PBOTD 22nd October: Jean Slaughter Doty - The Crumb

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Today's book looks at riding schools in America, although to be fair Ashford Stables are rather more of a training establishment for people with their own horses than anything else. Still, human nature is the same everywhere. Heroine of this book, Cindy, gets a summer job at Ashford. A dream come true, she thinks. 


Cindy loves horses with that slightly misty passion common to so many girls, and it's a terrible shock to her when she realises just how far some of the people at Ashford will go in order to win. Mind you, ruthlessness in the pursuit of success has not exactly gone away. There are still, sadly, any amount of shenanigans going on in the showing world, and if I can pick out just one truly hideous example about which I've written in the past, Tennessee Walking Horses are still sored to produce the Big Lick, a slightly bizarre gait much prized by people who show the horse.

This has been going on for years. People have been exposed on Youtube for the practice, and legislation is only now slowly crawling along.


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