Better horses

I have a bit of fun in this week's Insights newsletter:

Winston Peters’ tax credit for pretty horses fights the wrong battle when it comes to improving New Zealand’s bloodstock.

New Zealand has no obvious problem with ugly horses. Maybe farmers keep the ugly horses hidden so townies out for a drive don’t see them, but it seems unlikely.

I have yet to see an ugly horse here. They’re all beautiful in their own way.

But we do seem to have, dare I say it, cowardly horses. Every time Guy Fawkes Day comes around, we hear calls for banning fireworks because they worry the horses.

It wasn’t always this way.

Rudyard Kipling’s classic “Her Majesty’s Servants” tells the story of camp animals that served the British Army in India and Afghanistan. The troop-horse took pride in its bravery, telling the other animals it was trained to lie down to let its master fire across its back.

New Zealand sent more than 10,000 horses to serve in the Great War. The army selected its horses for their bravery rather than beauty. Cavalry was then on the wane, so fewer horses might have had to serve as shield for their riders. But they faced bullets, poison gas, and artillery.

Only four returned home. The remaining survivors were either sold to foreign interests or shot.
A generation of New Zealand’s bravest horses was wiped out. The most cowardly horses stayed home, and today’s pathetic stock are their descendants.

New Zealand does not need tax credits to make the country’s horses more attractive. Who can really judge that anyway? What we need instead are tax credits to build a braver bloodstock.

My modest proposal would require that every horse in the country attend boot camp, along with their owners, to re-instil the lost martial equine spirit. The worst performing horses would be gelded on the spot, preventing their contaminating future generations. The best performing horses could attract Winston’s tax credit. That tax credit would follow through to those horses’ descendants, but only if bred to other similarly creditable stock.

And the best-of-the-best could be drafted to make Winston’s proposed Police Flying Squad a mounted unit.

Kiwi horses would come to welcome Guy Fawkes Day fireworks as reminder of the comradery they shared with each other in boot camp.

And my proposal is no more ridiculous than tax credits for engineering beautiful horses. 

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