It's a horse world, after all

Yet another fantastic organization from our friends in France:

Equiterra

For those who don't read French (and the English-language version is done by Babelfish, and thus is largely unintelligible), suffice it to say that their gorgeous logo pretty much sums it up.

I'll have to translate their beautiful mission statement later. Or maybe I'll just have to email them and offer to translate their site for them.



A lovely photo of Bill the horse in Philadelphia traffic from katie.brothers on flickr.com.

And yet, there is always more to say...

(Belgian draft horse at the Kentucky Horse Park, January 2008, photo by Christina Hansen)

A couple of quotes for today:

"This curious world which we inhabit is more wonderful than it is convenient, more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used."
(Henry David Thoreau, commencement address, Harvard University, 1837)

"American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it." (James A. Baldwin)


(Spanish Norman at the Kentucky Horse Park, August 2004, photo by Christina Hansen)

An update, on many fronts...

It's been a while since I last updated my blog or my website (before Christmas! Egad!). In the interim, we were very busy at work with the holiday, then Peter and I headed home to Kentucky for a couple of weeks of R & R (and visiting our other equine friends at the Horsiest Place on Earth). Then, my laptop's hard-drive became terminally ill. So... Now I'm back (I still have to reload Dreamweaver on my computer...The hard-drive transplant wiped ALL of my programs and saved only my data).

Several months ago, I wrote about a fantastic blog by Jean-Leo Dugast, percheron-international.blogspot.com. More recently, I linked to an article about the use of urban horses in France. Percheron-International has a new post about Lasso-du-Jardin, a Breton cob gelding who collects recycling in Trouville-sur-Mer. You really must go to Percheron-International to see Jean-Leo's marvelous photos of Lasso in action.

For those who don't read French, here's a translation of the text from Percheron-International.

This title of "accrocheur" does not refer to Lasso-du-Jardin's age. At only nine years old and with two years of professional experience, one could say that Lasso is nothing but a neophyte.

If he "takes up the bottle," it is those bottles of the restaurants and cafes from the city of Trouville-sur-Mer in the Calvados. Seven years ago, the municipality put into place an empty-bottle collection service - Wednesdays for local residents and Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays for commercial establishments.

Lasso-du-Jardin is gradually replacing Festival-de-Mai (May Day), a 15-year-old Percheron gelding who inaugurated the service. Three people, Christelle, Pascal and Sebastien, supervise the four-legged municipal employees, and take turns on the recycling routes.

Trouville, like nearby Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives, is one of the cities spearheading the effort to use draft horses in an urban setting. Today, there are 70 cities in France that use horses for maintaining green spaces, collecting garbage and providing surveillance. This number is growing rapidly.

After only having year after year of hopes without concrete realization, the urban horse is finally taking off. Urban drafts, forestry drafts, agricultural drafts--draft horses give us a message of hope: hope of a world where one can "work differently to live better."

Jean-Leo Dugast, percheron-international.blogspot.com

France seeks to use more horses for transportation.

This can only be described as AWESOME.

"It's great for workers and the community to have contact with a living thing," Linot said.

"The civil servants are on strike now, but I tell you if they had their hands on a horse they'd be happier – I've never seen a driver kiss his truck."

Bring back the horse; go green; save the Earth.

As I tell small children who hold their noses and make faces walking past me and Chip in Philadelphia:

Horses smell better than diesel.