PBOTD 5th September: Gillian Baxter - Bargain Horses

-
Bargain Horses (1992) is the last pony book Gillian Baxter wrote. It was published as part of J A Allen's Junior Equestrian fiction series, and is an excellent read (and when I checked, secondhand copies are available in the UK fairly readily, and for a reasonable price).


The parents, or at least responsible adults, in Gillian Baxter's stories don't always get a good press. Perhaps worse of them is Bobby's hideous aunt, Helen, who buys Bobby's mare Shelta, and mistreats her, but she's given a run for her money by the mother in Bargain Horses, Mary Conway. It's not horses Mary mistreats: it's her daughter. In Bargain Horses we see what happens when an adult's ambitions are more important to them than their family.

Mary thinks she's a brilliant trainer, but the rest of the world doesn't agree. Mary has no money, and so the horses she finds to train are all bargains. They're bargains for a reason, because no sane person would ride them. But that's alright, because Mary has her daughter, Gemma, to ride the procession of equines who are mad, bad and downright dangerous to know. Gemma thinks she's seen the worst the equine world has to offer until the day when her mother buys Weston.

~  0  ~

More on Gillian Baxter

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rollkur and the blue tongue

-
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...
Read more

Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes

-
Image
My friend Louise sent me this picture today. It's from a children's book with the rather wince-making title For The Wee Ones. I thought, when I read that (because I read the message before I looked at the picture) that the picture was going to be a typical winsome production from the school of artists who think (or who are paid to think) that the child is a thing sent from God and a blissful thing. They had obviously never met a child, and certainly not mine. I should have known Louise better. The artist responsible for Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes slipped this one past the editors. Just look at the poor, broken Mother Rabbit. She knows she has not the faintest chance of being listened to, and poor thing, she is stooped in the way of a mother to whom this is just the lastest in a long line of horror; with nothing good to come. And Archibald is obviously the spawn of the Devil. Just look at those eyes. He'll have the bed after he's finished the bedclothes...
Read more

Dick Sparrow - 40 Horse Hitch, and Neil Dimmock's 46 Percherons

-
Image
Here's a clip of Dick Sparrow driving 40 horses. It's an amazing sight, particularly when the shot changes to show the team from the rear and you get the great incongruity of modern American corporate architecture as a background to the wagon and horses. I love the anticipation in the video: the sense of something amazing being just round the corner is palpable. Thanks to Christina Wilsdon for telling me about this world record 46 Percheron hitch (alas just stills) but you get the idea.
Read more