Congrats to AP and to all the other champion horses.
I've been reading some wonderful books about horses (true stories)--
Gunner: Hurricane Horse (about a champion Paint horse saved after Katrina, very touching story);
Chosen by a Horse (heartbreaking and uplifting memoir by Susan Richards who rescued a horse named Lay Me Down);
Saving Baby: How One Woman's Love for a Racehorse Led to her Redemption, by Jo Anne Normile and Lawrence Lindner; and
The Body Language of Horses, by Tom Ainslee and Bonnie Ledbetter.
Joe Camp's
The Soul of a Horse, is a delightful book I finished recently and it has opened up my eyes to some things I never realized: horses who are left to go barefoot are happier and generally healthier (if their natural hooves are trimmed properly); and horses really don't belong cooped up in stalls. They need to be outside in a pasture, enjoying companionship with other horses (all that's needed are outdoor enclosures for the horses to freely use when they want shelter). Here's more on Joe Camp, his wife, Kathleen, and their horses (Camp is the writer-director and animal trainer of the
Benji movies):
http://thesoulofahorse.com/blog/
I know such natural-based practices wouldn't ever be done for working racehorses, but still, being a racehorse under the conditions man dictates is not horse heaven. The horses, as always, do what they can to adjust to man's demands.
From the
Courier-Journal:
'"Horses training at high levels for long periods of time, like California Chrome has, gradually get behind in the bone's response to the stress because we train them and then ask them to stand in the stall for most of the day," equine Dr. Larry Bramlage said ... "So the treatment is to get them back to their natural state, let them be a horse in the paddock until the bone returns to normal."'
