Equestrienne

Equestrienne = Lady equestrian.

I enjoy old books and old magazines at least as much as I enjoy old movies. There is a zest and honor for language in their writing that you do not find so frequently produced today. On a Tennessee Walking Horse heritage website I came across this excerpt from a 1943 issue of Blue Ribbon magazine that I would like to find in print:

“It matters not whether your battle is in the office, in the factory or on the farm, you’ll need strength to fight. Strength comes through health. Health comes from exercise and proper care of your body.

Amanda & Jubilee resized

A glimpse from a lovely girl-and-her-horse photo shoot featuring Ebony’s Midnight Jubilee, a Tennessee Walking Horse. (Photography by Abigail Read)

That’s where the horse comes into the picture, for it is universally recognized that horseback riding is one of the finest forms of exercise that man or woman can take. It is not strenuous, yet it is invigorating. It tones up the muscles and gives one a glow of health.

We all need health today. That’s why you need a horse. And in choosing a horse you’ll probably want one which is easy in the saddle and smooth in gaits, for you don’t want to wrestle with your mount wile you ride. In other words you don’t want to work while you play. And all of us need a little ‘play’ through these strenuous days to keep us fit.

The Tennessee Walking Horse is known as ‘The World’s Greatest Pleasure Horse.’ But the word pleasure is rather passe now! Yet, it is sensible and right and proper to conserve our health in the highest possible degree while we carry on with the work that is before us on the home front.

When you have left the office or are out of the store or factory you need some form of recreation to build you up for another day. You can find this on the back of a Tennessee Walking Horse when he carries you along the bridle path, the open road, or around your own premises. That’s the tonic you need just now.

The Tennessee Walking Horse is gentle and sensible, easy to saddle, easy to mount and easy to ride. He’ll take you there and bring you back and he’ll do it in such a smooth manner that you will feel no fatigue after your ride. He’s famous for his “free and easy” gaits. No other horse can give you the delightful and gliding ride that he can and will give you, for no other horse has his delightful and gliding gaits.

These gaits are the flat-foot walk, the running walk, and the rolling canter. They’ll take you from four to eight miles an hour. After sixty minutes in the saddle on the back of a Tennessee Walking Horse you’ll rested and mended, you’ll feel fit and fine, you’ll be ready for peaceful sleep, and you’ll be able to hit the ball all the harder on the morrow.”

Grandest advertisement ever. Did you catch that, ladies and gentlemen? We all NEED horses when our nation is at war! Why not a swift-footed steed of plantation progeny that has some extra gears in its step?

In these photographs, Jubilee is wearing her Diamond Parade Set bridle from The Baroque Horse Store.

Jubilee’s ancestors:

~ Amanda