The Diving Horses of Atlantic City

1. Gus Dean
   October 14th, 2009 at 12:28 pm

   Wow!! I can't even imagine seeing this in person today let alone being the girl on the horse. I love Atlantic City....the casino's, entertainment, shops, restaurants, not to mention the people! I travel there 2 to 3 times a month and it's great! There is always something to do or see....come visit.

2. epfroth
   October 14th, 2009 at 12:33 pm

   There's a wonderful children's book about this,
   Girl on the high diving horse by Linda Oatman High.

3. Splint Chesthair
   October 14th, 2009 at 12:38 pm

   The article ends by saying the horses seemed to enjoy it greatly. I wonder if that's true or if they were beaten until they jumped and learned that way.

   Hard to say, I had a border collie that loved jumping off the river dike wall, probably 20 feet into the river below. He'd jump swim to the shore, run up the hill and jump again. Throw a ball into the mix and he'd do it all day long.

4. Waldo Jeffers
   October 14th, 2009 at 1:32 pm

   The horse were still diving into the early 70s, at least.

   My aunt used to own a house not too far from Steel Pier, and I remember being able to watch the horses dive from the beach.

   One year, my parents took us to see the show and ended up traumatizing my sister. Part of the show involved some trained dogs doing tricks, and two dogs got over-enthusiastic and fell into the water. A couple divers went in after them, but came up empty-handed. My sister was quite the animal loving 4-year-old and she cried for the rest of the day. She didn't quite believe my parents when they told her the dogs probably swam to shore further down the beach.

5. Ivory
   October 14th, 2009 at 1:45 pm

   You can stills see a diving horse, Lightning, in NY.

   http://www.thedivinghorse.com/

6. Kalel
   October 14th, 2009 at 3:06 pm

   Just say Neigh to horse-diving.

7. mandababy828
   October 14th, 2009 at 3:52 pm

   A Disney movie was made about Sonora Carver called Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103262/

   Great movie.

8. Amy Williams
   October 14th, 2009 at 4:04 pm

   Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken was one of my favorite movies growing up!

9. petra
   October 14th, 2009 at 5:17 pm

   Am I the only person who thinks that forcing an animal to do something against its nature, such as diving 40-60 feet into an abyss, an extreme in animal cruelty? Does anyone actually think that those poor horses weren't beaten into submission? Not to blame Jersey, but then again, is the same town (the Jersey Shore) that let Thomas Edison electrocute an elephant, and only a decade before...

10. Jill
    October 14th, 2009 at 9:30 pm

    Sad, sad, sad.

    Pretra, you are not the only person...

11. phoenix1693
    October 14th, 2009 at 10:36 pm

    I was just going to see if someone commented on that movie! I remember it so well!

12. Christophe
    October 14th, 2009 at 11:45 pm

    Insane! When is Red Bull planning the next event?

13. emmiline
    October 15th, 2009 at 1:48 am

    kalel- once again, you make me laugh out loud.

14. UrbanElf
    October 15th, 2009 at 4:21 am

    Yep, I hate being forced to do unnatural things myself. The amount of beatings it took before I was able to ride a bike, fly in a plane, wear shoes, play videogames....doesn't bear thinking about.

    Not to say that it *definitely* wasn't cruel, but I think to always assume that animals have to be beaten into submission to do something different is also a little shortsighted.

15. BikerRay
    October 15th, 2009 at 5:57 am

    Unlikely it was initially voluntary. In early cowboy movies, they filmed horses jumping off cliffs by using a trip wire to make them fall over the edge. A lot were killed or broke legs, which, if you're a horse, is the same thing.

16. UrbanElf
    October 15th, 2009 at 7:41 am

    Very true, BikerRay, but horses are now humanely trained to perform stunts/falls in films, so it *is* possible. It may well not have been voluntary, true, but there's always the immediate assumption that if an animal is doing something other than standing about, eating grass, it must have been beaten to within an inch of its life to do it.

    I come from a family of farmers, with highly trained dogs who respond to all sorts of calls to perform all kinds of 'unnatural' duties, even including diving into lakes etc to rescue livestock. Not once has any of them been beaten.

17. Justin
    October 15th, 2009 at 8:20 am

    Don't forget that humans jump off high dives for fun. Is it so much of a stretch to think that our "lowly" animal friends don't enjoy it too?

18. Fran
    October 16th, 2009 at 11:02 am

    No Petra. You are not alone. I think this is horrific and even the picture provided gives me chills. It's just wrong.

19. lisa
    October 17th, 2009 at 5:13 am

    Horse person here-
    I've looked at the pictures from this and other links and I can't see any indications that the horses were coerced. Nothing in their facial expressions or body shows fear. I'm not saying that they weren't trained with cruel methods, just that I can't see any evidence. I think it would be entirely possible to teach this using positive, reward-based methods and taking it one small step at a time. Actually, I don't know how you could get a horse to repeatedly dive like this any other way. A frightened horse in a situation like this could easily run through a fence or off the side of the ramp or he could decide not to move at all.

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