A Horse And Her Lady

Lady was said to have predicted the outcome of boxing fights and political elections, and was consulted by the police in criminal investigations. The parapsychologist researcher J. B. Rhine investigated Lady's alleged abilities and concluded that there was evidence for extrasensory perception between human and horse.[2] The magicians and skeptical investigators Milbourne Christopher and John Scarne showed that Lady's prediction abilities resulted from Mrs. Fonda employing mentalism tricks and signaling the answers to Lady.[3][4]

This nursery rhyme has more subtle variants than just about any other, making the task of divining or analysing the meaning of its specific details, such as the colour of the horse or the identity of the female rider, even more fraught with peril and error.

A horse and her lady

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Annika Schleu of Germany cries after failing to control her horse while competing in the equestrian portion of the women's modern pentathlon at the 2020 Summer Olympics on Friday. Hassan Ammar/AP hide caption

In a statement to CNN, the German Olympic Committee said that Friday's showing damaged the image of the sport. "Numerous recognizable excessive demands on the horse, and rider combinations should be an urgent reason for the international association to amend the rules," the committee said. "It needs to be changed so that the horse and the rider are protected."

A high-profile trainer of race horses, the 43-year-old Brown grew up in Mechanicville. He's been a presence in racing for years. He reached 2,000 wins for his career last summer. In 2018, Brown set the all-time record for wins by a horse trainer at Saratoga. NYRA spokesman Patrick McKenna said Brown has 419 wins there.

In 2019, Brown agreed to pay more than $1.6 million in illegally withheld overtime wages, back pay, and penalties, according to the U.S. Labor Department. Brown, owner of Mechanicville-based Chad Brown Racing, admitted that between December 2014 and August 2017, his company filed falsified time sheets and underpaid about 150 groomers and horse walkers at his facilities at Saratoga and at Belmont Park Race Track in Nassau County.

In 2009, he was among 10 horsemen fined by the state for not paying workers the overtime rate for every hour per week above 40. At the time, Brown, who also was cited for not keeping payroll records, said the investigation is a waste of taxpayer money that actually resulted in lower payments to his barn workers.

Three years later, Nixon has chronicled the shootings of at least 40 wild horses in this forest in northeastern Arizona, where several hundred of the Heber herd, named for the unincorporated town surrounded by the forest, roam. Each day she sets out on often miles-long treks, recording the live horses she sees and the ones she finds too late. The most recent shootings that anyone knows of were in late December, when three dead wild horses were found. So far, necropsies have yielded few clues.

After the December killings, the Forest Service announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction. Wild horses are federally protected, and killing one on public land is punishable by up to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine under the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971.

Two Nevada men were sentenced to six months in federal prison and one year of supervised release in 2010 for shooting five wild horses with an AR-15 rifle. In 2005, two men in Utah were convicted of shooting nine horses and sentenced to five months in jail, followed by five months of house arrest, and ordered to pay restitution of $2,005. In another Nevada case, two men were each sentenced in 2002 to 60 days in jail, fined $2,000, for shooting a horse, one of 33 mustangs that had been shot dead four years earlier in the same area.

Ranchers, hunters, horse advocates, and forest officials in Arizona have been struggling for years over how to manage the growing Heber herd, which Todd estimates could number up to 500. Now, someone may have taken it upon themselves.

Defenders of the free-roaming horses say they play an important role in the ecosystem, breaking ice over water sources so they and other animals can drink in winter, and helping trim down brush and grasses. Others say the horses are ecosystem invaders, little more than a misplaced symbol of freedom in the West.

But nobody knows the motive for the Arizona killings, and past attacks on wild horses and burros have been blamed on everything from trigger-happy passersby to hunters using the smelly carcasses of slain horses to lure bears.

All Nixon knows is that what began as a relaxing retirement hobby of tracking the bands, or families, of wild horses has become a grim task of searching for dead ones and sharing her information with law enforcement in hopes something cracks the case. She spends about 40 to 50 hours a week driving and hiking the south-central part of the forest, where the killings have occurred. Sometimes, she hikes as much as five to seven miles along rocky, winding terrain. She keeps a photo and video library of all of her records on each horse and its band.

Forest officials say the Heber herd began with six mares and one stallion but over the years has grown to hundreds. There is a Forest Service proposal to whittle the herd down to as few as 50 and no more than 104, using contraceptives and removal of horses; the 146-page draft management plan, originally set to take effect in the spring, has been pushed back for final review until the end of the year.

As the weather warms up, if history is any indication, the horse killings may subside for a while. The shootings generally happen in winter, when the area population drops to about 3,000 from a summer high of 18,000, making it easier for an assailant to operate unnoticed.

