm. For $70, de Leyer had himself another horse, an equine mutt who looked to be half-Percheron and turned out to be nine years old.

  Coming down the ramp at the farm, as de Leyer, his wife and five children looked on, the horse tripped over his own feet and stood there at the bottom in six inches of snow, blinking under a blinding sun. Snow Man, they would call him.

  Five washings later, the accumulated layers of farm filth finally left his coat. The family groomed him, shoed him, put some weight on him, schooled him as best they could — and sold him that summer for $140 to a local chiropractor. But like Dr. Seuss’s cat, he came back the very next day, at a gallop, and did so repeatedly no matter how high the enclosure. Two aspects of the horse became clear: Snow Man was loyal to de Leyer and Snow Man could jump.

  De Leyer began to train him, at first with woeful results. The gray tripped over the cavaletti — poles on the ground that teach horses to lengthen and shorten stride — but he soon mastered the art and eventually it took only a cluck from de Leyer and even a riderless Snow Man would leap any fence. Like Big Ben, who took great joy as a colt in leaping fences when turned out in an arena, he was that rare horse who naturally, gleefully, takes to jumping.

  In 1958, after humbling lesser competition, Snow Man jumped victoriously at Madison Square Garden in New York City and was later named American national
champion two years running. Snow Man would win the puissance one minute (calling on his power) and the speed class the next (relying more on his quick turns than on pure speed). Offers to buy him ran as high as $400,000. But de Leyer had no interest in selling the Cinderella horse, as he came to be known. Countless magazine articles were written about him, along with two books.

  10.1 Snow Man swimming Long Island Sound with de Leyer children: from abbatoir truck to show jumping champion. (photo credit 10.1)

  Back on the farm, he was a docile pet. Photographs in the November 7, 1959, issue of Life magazine show Snow Man being ridden by all five de Leyer children; another photograph has three of the kids on his back as he swims — apparently he loved to swim — Long Island Sound. His mouth is open, teeth showing. You would swear he was smiling. De Leyer, by the way, now seventy and living in Virginia, still rides and competes. “Horses do more than keep me young,” he says. “They keep me happy.”

  Snow Man was not the only horse to leap from servitude to show ring. Laurens van der Post wrote a book earlier this decade called About Blady. Mystical in places and often autobiographical, the book is very much about human kinship with horses.

  Van der Post and several friends were traveling through France decades ago when a woman in the car spotted a plow horse in a field. Headstrong and confident, she demanded that the car be stopped, then she strode purposefully out to the farmer behind the plow, bargained with him and bought the horse on the spot — over her husband’s objections. Blady went on to become a great show jumper, and in one memorable competition, Blady and rider beat the gifted Spanish rider Paco Goyoago and his fine mount.

  From plow horse to show horse. It happens.

  Such miraculous transitions have their own appeal and represent one more aspect of the fervor humans feel for horses. If the passion for horses were seen as a great tree, the wealth of horse mythology would be the deep and tangled root.

  At the other end of the tree, the top end, amid the light and airy branches, lies the fruit. Strange exotic fruit, tempting and often delicious to behold, but can you swallow it? Can you trust the taste? Is it hollow inside, or as genuine as the horse plum that grows wild on the North American continent?

  Horsiness invites the trading of horse lore, the way cat or dog lovers do. We who value horses swap horse stories and offer them as proof — of horse character, stubbornness, intelligence (or lack of it), courage, devotion or high spirit. The stories say to those who prize horses, See? I told you so. Or, You won’t believe this but …

  One of the most enduring clever horse stories concerns a sixteenth-century horse in England called Marocco. Shakespeare’s play Love’s Labor’s Lost has Armado engaging in banter with his page, Moth, who says, “Now here’s three studied, ere you’ll thrice wink: and how easy it is to put years to the word three, and study three years in two words, the dancing horse will tell you.” The dancing horse was Marocco, a medium-sized bay gelding with a docked tail. Ben Jonson, John Donne, Thomas Middleton and Sir Walter Raleigh all mention him in their work.

  In his History of the World, published in 1614, Raleigh writes of Marocco’s trainer, Thomas Bankes, a Scottish wine merchant and juggler, that “if [he] had lived in older times he would have shamed all the enchanters of the world, for whosoever was most famous among them could never master or instruct any beast as he did his horse.”

  In 1600, in a celebrated performance, Marocco climbed the spiral staircase of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. He could dance a jig and walk on his hind legs (forward, backward and in circles). It seemed he could also count. Someone would throw dice and Marocco would tap out with one silver-shoed hoof the number that came up. Shown the glove of a person in the audience during a performance, Marocco could even pick out its owner.

  Clearly, Thomas Bankes was passing sly signs to Marocco. Credit the horse’s attentiveness, the trainer’s showmanship. But perhaps they were too clever. Obsessed with magic and witchcraft, sixteenth-century authorities exacted severe penalties for practicing either.

  Unable to imagine such a gifted horse and trainer, audiences concluded that Bankes was a sorcerer and Marocco his apprentice. The trainer landed in dungeons several times. According to one story, he once ducked prison by having his (obviously holy) horse kneel before a man wearing a crucifix in his hat; Marocco then rose and kissed the cross.

