Dark Horses and Black Beauties: Animals, Women, a Passion

I was sucked in with the first few pages, so I took this book home. Through most of the first third to half of the book, I couldn't believe that someone out there had hit the nail on the head so many times -- the author almostly perfectly described (in my opinion) the forlorn love of the little horse-crazed girl, particularly the kind that can't have one. Like one of the other reviewers, I too was hoping for a trip down nostalgia lane.

However, in comparison to the author, I am a woman that was fortunate to achieve my dream. I have had three horses in my lifetime so far, and I actively compete and live the dream I always had. I believe that the many years this author spent not realizing her dream helped fuel a resentment within her. Not to mention her animal activist views she proceeds to share with the reader in a writing style that suggests that the longer and more poetic the sounding sentence, the more spiritual it will be.

Like many other reviewers, I found the book to be misleading in its intentions, and I don't believe the author quite understands the kind of love that those of us who ride our horses have. I have met her kind before, the type that believe we are disrespecting and abusing horses by riding them for our own pleasure. I know there are all types of horse owners out there, and that all types of abuses are out there, but I'm not one of those types of owners and therefore the darkness of this book's true underlying message saddens me when it's not insulting me.

I'm curious to speculate what this author's views would have been had she gone on to become a loving, doting horse owner earlier in life.

Overall, I'm glad I bought this book. I'm glad I read this book, and for a lot of reasons enjoyed the experience of reading it regardless of the overall feeling it left me with. I would recommend others to just expect to take the good with the bad on this one.


Painful   June 14, 2002
 2 out of 3 found this review helpful

A horse owner and lover, I was given this book as a gift. Had it not been a gift I would have happily thrown it in the trash, but I kept reading in order to give the soon-to-be-asked-for book review. This book is dark, very dark. There are a few nice "moments." I kept waiting for the "payoff" for all the darkness and it never came. Overall I found it disturbing and wanted only to expunge it from my memory. There are other books that will be much more enlightening and enjoyable. Buy those.


I was irritated by this book, misled by its cover   April 22, 2002
 5 out of 11 found this review helpful

I thought I was getting a nostalgic look at a brief period in my childhood, as a privileged fourth grader taking riding lessons in tony, horsey Wilton CT. My horsey passion was cut short by an abrupt move to NYC, but I never forgot the elite culture I left behind. This small book started off OK with an accurate look at girl's formulaic horse stories, for which I award it a single star; I did get a few laughs. But it soon falls apart. I had not bargained for an animal rights book. I have a lot of bones to pick with Ms Pierson, but we'll settle for one here. I was annoyed by her self righteous dismissal of foxhunting, and thought she was unfair to the English hunt club that rescinded her invitation to ride with them after reading some of her more strident columns in the animal rights vein. Animal extremists in England are threatening the very existence of foxhunting, out of class envy and misplaced sentimentality; the foxhunters have every reason to be wary of unsympathetic journalists. Who is Ms Pierson to judge someone an impostor, in this case the hunt club official who turned her away, because they don't love horses according to her skewed definition of "love"? This annoyed me, especially because foxhunting was an important facet of our little coterie of girlish horse-lovers in the sixties. Fox hunters were widely accepted and venerated by us horse-loving girls who dreamed of riding to hounds on beautiful hunters. Ms. Pierson should have stuck to her theme, even if it made her uncomfortable. Besides, Marguerite Henry, a children's horsey book writer much admired by Ms Pierson, wrote "Cinnabar the One o'clock Fox" in which foxhunters were not typecast as cruel and stupid, but given their due as an important part of horse culture. I was too vexed to finish the final third of "Dark Horses", and was particularly annoyed because it started off so great!


What I said to friends on the Chronicle of the Horse forums   April 3, 2002
 2 out of 4 found this review helpful

It is a little book, one that describes the love from childhood of all things horse related and how a person grows but doesn't lose that feeling of awe and delight in the presence of horses. The author quotes brief remembrances of others who have had these incredible animals touch their lives.

While it focuses on little girls, women and gender, it is of definate interest to everyone here who loves horses. The author tries to explain why so few males continue to ride and lauds those who do.

I got halfway through the book and had to call ..... By that time, I had already cried twice and been astonished to find chapters dealing with COTH BB topics just in the past few days. ... topic on the Rich/Poor gap, Dressage vs Hunt Seat, "Natural Horsemanship vs Plain Common Sense, the desire for custom boots, doeskin britches, jeweled stock pins.

I was reminded of our dear ... and her bright and down to earth "Stupid Question of the Week" several times as the author describes her return to the horse dreams of childhood by taking up lessons after a 25 year hiatus.

After I got off the telephone with ..., the book turned even more towards the topics we are all obviously interested in. Slaughter, abuse, unwanted horses. She revisited her childhood anger over the plight of mustangs and the terrible treatment of livestock shipped for profit as opposed to our treasured pets and companions, first discovered through Marguerite Henry's book "Mustang, Wild Spirit of the West".

I was dumbfounded to read of Dr. Temple Grandin, a short few hours from the first time I had ever come across her work (in researching ... COTH Slaughter article topic). Totally surprised to not only find this information on the internet, then to have ... mention it later in the day, yet again in a book I had randomly selected!

This book, as I told ..., is really the inner core of many of us. I thought to call her back later to let her know that it is far more complex than I had led her to believe and not all happy memories.

Definately an intriguing book, perhaps not for everyone as it tells a grim tale of the treatment of horses in our society without rose colored glasses.