1 comments about How to Use Leg Wraps, Bandages and Boots: Supportive Leg Care for Your Horse.

1. This book really describes all boots and bandages very thoroughly! I just bought a new horse who was used with boots all his life and I've never used them before! This book was an awesome into for me! Good for any rider in any field of equines!

No comments about Breeding the Competition Horse.

2 comments about Are You Thinking Of Buying A Horse?.

1. I thought this book was well put together. It gives you all the information you need if you are serious about buying a horse. I give this book a big thumbs up!



2. I have read horse books before, but this book has it all. It goes into every aspect of buying and caring for your horse. It is the best I have seen for beginners and I think long time horse owners can even learn a few things too. I would really recommend this book to anyone who is even considering buying a horse. This book is a must have for all horse owners and future horse owners!!

2 comments about Horses.

1. Writer, rancher, horseman, and conservationist Thomas McGuane is the author of nine novels, a collection of short stories, several collections of essays on sport and horse, and he also wrote the screen play for "Missouri Breaks."
   
   The latter just goes to show that an author can be an expert on his subject and still end up as a grease mark on the Hollywood Wall of Shame.
   
   I had already read his essay collection, "Some Horses" and eagerly ordered this second title, thinking the two books would be similar. In a sense they are. In fact "Some Horses" contains expanded material from "Horses" which is more of a photo collection by Jay Dusard, and contains only a few essays by Thomas McGuane. If you are interested in McGuane's writing, go for "Some Horses," not this title.
   
   Jay Dusard has been riding and photographing Western horses since 1962. In his introduction to this book, he compares horses to sculpture: "Sculpture that races, rests, fears, flees, fights, bucks, works and plays, lives and dies." "Horses" contains a few very sculptural pictures, almost abstract, of a horse's flank caked in mud, the shadow of a horse's head molded across the rump of another. Most of the pictures show the working relationship between horse and cowboy, mule and cowboy. One of my favorite stories (which I think is written by Dusard) concerns the use of mules on a cougar hunt. The author was mounted on a horse, his companion on a mule, and the cougar they were following climbed down deep into a canyon. The mule plunged down where the horse couldn't follow:
   
   "Like a long-eared hang glider the mule leaped into the abyss, striking long trails of sparks with his shoes...In a matter of seconds he dropped completely out of sight, only to reappear at a high lope on a bench far below. At the end of the bench, and without breaking stride, Mochoma again propelled himself into deep space."
   
   I would have liked to have ridden Mochoma, as the only mule I ever struck up an acquaintance with was a red Appaloosa, who fell down twice on the first day of our camping trip into the Tetons. He ended up permanently in the pack string.
   
   "Horses" would make a nice gift with its gritty photographs and cowboy stories. You'll make your way through it in half-an-hour and be hungry for more pictures and yarns from this photographer and author.



2. One does not need to be a horse lover to enjoy this book. Jay Dusard, whom I consider one of America's finest black and white photographers (and a fine hand), has taken a wonderful diversity of images for this book which leads to a serendipitous journey through different equines and, thank goodness, not necessarily sentimental streets.
   
   The text is written by a man that also rides horses and understands how complex horse riding AND owning can be. Tom McGuane has nailed it completely without assuming that you know anything about horses to enjoy the read.
   
   The insight he offers in his stories are personal vignettes that allow the reader a great story in image AND in humour.
   
   HORSES is a GIFT...to be given to people that you know enjoy the refinements of a good book; to be given to yourself because you deserve the treasure...and that horse lover too, of course.

5 comments about Champions: The Lives, Times, and Past Performances of the 20th Century's Greatest Thoroughbreds.

1. What a wonderful book - filled with statistics, stories and sometimes pictures. It takes the champions of the 20th century (American thoroughbreds, for example, Horse of the Year, and tells the stories of their racing careers decade by decade. Each chapter of text is followed by Past Performances, as put together by the DRF. There are stories about long-ago horses I haven't seen since Robertson's History of Thoroughbred Racing in America. It's going to take a long time to read this book - not because it's slow reading, but because I keep going back and forth in time to compare stories and speed fractions.
   One thing I'd change - even if they didn't have the space to tell the story of each champion, I wish they'd found the space to have a picture of each one. As they say.....one picture is worth....... I love looking at pictures of the old racers and the newer ones - line them up next to each other and look at their relative build, then go to the track and see who reminds you of the great old geldings or the powerful sprinters. Now THAT's data!



2. i already wrote a review praising this book, but i wanted to leave another to let people know that they don't have to pay the extravagant prices wanted by the thieves selling here on amazon. simply go to drf.com and you can get this book for the list price of $50. i'm not affiliated with them, i just think it's wrong for someone to try and over-charge by 7 times because someone might not know where else they could get the book.



