Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Horse Lover's Companion

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  In 1719, Prince Louis IV Henri created one of the most beautiful palaces in the world—for horses. Louis Henri believed in reincarnation and thought that, after his death, he would return as a horse. So he hired French architect Jean Aubert to design the Grandes Ecuries (the Grand Stables) at his castle in northern France. High ceilings, relief sculptures, and a monumental dome make the large stable feel palatial: 623 feet long by 59 feet wide, with walls 16 feet high. Once home to 240 horses, today the Grandes Ecuries houses the Musée Vivant du Cheval (the Living Horse Museum).

  Inside, there are 31 rooms filled with paintings and sculptures dedicated to horses and horsemanship. But more than that, 30 horses and one donkey still live at the stable. They’re of varying breeds—Friesian, Appaloosa, Spanish, Portuguese, Boulonnais, Thoroughbred, and even Shetland ponies—and they perform a daily dressage demonstration. They do tricks, too. Some of the museum’s horses can even sit and roll over.

  The National Horse Racing Museum (England)

  The large entrance gates at the National Horseracing Museum in Newmarket lead to a small building packed with exhibits. There are many paintings of famous English Thoroughbreds, but the museum also has some of the most unique (and macabre) exhibits in equine history:

  •The preserved head of Persimmon, who won the Royal Derby in 1896.

  •The skeleton of English racer Hyperion.

  •The pistol Victorian jockey Fred Archer used to commit suicide.

  •A model horse that visitors can saddle and bridle. (He never kicks or bites.)

  •And, especially for Uncle John, the “seats for the loo” (toilet seats painted with horses and racing scenes), on sale in the museum gift shop.

  Dartfield Horse Museum and Park (Ireland)

  This museum is part of the 700-acre Dartfield estate, built in 1827. And despite the country’s long equestrian history, this is the only museum dedicated to Ireland’s horses. It features traditional exhibits, but Dartfield is also home to the country’s largest population of Connemara ponies. Hardy and intelligent, the ponies are native to Galway and likely descendants of the Scandinavian ponies that the Vikings brought to Ireland in the eighth and ninth centuries.

  The Equine Museum of Japan (Japan)

  The ancient Japanese believed that the gods first appeared to humans on horseback. Since the fourth century, the Japanese have also ridden horses, and the Equine Museum on the island of Honshu celebrates that long history. The museum is located beside a park that was a racecourse during the mid-1800s—the first in Japan to feature European-style Thoroughbred horse racing.

  The museum’s exhibits are uniquely Japanese. There are ancient scrolls and statues that show horses participating in religious ceremonies, paintings of Kiso horses (Japan’s favorite breed) in full battle armor, and the silver trophy that was the first Emperor’s Cup of Japan. A special viewing device helps visitors understand how horses’ vision differs from humans’, and machines test human strength against the power of horses.

  The International Museum of the Horse (Kentucky)

  By far, though, the world’s largest (52,000 square feet) and most comprehensive horse museum is in bluegrass country. Kentucky’s International Museum of the Horse in Lexington includes exhibits on art and photography, a research library, Horseshoe Hall (a room adorned with hundreds of decorative and functional horseshoes), and a permanent collection that tells the story of the horse’s evolution—from eohippus to the modern breeds.

  Traveling exhibits stop by, too. Over the years, the International Museum has hosted many temporary collections, including “Imperial China: Art of the Horse,” worth more than $100 million and including a bronze chariot from the Han dynasty. “The Presidents and Their Horses” displayed quirky items like an electric horse that was once installed in President Calvin Coolidge’s White House bedroom—he “rode” it dressed only in his underwear and a cowboy hat.

  The museum is part of Kentucky Horse Park, a 1,200-acre horse farm where more than 40 different breeds are stabled. Standing at the park’s entrance is a statue of Man o’ War, who is buried on the property. Horses who live at the park’s Hall of Champions—like Cigar, the greatest money winner in racing history—make appearances daily.

