Animals: Show Horses

The animals exhibited in the 46th An-nual National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden last week were valued at $1,000,000. The prizes for which they competed were worth $100,000.

Every year the horse show differs in some respects from preceding shows. Last week the promenade, where spectators might walk around the outside of the judging ring, had been restored. Restored also was Hunt Night, when spectators wore pink or green coats to watch the judging of hunter classes. There were 30 fewer classes than last year, but most of the best U. S. show horses—with a few notable exceptions, like William DuPont’s grey hunters Quarryman and Quarrymaster, Mrs. William P. Roth’s five-gaited saddler, Chief of Longview—were entered. Young horses, such as Mountain Pippin, a three-gaited saddle horse owned by Jane’s Place; Lieutenant W. M. Cleland’s six-year-old Irish hunter Margot; H. Hollon Crowell’s hunter Sir Conrad—won more than their usual share of blues. In the harness classes, there was a seasoned show-horse which no comparatively new competitor could hope to displace. This was Mr. & Mrs. Paul Moore’s aging bay harness mare, Seaton Pippin. On the opening night she won her 185th blue ribbon.

Seaton Pippin, by Marlboro, out of Phosphate, by Polonius, holds the world’s record as a hackney. She has won more championships than any other horse in her class, has never been defeated in single harness nor in hand. Named (like the Moore stables, Seaton Hackney Farm at Morristown, N. J.) for Lady Seaton, international hackney champion who was retired in 1917. she was foaled eleven years ago and shown for the first time three years later. At five, she won the reserve championship. Since then, she has won the $2,000 harness horse stake at the National Horse Show four times in a row. She won it for the fifth time last week. In the Cohasset, L. I. show last summer she won her 50th championship. Fifteen hands high, she holds her plump neck punctiliously arched, lifts her hoofs in a gait which is higher, slower and shorter in stride than that of a standard bred horse. She has four white stockings, a white star on her forehead and a white snip on her nose. Her black tail is cropped; on her black mane, in the show ring, are knots of red wool to accent the curve of her neck. In her stall she shows traces of the nervousness which is noticeable in all progeny of her mother. She regards all small objects as likely to be edible and wears a wire muzzle to prevent her chewing her blanket off. The wide margin of Seaton Pippin’s superiority was not approached in other classes at last week’s show. For the last few years judges at American horse shows have awarded most of the saddle class prizes to Kentucky-bred horses, a procedure that stirs lively opposition in devotees of the British thoroughbred strain, which used to win. Thoroughbreds are built for racing and hunting as well as show. Slightly crossed with standard-bred horses, they make excellent saddlers. Ken-tucky-bred horses have been fined down to a mettlesome nervousness highly impressive in the ring but unsuited, so their critics claim, to hardier exercise. Judges last week overlooked Antonio P. Fachiri’s imported thoroughbred Rosewater, gave the Biltmore Challenge Cup, for three-gaited saddle horses suitable for park rid-ing, to Jane Bancroft’s Kentucky-bred mare, Likely Lady.

The same question—practicability v. appearance in the ring—arises among hunters but it is more amicably settled. Hunters may be judged for example 60% for jumping, 40% for appearance; or 50% conformation, 25% performance, 25% for way of going and manners. Among outstanding hunters this year was Mrs. Simon Patterson’s bay gelding Prince H, which won the John R. Townsend Memorial Cup for both green and qualified hunters.