Dreamer, the Pony Club chapter books, and Black Beauty are a few among the various trauma plots concerning horses that many of us consumed growing up, notably before our brains had fully developed. It remains unknown whether our prepubescent nervous systems could properly handle the emotional potency of these stories, but I would go so far as to say that they could not.
What do these stories have in common? You might say that they all involve horses and the kind of profound love and companionship one could only forge with such a highly intelligent, majestic creature. Well, another thing they have in common is that the horse almost always dies at the end. Black Beauty is basically the Old Yeller of horse movies, except the animal abuse is far more rampant. The horse might not die in Dreamer, or most of the Pony Club books, but there are enough excruciating moments that will have you fearing for that horse’s life.
Growing up with this genre, one of the first things I learned was not the remarkable power of friendship, but the fragility of the horse’s immune system. You learn pretty early on that if a horse gets sick you should get ready to say your goodbyes. Considering how strong horses are, it is truly incredible how little adversity they can withstand when it comes to their immune systems. Ruby’s got a cold? Uh-oh. Mumps has the mumps? Good luck, Mumps. Lightning comes down with a fever? They’re a goner. The fever subplot was one of the most widely used story devices—or should I say misused! I can only imagine the kind of sadist it would take to orchestrate such inane torture for child-dominated audiences.
Nonetheless, we loved these stories growing up. Mostly, because they involved horses. If you didn’t want the horse, you wanted to be the horse. Even more alarming than these latent furry tendencies, I think, is that part of us looked forward to the suspense of it all. What could be cooler than saying, “Sorry, I can’t come into school today—Loofa broke her leg yesterday while we were out for our mid-afternoon stroll. Just around Blackberry Mend, she was spooked by a squirrel and cantered deep into the woods where we ran into a pack of wild wolves. They chased us towards a cliff edge that had Loofa trotting in place over a 50 foot drop to a low river. After creating a makeshift harness for the both of us out of my lasso, I threw her reins over a nearby tree to act as a pulley. Using my own strength, I grabbed the reins, carrying both our weights in one hand, and rock climbed down with the other. Unfortunately, before we could reach the water and float downstream back to safety, one of the wolves gnawed through the rope and we fell three feet towards the rocks. I tried to cushion Loofa’s fall using my own body, but her front hoof got caught in a crevice. Now, I am living with her in the stable as I nurse her back to health. I will not be able to come into school for three weeks.”
Later on, of course, Loofa caught pneumonia and had to be shot behind the farm by Lauren’s father. So, once again, we see that the extremes of the horses’ misfortunes cannot have had a positive impact on its adolescent readers and viewership.
