Are Horses Happy?

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20314, 13 August 1931, Page 8

Are Horses Happy?

One of the novelties of the Horse Show at Olvmpia, "Y.Y." points out in a recent issue of the New Statesman and Nation, was a parade of sixty colliery horses and pit ponies brought straight from their work in the mines of South Wales and Monmouthshire. Each bore an announcement of its name and the number of its years of service. Gwcnny, a bay mare, aged 26, is the leader; she lias been living and working underground for twenty-two year*. Almost as old is County, a 21-year-old orey, who has been twenty years of her long life in the bowels of the earth. . . . They ar6 greeted with applause such as they can never have received belorc from an audience that includes many of the most devoted lovers of horses in tho world. But " Y.Y." sits through the exhibition with mixed feelings. He a«ree* that

they are well fed and comfortable-look-ing, that they havo escaped " the vicissitudes of storm and cold, wet and "draughts," that flies have never irritated them, and that if they have been exposed to greater risk from accidents they have had far more hours of rest than if they had lived and worked on the surface. But he cannot believe in their happiness, and in the end wonders if horses "enjoy any of the tasks, 11 whether of sport or di ndgerj, to "which they arc put by num." It is of course a far cry from tt Welsh pit to the tracks at Kiccarton and Addington, but if the liorses we are so eagerly studying this week do not enjoy upsetting our calculations they are astonishingly good actors. It may be true, ae " Y.Y." says, that when once a bridle is put on his head a horse becomes a performing animal; but it is not true, either of the race-course or oi the show ring, that his " apprehensive " eyes, restless care, and swishing "tail," as he approaches a difficult jump, indicate that his sole desire is to get back to his stall as soon as his rider will take them. They indicate rather that the horse, as the Psalmist said, is "a vain thiug for safety," whether we are on his back or on his number. Instead of weeping- over him with "Y.Y."—he admits that ]t would be a melancholy thing to " sen- " timentalise so beautiful an animul "out of existence "—we should begin studying the sly hints he gives us of the difficulty of defeating the Treasury and the laws of mathematics simultaneously.