John Rarey, the Ohio Horse Tamer Who Performed for a Queen
In January 1858 a farmer's son from Groveport, Ohio, lay down beside a horse in front of Queen Victoria. A century before Dorrance and Hunt, John Rarey made gentleness famous.
Origins
From the first riders and the first manuals to the riding masters and horse tamers: the good, the bad and the ugly of how people have handled horses.
The First Teachers on Record: Kikkuli, Simon and Xenophon
Horsemanship was being written down more than three thousand years ago. The oldest texts already hold the two halves of the craft: a program, and a way of treating the horse.
The Hard School: Grisone, the Riding Academies and the Long Argument About Force
The first printed riding manual of the Renaissance recommended punishments that read today as cruelty. The masters who came after it spent two centuries arguing their way back to gentleness.