Preface

It is with no small trepidation that I enter the fields of horsemanship and equine domestication. Time has obscured much of the path taken by our predecessors so that it is not always easy to retrace their steps, and many natural hazards, not the least speculation, await the unwary, but without speculation no testable hypotheses can be fashioned, so I must at times speculate although I hope with suitable caution. There are also hazards of an unnatural, or at least unkind, sort along the way. I have noted that some writers take up equestrian subjects with an attitude akin to jealous entitlement. Their chief aim seems to be finding fault with other writers’ qualifications on the subject. They carp at word choices of others and feel that only the terms by which they name the parts of the saddle or harness are they right ones, somehow divinely approved of by Noah Webster or other such deity. Above all, with tolerant smiles of arrogance, they seem to exhibit a silent contempt for the horsemanship of all others.