  Hi-Yo, Scout . . . Away!

  Everyone knows Silver, the Lone Ranger’s horse, but what about Scout, the one Tonto rode?

  •Scout was originally going to be solid white like Silver, but TV producers thought that made Silver less impressive. So they got a bay-and-white pinto to play Scout.

  •In the early Lone Ranger radio programs, Tonto rode a horse named White Feller. But in a 1938 episode, the Lone Ranger (feeling bad for keeping Silver) released his horse into the wild. When Silver returned to his master, he brought along a friend for Tonto: Scout.

  “Where the Turf Meets the Surf”

  Begun by Hollywood heavies wanting a vacation spot, the Del Mar Racetrack today is a premier racing venue.

  Hollywood South

  The 350-acre Del Mar racetrack, just north of San Diego, California, is a horseshoe’s throw from the Pacific Ocean, a fact that inspired the track’s slogan: “Where the Turf Meets the Surf.” It holds races from mid-July to early September and typically hosts about 40,000 people per day.

  The track got started in 1937, when movie-star crooner Bing Crosby—along with fellow Tinseltown luminaries like Pat O’Brien and Jimmy Durante and well-funded friends like millionaire auto dealer Charles S. Howard—founded the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club. At the time, Crosby told reporters that he brought racing to Del Mar because he and his pals were looking for a relaxed, sunny place to spend their summers—away from the hectic pace of Los Angeles.

  The track opened that summer, and Crosby did more than bask in the sun. On that first opening day, he stood at the front gate to take tickets and greet visitors.

  Track Cred

  Del Mar might have been the brainchild of Hollywood celebrities, but it quickly gained a reputation as a serious racetrack. In August 1938, the track’s second season, cofounder Charles Howard raced his Thoroughbred Seabiscuit at Del Mar in a much-publicized $25,000 winner-take-all race. In that contest, Seabiscuit battled it out with Ligaroti, a horse from Binglin Stables—a farm co-owned by Crosby and Lindsay Howard, Charles’s son. Seabiscuit won the race by the proverbial nose and solidified Del Mar’s reputation as one of the country’s leading tracks.

  It also gained a reputation for being a celebrity hangout. Stars like Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, W. C. Fields, Betty Grable, Ava Gardner, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour made regular appearances at Del Mar in the 1940s and ’50s. And today, Hollywood glitterati still take part in the Del Mar race scene—Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and Jessica Simpson have all been spotted there.

  Notable Numbers

  Over the years, Del Mar has posted some impressive stats:

  •In 1949, Bill Shoemaker became the first apprentice jockey to win at Del Mar. (More about him on page 208.)

  •In 1955, Cipria, a filly from Argentina, set a Del Mar record: she made $263.40 for each $2 bet.

  •In 1991, the track hosted its most expensive race to date: the first $1 million Pacific Classic.

  •On average, visitors to Del Mar place a total of more than $13 million in bets each day.

  Taking the High Dive

  Diving horses, who jumped from 30-foot-high platforms into a pool of water, got their start in the 1920s in Atlantic City, when sideshows made the act famous. By the 1950s, charges of animal cruelty made the shows unpopular; they shut down in the 1980s. But diving isn’t completely foreign to horses—they sometimes do it in the wild. And there is one place where a horse can still take the plunge for show (and, by all accounts, be treated well): Magic Forest Amusement Park in Lake George, New York.

  Lightning, a 13-year-old chestnut, lives at the park and, from June through August, performs two shows a day of about two minutes each. (He has the rest of the year off.) He inherited the job from his father, Red, who started diving a
t Magic Forest in 1977. According to the park, Lightning is trained to jump nine feet into a 14-foot-deep pool of water. And he’s never prodded or pushed like the sideshow horses were (though his trainers do give him a bucket of oats after each plunge).

  Unfinished Masterpiece

  Created by Leonardo da Vinci, the Horse Statue would have been the largest equestrian monument on earth—if it had ever been built.

