JasonKoivu

So the other day I was at the library trying to pick up chicks - an Easter basketful of fuzzy chickadees had toppled over...too adorable to be true - when I saw The Pleasure Horse and immediately thought of karen. Unfortunately, it turned out not to be her kind of book, if ya know what I mean. *wink, wink* But surprise, this was totally my kind of book! I genuinely enjoyed reading it, I mean, WAY more than I thought I would.

Though my family had a farm with a pony and the occasional horse, we mostly raised cows and pigs, so I never really learned much about the horse. Thanks to this book I finally understand what jargon like "hands" means and what to look for in a good horse. Terms for color and marking, "points" of the horse, and terms for sex and age - all things that have mystified me for ages were explained quite straight forward and simply. The chapters are all bite sized, but that leaves plenty of room to succinctly go over history, purchasing, housing, feeding, grooming, shoeing, bridling, training and more.

The look, layout, illustrations, all scream kids' book, but unless those Hollis Lee was referring to in his preface as possible landowners or people who might be acquiring "a country place" were actually children, I have to assume this was actually meant for adults.

Reading the mere 90 some odd pages of The Pleasure Horse was worth it for, if nothing else, learning about Galvayne's Groove, which made me research and discover the origin of the phrase "long in the tooth." One doesn't equate the other, but the groove made me move and that's a pleasure all its own.