I've been meaning to write about this all week, but reading the exclusive in Horse and Hound about the controversy tipped me over the edge. For my non-horsy readers, rollkur is a training/warming up technique used by some dressage riders. It basically involves riding the horse with its jaw pulled in virtually to its chest, in order to increase suppleness. Patrik Kittel , a Swedish competitor in Odense was videoed riding his horse in this way. If you watch the video , you'll see the horse's tongue hanging out - blue. It takes a while before the rider notices this. When he does, he stops, puts the horse's tongue back in, and carries on. There are two things which bother me about this. Firstly, I am fully aware large sections of the dressage world, and some of its brighest stars, consider rollkur perfectly ok, but the FEI guidelines state this practice should only be for short periods, allowing the horse to rest. Patrick Kittel apparently rode the horse for two hou...
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The Sun hasn't risen here yet but the moon is quite beautiful this morning.
Question for you: Do you see the resemblance between Michael Morpurgo's "War Horse" and Brian Carter's "Jack"? Just curious.
Morpurgo's "War Horse".
Jack is the name of a young man who grew up in Devon, and raised a horse named, "Bethlehem", or "Beth"
for short. Bethlehem is requisitioned for the artillary during WWI, and Jack, when he becomes old enough, joins the service.... I could continue on, but anyone can plainly see the similarities, which only become more and more as you read the two stories. There is not much difference between the book "Jack" and "War Horse", the book/movie, even to the French farmer and the French girl who take care of either Beth or "Joey",as the War Horse is named.
Why am I bringing this up? Because I'm curious as to the history of these two authors writing such similar stories, and if anyone else has made the same observation.