3. I bought this as a birthday gift for my 25 year-old daughter, and it's her favorite of anything I have ever given her! She has always been really good at spouting names, numbers, years, tenths of a seconds, etc. Now she'll be insufferable! This book is absolutely loaded with all the racing stats you could ever think of! She actually WHOOPED when she opened the package!!! She opened it and explained all the racing stats to me--she understood every bit as soon as she saw it (I was still in boondoggled land!) The book DID have some of my favorite recent horses in it (such as Bertrando and Paseana) and it had ALL of her favorites in there! It also contains pretty much all the great horses of the century. One thing even I noticed and really loved in this book, is it tells who the jockey was in each race.

   And of course, the unsurpassable Secretariat is in here; all his races. I still think that seeing him win the Belmont and with it the Triple Crown, was the greatest moment in sports history! The reruns are unreal, but there was NOTHING like seeing it happen!

   I can't speak as an owner, trainer, or one who bets. But as a "serious fan" of racing, I can truly say this is one extraordinary reference manual to have on hand. WELL worth the price!




4. For all of us in the Horse Racing business as owners, toutes, fans, etc, everyone knows the Daily Racing Form is the key publication for past performance data and news.

   The PP's(past performances) of famous champions of the past really open your eyes as you see that some of them ran within days of their last start in Major Stakes races and others ran at tracks that no longer exist, or across the country and both coasts in the same season.

   The best of the best are in here, and as DRF did a very good job with arrangement and information. Its like looking at the Breeders Cup Entries of the Immortals !

   Best Regards to All, MC - TheStickRules.Com




5. a good book which serves as both an overview of horse racing in the 20th century, as well as offering loads of past performance lines so race fans can compare the greatest thoroughbreds.

2 comments about Tips and Tidbits for the Horse Lover (Howell Equestrian Library).

1. I took this to the barn to read aloud with the farrier and some boarders, we had quite a few laughs. What a fun book!



2. cute illustrations takes you threw all sorts of fun facts about the animals we love. Things from the history on the mustangs to the basic "did you know " kind of thing we have all wondered about.

No comments about Essential Care of the Ridden Horse.

4 comments about Speed and the Thoroughbred: The Complete History.

1. I enjoyed reading this book. It is full of interesting information. Most books about the history of thoroughbred breeding tell all about those magical three eastern stallions. But this one tells the whole story. Mackay-Smith has offered proof that the Irish hobby- and English running-horse strains were thriving in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and that it is the "taproot mares" which offer the thoroughbred its speed. The addition of the blood of the eastern stallions provided middle distance stamina to the breed. He also talks a lot about the various personalities surrounding the early breeding of thoroughbreds. Until I read this book, I wasn't aware of the connection between the English civil war, the Restoration, and the development of the thoroughbred.
   BUT.... this book is far from perfect. As an earlier reviewer pointed out, it is very poorly edited. The illustrations are very good, but the style is a bit jarring and disjointed; it does seem like a bunch of author's notes thrown together under sketchy headings, and the same facts are repeated over and over. There are punctuation errors, and at one point the book refers to "Kentucky Derby winner Native Dancer", a grievous mistake that I think highly unlikely to have been the fault of Alexander Mackay-Smith. In my experience of books published by the Derrydale Press, this book is not quite up to their usual high quality of production. However, even with its faults, I thought this was a unique book, and for racing fans it's definitely worth reading.



2. I loved reading this book. I read it at home, at work, while driving... It is the best history of the origin of the thoroughbred I've read. Everything imaginable is compiled into one book. All racing nuts have heard "The" story of the origin of the thoroughbred: in the 17th and 18th centuries, English nobility imported a handful of Barb, Turk, and Arabian stallions, crossed them on non-descript local mares, and found that because of the enormous "prepotence" of these fabulous foreign studs, the offspring were stamped with their sires great speed and beauty. Mackay-Smith's great contribution is telling the history of these local mares, showing that they were not just empty vessels waiting to be filled, but were powerful sources of speed themselves, having been bred for racing for generations in England and Ireland. Indeed, they may have been faster than the imported stallions, with the Arab/Barb/Turk sires adding conformation and endurance, more than speed itself. The sires are the source of "speed that can carry", not speed per se. Fun book -like a little trip to a museum everytime you flip through it.



3. I was dreadfully sad to read a review of this book which thought that it was too difficult and not well edited. I'm only 21 and found this book to be fascinating, with much knowledge and information that captivated my interest. It is a text that has to be thought over and studied, making it much more valuable than simply a child-view of such a distinct history of the Thoroughbred horse. It was well written and planned out. I found this to be a brilliant construct of the details of such a beloved tradition as these creatures.



4. This book is not a good read but full of interesting bits of information. It is drastically in need of editing. Published posthumously, the format gives the sense that the author's notes were simply printed as they were found with information oddly organized or repeated.

No comments about Sketchbook.

No comments about Feeding Horses & Ponies.