  Leonardo’s Great Idea

  In the 1480s, Milan’s Duke of Sforza commissioned Leonardo da Vinci to build a huge statue of a horse to honor his father, Francesco Sforza. Da Vinci worked on the piece for nearly 17 years, studying horses exhaustively and then making a series of models, including a full-sized clay model that was 24 feet tall. Next, he completed the molds, into which more than 50 tons of molten bronze would be poured to create the final horse. But then a war broke out, and metal was in short supply. All the bronze in Italy went to the war effort, mostly to make cannonballs.

  On September 10, 1499, the French captured Milan, where da Vinci lived and worked at the time. Some soldiers camped near the artist’s workshop, and a company of them used his clay horse model for target practice, riddling it with holes. Rainwater collected in the holes, and weather exposure eventually destroyed the model. When da Vinci died in 1519, he was “still mourning the loss of his great horse.”

  The Horse Rides . . . Finally

  In 1977, an American named Charles Dent happened to pick up a copy of National Geographic magazine that contained an article on da Vinci and his horse. Dent, an Italian Renaissance buff, decided that completing the horse would be a fitting way to honor the greatest mind of the period.

  Da Vinci had left no detailed drawings that indicated what the final horse was supposed to look like; all that survived were a diary and some preliminary sketches. No matter—Dent decided to wing it. On September 10, 1999, exactly 500 years after da Vinci was forced to abandon his dream, his horse (or at least an approximation) was unveiled in Milan. It stood 24 feet high, weighed 15 tons, and was made of bronze and stainless steel. The horse was intended, Dent explained, as a gift “to all the Italian people from the American people.”

  Horsey Hodge Podge

  •In wild herds, the lead mare usually decides when the group should move to find food.

  •Horses have about 175 bones in their bodies.

  •Horses use more energy to lie down than to stand upright.

  •On Hydra, in the Greek Isles, horses and ponies are the only legal means of transportation.

  Mythconceptions: Pumpernickel

  We went looking for the origins of this much-loved bread and discovered that two common myths surrounding its origins are deeply rooted in one very famous general . . . and his horse.

  Myth #1: The bread name “pumpernickel” originated with Napoleon’s horse.

  Theory: During the Napoleonic wars of the early 1800s, French troops barely had enough bread to stave off famine. But there was always enough pain (bread) for Napoleon’s horse Nicoll. Hence, pain pour (for) Nicoll . . . pumpernickel.

  Myth #2: Napoleon again.

  Theory: Another story goes that Napoleon didn’t save the bread for his horse but that he thought the dense, coarse bread the soldiers had to eat on the battlefield wasn’t fit for human consumption. Supposedly, on a military campaign in Eastern Europe, he discarded the bread, saying disdainfully that it was “pain pour Nicoll”—bread for Nicoll, his horse, meaning it was not good enough for humans to eat.

  The truth: The term “pumpernickel” actually predates Napoleon by many years. The Germans were calling each other “pumpernickel” long before Napoleon was born. It was a derogatory term, similar to “jerk” in English. According to Webster’s Dictionary, they began using the term for bread around 1756. It came from two old German words: pumpern, which means “to break wind,” and nickel—“goblin” or “devil.” Basically, people called it the “devil’s fart” because the coarse, dark bread was so hard to digest.

  Fact or Fiction?

  The rumor: Adolf Hitler’s chestnut stallion is buried at Louisiana’s La Branche Plantation.

  The evidence: There’s no definitive proof that Nordlicht (North Light)—born in Germany in 1941—belonged to Hitler, but the circumstantial evidence is pretty good. Nordlicht was was named Germany’s Horse of the Year in 1944 and even appeared on his own postage stamp. One of Hitler’s supporters abandoned the horse when he fled Germany in 1945, and the Americans took Nordlicht to the States with them. Louisiana doctor and horse breeder C. Walter Mattingly bought the horse in 1948 and moved him to La Branche. When Nordlicht died in 1968, he was buried at the plantation. Today, the owners of La Branche proudly profess the “grave of Hitler’s horse” as one of the plantation’s attractions.

