Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
comic strip overdue media

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

When I was a girl

I loved horse stories, especially the Marguerite Henry books (my favourite was Black Gold) and Anna Sewell's Black Beauty. I went through a horsey-girly phase where I read about them, drew them obsessively, etc., etc. Despite the fact that my horsey-girly phase dimmed long ago, I'm severely allergic to horses, and to be honest, I'm a little bit afraid of their sheer size when I encounter them for real, even so, horse stories such as this still move me:

Burma's True Love: How a girl lost — and found — the horse she cherished

It has all the plot twists of an excellent horse book or movie, and, thankfully, a happy ending. I had never heard of the practice of using mares to test stallions undergoing quarantine for contagious equine metritis, and the process and what it does to their bodies seems horrible. They were used up and thrown away to slaughter by people who did not really love them. I'm so glad that this horse and her companion were rescued, and that a girl and her horse were reunited.

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