The diving horses performed at Atlantic City's Steel Pier in the 1920s and 1930s. The horse would jump into a tank of water, typically with a young woman riding on its back.
Further details and additional photos at the http://www.petticoated.com/pdqwinter04/otherdocs/divinghorsesW04.html, via ty.rannosaur.us.
Some dove with their front legs straight out, while others tucked up their legs as if they were going over a jump. One horse would twist in the air and land on his side, making it dangerous for his rider.
‘The riders (all women) would suffer one or two broken bones a year. Most of the injuries came from getting out of the pool of paddling hooves. They made it look easy, but it wasn’t. Years ago a rider by the name of Sonora Carver (in the late 1920’s) went blind from a bad impact with the water. The jump was sixty feet at that time, but was then lowered to forty.
‘Another horse, I think his name was Patches, drew quite an audience. After making so many jumps he no longer waited for his rider. He would charge up the ramp to the tower and take a running jump off the diving board, leaving the rider behind. A couple of the girls tried to leap on him as he flew by, only to be left sailing through the air mount-less.
Further details and additional photos at the http://www.petticoated.com/pdqwinter04/otherdocs/divinghorsesW04.html, via ty.rannosaur.us.
Girl on the high diving horse by Linda Oatman High.
Hard to say, I had a border collie that loved jumping off the river dike wall, probably 20 feet into the river below. He'd jump swim to the shore, run up the hill and jump again. Throw a ball into the mix and he'd do it all day long.
My aunt used to own a house not too far from Steel Pier, and I remember being able to watch the horses dive from the beach.
One year, my parents took us to see the show and ended up traumatizing my sister. Part of the show involved some trained dogs doing tricks, and two dogs got over-enthusiastic and fell into the water. A couple divers went in after them, but came up empty-handed. My sister was quite the animal loving 4-year-old and she cried for the rest of the day. She didn't quite believe my parents when they told her the dogs probably swam to shore further down the beach.
http://www.thedivinghorse.com/
Great movie.
Pretra, you are not the only person...
Not to say that it *definitely* wasn't cruel, but I think to always assume that animals have to be beaten into submission to do something different is also a little shortsighted.
I come from a family of farmers, with highly trained dogs who respond to all sorts of calls to perform all kinds of 'unnatural' duties, even including diving into lakes etc to rescue livestock. Not once has any of them been beaten.
I've looked at the pictures from this and other links and I can't see any indications that the horses were coerced. Nothing in their facial expressions or body shows fear. I'm not saying that they weren't trained with cruel methods, just that I can't see any evidence. I think it would be entirely possible to teach this using positive, reward-based methods and taking it one small step at a time. Actually, I don't know how you could get a horse to repeatedly dive like this any other way. A frightened horse in a situation like this could easily run through a fence or off the side of the ramp or he could decide not to move at all.
Does it look unnatural and scary? Heck yeah? Dangerous for the horse? Absolutely! But the question is...is it?
farm boy cowboy up
Horses are pretty smart. I recall General Meade's horse, Old Baldy, was wounded 7 times during the Americn Civil War, including at Gettysburg. One day Old Baldy refused to go into battle. Meade retired Old Baldy and both Old Baldy and Traveller, General Robert E Lee's horse, out lived both Generals. Don't cut horses short. After all, where do you think the phrase, "Horse Sense" came from?