  Equine Expressions

  At one time, horses were an integral part of human culture. So it’s no wonder that they show up in all kinds of phrases. Here are some favorites.

  Hold Your Horses

  Meaning: Be patient, take your time.

  Origin: This is a born-and-bred American expression. The phrase first appeared in print in an 1844 edition of a Louisiana newspaper: “Hold your hosses, Squire. There’s no use gettin’ riled, no how.” (“Hoss” was 19th-century slang for horse.) By the 1930s, the phrase we know today—“hold your horses”—was showing up in common speech.

  A Stalking Horse

  Meaning: A decoy, specifically a political candidate used to conceal another person’s real candidacy.

  Origin: In 16th-century England, hunters discovered that it was easier to find game if they hid behind a horse than if they went off into the woods by themselves—birds and other animals would run from humans, but not horses. So hunters stood behind the neck or crouched under the belly of a horse trained to graze as it slowly approached wild game. That way, the hunter could get a good shot before the game noticed him.

  Take the Bit Between Your Teeth

  Meaning: Take control.

  Origin: Bits press against the soft part of a horse’s mouth as the rider manipulates the reins, directing the animal which way to go. But a horse who takes a bit between his teeth chomps down on the fitting and takes control away from the rider. This phrase first appeared in John Dryden’s 1682 poem “The Medal”:

  But this new Jehu spurs the hot-mounted horse,

  Instructs the beast to know his native force,

  To take the bit between his teeth and fly

  To the next headlong steep of anarchy.

  It originally meant to convey obstinance. But over the years, it evolved to a more positive expression of taking charge.

  Long in the Tooth

  Meaning: Old

  Origin: Back in the 19th century, horse traders were a shifty bunch who often tried to pass off old horses as younger than they were. The best way for a buyer to identify a horse’s true age was to inspect the animal’s teeth to see how long and yellow they were and how far the gums had receded.

  If the roots of the teeth were showing, the buyer knew the horse was old.

  Examining horses’ teeth gave us two other expressions:

  •“Straight from the horse’s mouth.” Because young horses were worth more than old ones, looking in the animal’s mouth was a reliable way to establish its value.

  •“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” When you got a horse as a gift, checking its teeth right there in front of the gift-giver was bad manners.

  You Can Lead a Horse to Water, but You Can’t Make Him Drink

  Meaning: You can show someone the best path, but you can’t force him to take it.

  Origin: This expression dates back to 1546, when an early version appeared in John Heywood’s A Dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of All the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue: “A man maie well bring a horse to the water. But he cannot make him drinke without he will.”

  Quite a Storm

  Born in 1983, the Thoroughbred stallion Storm Cat entered stud in 1988. His initial fee: $30,000
. His children and grandchildren, though, proved to be such great racers (160 stakes winners) that by the time he retired in 2008, he was making a record $500,000 for each mating.

  Good Grooms

  Grooms are perhaps the hardest-working laborers at the racetrack. They are the trainers and jockeys’ eyes and ears and the horses’ best friends. But they’re also among the industry’s least-appreciated professionals.

  Unsung Heroes

  In the racetrack pecking order, grooms generally rank just above stable hands and exercise boys and are rarely rewarded for the relationships they develop with their horses. A few lucky grooms might get a percentage of a horse’s winnings—maybe 1 percent—in addition to their wages (usually between $400 and $600 per week), but that’s the exception. Long hours, huge responsibilities, modest wages, and no job security are the norm.

  Some grooms have just one equine charge (usually a high-profile racehorse), but most are responsible for six to eight horses. Their daily chores include preparing feed, monitoring diet, and tending to aches, pains, bruises, and strains. They check a horse’s shoes and tack for wear, prepare the animal for exercise and races, and advise the trainer and jockey. Because the horse’s health and performance are paramount, everyone depends greatly on the groom’s close attention.