  But in Rome, the pope denounced both man and horse as devil worshipers. Bankes either escaped or was pardoned, because he did live to a ripe old age. Of the dancing horse nothing was heard again.

  A hundred or so years later, the public reacquired a taste for trick ponies. In 1770, as mentioned earlier, Philip Astley launched the first of its kind — an equestrian circus in London that led to others in Dublin and Paris. Illustrations of the day depict his amphitheaters as circular arenas with magnificent chandeliers and four tiers of seating. They looked like opera houses, with horses, not singers, at the center.

  10.2 Sky Rider, Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1960: stunt-rider and horse jump from a 75-foot-high tower into water. (photo credit 10.2)

  Richard Lawrence, a veterinary surgeon who witnessed the entertainments at Astley’s Theatre, was impressed by what he saw and the means of achieving it. “A good-natured clever man,” he wrote, “may teach a horse anything, and it is a very mistaken notion that those horses which perform so many dexterous tricks at Astley’s, and places of that description, are brought to execute them by violent means. The fact is, they are taught by gentle means only, and by rewarding them at the moment they obey; hence they become accustomed by habit to combine the recollection of the reward with the performance of the trick, and it becomes a pleasure to them instead of labor.”

  Astley’s horses could dance a minuet, lie down on command and play dead during mock battles, not stirring until asked. Most famous of all was Billy, The Little Learned Military Horse. Like Marocco, he could apparently count (taking his cue from the clicking of his master’s fingernails, as perhaps Marocco had done). As a favor Astley once loaned Billy to a colleague who sold the horse to pay off a debt. Astley spotted him later on the street, pulling a cart. The master clicked his fingernails and so spirited was the response that Billy almost overturned the cart. Horse and trainer were quickly reunited.

  Billy could spell Astley’s name in the earth with his hoof, distinguish gold from silver, ladies from gentlemen, and pluck a handkerchief from his owner’s pocket. Asked to choose between death and fighting on the side of the Spanish, Billy dropped down, as if dead. Even in old age, Billy would, on command, wash his feet in water, remove his own saddle or lift a boiling kettle from a fire.

  A century later, and along came a cart horse in Germany known as Kluge Hans, or Clever Hans. His story is still told by scientists to debunk notions of animal intelligence and, especially, to counter the human tendency to read too much into animal actions. Clever Hans, these professors insist, was not so clever at all.

  10.3 Wilhelm von Osten with his prize pupil, Clever Hans: smart horse, great expectations. (photo credit 10.3)

  I am less sure. At play here are two disparate elements: a truly smart horse and humans ill-inclined to bestow the word clever on any other creatures.

  Hans came to be owned by Herr Wilhelm von Osten, a Prussian nobleman who was impressed by how Hans backed a cart along a circular driveway. You need only watch a skilled transport driver back from a busy street into a narrow alleyway to appreciate how devilishly difficult it is when cab and rig, or horse and cart, are semidetached. Von Osten insisted that horses in general, and this horse in particular, were smarter than commonly believed.

  A wealthy eccentric with the time to indulge his whims, von Osten thought he could teach Hans to think, as a teacher would a pupil. The one photograph I have seen of teacher and pupil together shows a bearded man in an ankle-length lab coat standing at the horse’s shoulder. To his right are two blackboards busy with numbers and letters in chalk. Looming over the blackboards, a foot or so from the horse’s nose, is a
n abacus.

  The horse learned to respond to questions — by tapping his right hoof a certain number of times in mathematics, by selecting the correct wooden alphabet block or by shaking his head or nodding. Correct answers won him a bite of carrot; wrong answers earned dire threats from his master. Telling time, distinguishing coins, identifying musical scores, absorbing geography and politics all appeared to be within his grasp. Word spread. Clever Hans became world famous.

  Was Hans a thinking horse? Or another Marocco? The world wanted to know. So on September 6, 1904, a committee of thirteen apparently smart people — including a zoologist, a politician, a veterinarian and a psychologist — set out to determine the answer.

  They were at first amazed, then stumped. Hans, they were quite certain, was not actually doing the math, but if the horse was reading signs from von Osten, what signs?

  Finally, Oskar Pfungst, a student at the Berlin Psychological Institute, proved that the horse was reading the body language of the questioner. The horse was lost for an answer when von Osten asked his multiple-choice questions out of the horse’s sight; in his sight was another matter. Clever Hans — perhaps by observing his master’s eyes or eyebrows, body tilt or rate of breathing or slight unconscious flaring of the nostrils — caught the clue.

  The curious thing is how the world of science responded to this finding. A note of triumph was struck: a dumb animal had been restored to its rightful place below humankind. Even von Osten, who never meant to cue the horse, felt betrayed, as if Hans had somehow let him down. He died soon afterward, a bitter and disillusioned man.

  I am not the first to ask the obvious question. (Vicki Hearne has also written about Hans.) Why did Clever Hans not receive more credit for his ability to read signs so subtle that thirteen learned observers could not detect them?