Editorial Paddock by Cheryl Childs

Dick Francis, a former jockey in Britain and mystery novelist, is one of my favorite authors. In one of his novels the hero is attempting to find information about something in Russia and when he gets the information he is asked how he got it. Our hero informs them “I knew the magic word,” and when asked what the magic word is he responds, “ Horse,”. I love that line because it’s so true. Only a horseman would have written that line and only horse people
understand the meaning of it.
 It seems to me that horse people, on the  whole, are a  little different than the rest of the people in the world and we see things differently, even when it comes to literature, art and film.
 I remember going to see Mask Of Zorro and when Antonio Banderas’ character says to the horse “ I’m  going to give you the great honor of being my horse,” there were just a few people in the theater who laughed slightly - horse people of course. Then when he says “ I’m warning you I will get another horse,” when the horse won’t come when he is called, a few of us  laughed out  loud. Of course, that had to be the horse people in  the theater, because we all knew that threat wouldnever phase a horse. Non-horse people, well, they didn’t really get it.
 In the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance   Kid in the scene where Butch trys to run off the  posse’s horses, and they don’t move, we all know how silly the line “ Some one sure trained them good,” is. Please... that’s standard horse behavior - if you are trying to run a horse off to get them out of your way to do somethingthey just plant themselves in front of you, but if you are out there trying to catch a horse  he will gallop off.
 If you look at the bookshelves of a horse owner chances are  you won’t see a lot of self-help books, unless they apply to training or riding. You might find authors names like Mary Twelvepony,  Monty Roberts, or Gawani Pony Boy. You  might find titles like Cross Training Your Horse or Training The Reining Horse.
 Another thing I have noticed about us horse people  is the photos  we carry in  our wallets may often times be of our beloved equine friends. Family photos often will include horses. Photographs on the wall, as rule,  are photos of horses.
 We tend to buy art work that is equine related. Home decor is often equine related as well and should everyone in the house be a horse person then chances are the entire house may done in “horse”.
  If you look at our movie collections they may not all be horse movies, but most do have horses in them. When flipping the televison channel we just automatically stop when we see  a horse, whether it’s a horse race, rodeo, 3-day eventing coverage or old an western movie or TV western.
 Of course you never see a horse parked outside a  psychiatrist’s office. Okay, well, maybe a pick-up truck with a horse bumper sticker on it.
 I think horse is a magic word  and it  really  is an international language that we all speak whether we talk in English, Spanish, French or German, because we are all horse people.