Blog Posts by Subject: Horsemanship

15-year-old exercise rider Jack Walsh hopes and dreams that someone will promote him to "bug boy," a.k.a. apprentice jockey. However, in no way, shape or form did he aspire to take advantage of the misfortune of Showboat, the leading jockey at his barn. 116 pounds is much too heavy for a jockey; ten pounds to lose in two days. Endless frantic running, eating and drinking little of anything, wrapping oneself in a heavy blanket in the middle of summer, and vomiting up anything that will come up. One hopes that his fate does not mirror Showboat's.

The 

I love horses, and Jill Greenberg makes them look like works of art. The horses in her photographs look so majestic that they do not look real. She has some spectacular photographs of equines, and she masterfully uses light to accentuate the horses. The horse on the cover looks almost fluorescent.

Greenberg also photographs distinct body parts of the equines. For example, you can see the muscle rippling on the horses' 

Breathtaking. That is the first word that comes to mind when flipping through the spectacular visual art in this book. The dark cover photo of a relaxed, beautiful flaxen chestnut horse sets the tone for this set of pictorial works.

Many of Stromberg's photos have dark colors and depict wild horses running free across the countryside. They are vivid depictions of 

This blog post was actually spawned from a visit to Devon Saddlery near Washington, D.C. I saw a poster there for a horse event, which included information on the National Sporting Library. I then became curious as to what other horse libraries were out there.

I visited the Kentucky Horse Park as a teenager when I was competing in the National Horse Bowl Competition in Lexington, KY. Horse Bowl is a jeopardy-like contest in which contestants are on two teams of four individuals. The competition consists of team and individual 

Like always, I am horse crazy as ever, so I definitely wanted to see which professional associations and journals are out there to aid horse professionals. When I was a librarian at a corporate library, part of my job was to dig up medical professional journals. I found an association for recruiters in health care for my supervisor that she did not know about. I became aware that there is a professional association for everything, and I sometimes refer patrons to professional associations.

Once at the library, I had a parent inquire about education for her child, and 

A Horse for Mandy by Lurlene McDaniel, 1981

Best friends forever, frenemies, or worse, nothing at all. Laura and Mandy used to be tight, real tight. All of that changed when Mandy got a horse for her 13th birthday, a lifelong dream. Suddenly, there was tension. Laura trained her Tennessee Walker, Diablo, for the show circuit that summer... but alone, not with Mandy as usual. Mandy spent all of her time with her beloved Paso Fino, Solana. 

Firehorse by Diane L. Wilson, 2010

Imagine a world where horses pull fire engines, hoses and firemen, galloping to fight fires and save lives. Imagine a place where "ready-made" clothes are the talk of the town, and women gasp at the prices, where dalmatians nip at the heels of horses to make way for the fire horses, where a working "woman writer" at the Bostonian newspaper Argus is scandalous, and Rachel's father wonders who is taking care 

Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse has been a London stage play for four years running and has now come to Broadway. The Spielberg film version is slated to be released December 28, 2011.

The story takes place during World War I and describes the horrific conditions and loss of life, both human and animal, that took