Talk:Frank Hopkins
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page. | ||
| Start | This article has been rated as start-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ] | ||
 |
This article is supported by the Politics and government work group. | ||
 |
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Equine, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of articles relating to horses, asses, zebras, hybrids, equine health, equine sports, etc. Please visit the project page for details or ask questions at the barn. |
| Stub | This page has been rated as stub-Class on the quality assessment scale |
| Low | This article has been rated as low-importance on the importance assessment scale |
After finally seeing the movie "Hidalgo", two years after it came out, I searched for information online about Frank Hopkins and his horses, and only then became aware of the huge controversy surrounding Hopkins' claims about his life, and the particular set of stories on which the movie was based. Concerned about the passionate emotional involvement of the Long Riders-sponsored debunking of Hopkins, I read some of Frank Hopkins' biographical comments and articles he wrote. I have a bachelor's degree in history, and have worked with local historical society museums and archives in Colorado. I also breed, raise, and train Arabian and part-Arabian horses, so I have some qualifications to be able to judge Hopkins' expertise with horses, or lack thereof.
While I agree that there was probably never a 3,000 mile Arabian endurance ride such as the movie describes, we do know that the Arabian horse was bred for endurance and stamina in desert and semi-desert conditions, and there is every reason to suppose that there are and were endurance rides, staged primarily for Arabian horses, to improve the breed.
The major point which stands out, to my mind, is the allegation by the debunkers that Hopkins did not know very much about horses. This would seem to be disproved by the article "Gentling", which carries his name, and was apparently written for the The Vermont Horse and Bridle Trail Bulletin in the 1940s. Whoever wrote this article knew a good deal about training young or unbroken horses. If Hopkins was the writer, his expertise is proven by this article alone. The methods he describes are not what a modern gentle-method trainer like John Lyons or Monty Roberts would use in every detail, but strongly resemble the procedures they teach. The similarities are impressive. The methods Hopkins describes also do NOT resemble those used by many of his contemporaries who favored a more quick and violent approach; an exponent of this latter approach to horse training as unfortunately typical of of pre-World War II era trainers is shown in Monty Roberts' description of his father in Monty Roberts' book "The Man Who Listens To Horses".