Wild horses have roamed this small barrier island for centuries. When they were in danger of being wiped out, a woman who knew nearly nothing about horses rounded up experts, facts, and moxie to save them.

As the pontoon boat ferry approaches the east end of Shackleford Banks, the young, floppy-haired captain spots some horses standing on the muddy shore. He slows the boat, and dozens of sightseers in swim trunks and sun hats turn their heads to look.

When the ferry stops on the sandy tip of the island, across a channel of blue water from the Cape Lookout Lighthouse, several people with towels and coolers clamber off, heading toward the wider beach on the south side of the banks. Carolyn heads north. She hugs the shoreline, dodging cactus and sharp brown grass, her old suede boots slogging through the mud and salty streams. Occasionally, she steps on the ever-present horse droppings, which are so dry and grassy that they disintegrate, odorlessly, under her heel.

This place, a nine-mile-long barrier island that protects the mainland between Beaufort and Harkers Island, has always been harsh. Once, a town of 500 people stood on the flatter, eastern end, but the last person moved away three years after the 1899 hurricane. In the years afterward, fishing shacks and ramshackle cottages, meant for weekend getaways for locals, popped up. Cows, goats, and sheep grazed here. The horses were rounded up from time to time.

Because Carolyn was a librarian, the new nonprofit decided she should be in charge of rounding up facts. She emailed congressmen using a dial-up connection at her home, and cold-called professors from a stool in her kitchen. Soon, she was able to get genetic testing done on the horses to prove the old stories that had been floating around Beaufort for generations: The horses really did come from 16th-century Spanish galleons that had shipwrecked or whose sailors had thrown the animals overboard. She met with the National Park Service and methodically refuted their positions.

Those facts, and Carolyn herself, got the attention of U.S. Representative Walter B. Jones Jr., who, in 1997, introduced legislation to protect the Shackleford horses. Senator Jesse Helms pushed it through the Senate, and a third North Carolinian, White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, convinced President Clinton to sign it. One day, the NPS considered the horses pests. The next, the agency had to consider them protected.

Stallions serve a purpose here. They protect their harems of mares and foals, and pass on their genes to a new generation. Thanks to their numbers, now hovering around 100, Shacklefords are among the most genetically diverse wild horses left in the world, and other herds need their help. Corolla horses, whose population has decreased, are down to just one maternal genetic line, and many of them have birth defects due to inbreeding.

The Lady Harriet, who remained at the hall, was a great invalid, and never went out in the carriage, and the Lady Anne preferred riding on horseback with her brother or cousins. She was a perfect horsewoman, and as gay and gentle as she was beautiful. She chose me for her horse, and named me "Black Auster". I enjoyed these rides very much in the clear cold air, sometimes with Ginger, sometimes with Lizzie. This Lizzie was a bright bay mare, almost thoroughbred, and a great favorite with the gentlemen, on account of her fine action and lively spirit; but Ginger, who knew more of her than I did, told me she was rather nervous.

"Oh, no, not at all," she replied, "but I am amiable enough to let you ride him for once, and I will try your charming Lizzie. You must confess that in size and appearance she is far more like a lady's horse than my own favorite."

"My dear cousin," said Lady Anne, laughing, "pray do not trouble your good careful head about me. I have been a horsewoman ever since I was a baby, and I have followed the hounds a great many times, though I know you do not approve of ladies hunting; but still that is the fact, and I intend to try this Lizzie that you gentlemen are all so fond of; so please help me to mount, like a good friend as you are."

He hung my rein on one of the iron spikes, and was soon hidden among the trees. Lizzie was standing quietly by the side of the road a few paces off, with her back to me. My young mistress was sitting easily with a loose rein, humming a little song. I listened to my rider's footsteps until they reached the house, and heard him knock at the door. There was a meadow on the opposite side of the road, the gate of which stood open; just then some cart horses and several young colts came trotting out in a very disorderly manner, while a boy behind was cracking a great whip. The colts were wild and frolicsome, and one of them bolted across the road and blundered up against Lizzie's hind legs, and whether it was the stupid colt, or the loud cracking of the whip, or both together, I cannot say, but she gave a violent kick, and dashed off into a headlong gallop. It was so sudden that Lady Anne was nearly unseated, but she soon recovered herself. I gave a loud, shrill neigh for help; again and again I neighed, pawing the ground impatiently, and tossing my head to get the rein loose. I had not long to wait. Blantyre came running to the gate; he looked anxiously about, and just caught sight of the flying figure, now far away on the road. In an instant he sprang to the saddle. I needed no whip, no spur, for I was as eager as my rider; he saw it, and giving me a free rein, and leaning a little forward, we dashed after them. 2ff7e9595c