AFTER THE FINISH LINE. Bill Heller. Thoroughbred Times Books, P.O. Box 8237, Lexington, KY 40533. 184 pp. 2005. $16.95.

The continuing debate concerning horse slaughter in the United States is a hot-button issue for horse lovers. Their passion for the animal makes them vehement and voluble protestors of the whole business. But those more practical view horse slaughter as an unfortunate but necessary act, one needed to control the numbers of unwanted and therefore neglected horses.

Bill Heller doesn’t pretend to offer a balanced view on horse slaughter. He’s unequivocally opposed to it, and he systematically defends his stance with stories of horse rescue and facts and figures that paint the slaughter industry with a gruesome brush.

Heller’s opposition rests on the supposition that in the United States, horses aren’t raised as food animals, but for work, sport and pleasure, and because of this should never be slaughtered for food.

An Eclipse-award winning journalist for The Thoroughbred Times, one of the leading magazines in the Thoroughbred industry, Heller writes with an elegant, fact-imbuing style one would expect from an award-winning journalist. He doesn’t use cheap sentiment as a ruse; he lays out his opinion using facts and quotations from other industry leaders to support his cause.

Many of the facts he presents in the book do have the weight to make one think, if not out of sentiment, out of business acumen. For instance, there are only three equine slaughterhouses in America, and all three are owned by foreign companies and exist to make foreign profit on the 50,000 horses they slaughter every year. No matter your view, from the nation’s economic viewpoint, that seems counter-productive.

Heller also offers many wonderful stories of people and organizations who’ve rescued horses from slaughterhouse auctions and discovered a diamond in the rough. He expounds on the sad stories of Exceller and Ferdinand, two legendary racehorses who each ended up meeting their demise in slaughterhouses.

Heller does an excellent job in systematically defending his anti-equine-slaughter stance, sparing no gruesome details. But one glaring omission is Heller’s lack of a solution for what to do with the 50,000 horses slaughtered each year. Were equine slaughter to be banned tomorrow, who would be become responsible for those horses?

That’s the only question Heller doesn’t answer, and perhaps it’s the most important one to ask.

Nicole Lever

THE HORSE’S PAIN-FREE BACK AND SADDLE-FIT BOOK: ENSURE SOUNDNESS AND COMFORT WITH BACK ANALYSIS AND CORRECT USE OF SADDLES AND PADS. Joyce Harman, DVM, MRCVS. Trafalgar Square, No. Pomfret, VT 05053. 218 pp. Illus. 2005. $29.95.

Every once in a while, a light bulb will go off in a rider’s head that illuminates a problem they’ve been having with their horse. It’s an epiphany that leads to a major breakthrough in their performance partnership.

A change in feed, an improvement in rider position, some apt sports psychology, or better shoeing–each can radically change a horse’s behavior or willingness to do what’s asked. But a better-fitting saddle?

Most of us are aware that our saddle should fit our horse, but aren’t we really more concerned with how comfortable we feel in it? When you go to buy a saddle, don’t you sit in it first?

Dr. Joyce Harman’s The Horse’s Pain-Free Back And Saddle-Fit Book stresses just how important the saddle is to any rider-horse relationship and just may be the inspiration needed for such epiphanies.

A Virginia-based veterinarian, Harman is both a certified veterinary acupuncturist and veterinary chiropractic. She’s appeared as a guest speaker on the topic of saddle fitting in the United States, England and Germany and approaches the science of medicine with a holistic approach.

Harman explains that a horse trying to move in a badly fitting saddle is similar to us trying to hike in badly fitting hiking boots or trying to dance in pinching, restricting dance shoes. When all you can do is think how uncomfortable you are, performing in an athletic way is nearly impossible.

So she guides the reader systematically and comprehensively through a re-evaluation of a correctly fitting saddle’s importance. She explains why saddle fit matters, what a correctly fitting saddle should look like, and how to evaluate the shape of your horse’s back. She even guides the reader through the purchase of such a saddle.

Harman’s writing style is easy, engaging and constructive and color photos, sketches and diagrams amply illustrate the text. But she hasn’t tried to “dumb-down” her language for ease of comprehension, so even experienced horseman can learn from this book without getting impatient. As well known as Harman is for her holistic ideals, this book is all practical advice and based on scientific fact.

Harman’s saddle-fitting book seems like a good place to begin in the quest to help your horse achieve more, comfortably.

Nicole Lever

HORSEKEEPING ON A SMALL ACREAGE. Cherry Hill. Storey Publishing, 210 MASS MoCa Way, North Adams, MA 012147. 308 pp. Illus. 2005. $24.95.

Author Cherry Hill’s goal in updating this 1990 horse-care classic is to promote horse owners’ stewardship of the land on which they keep their horses.

“More than ever, we horse owners must be diligent caretakers of the land and environment so our children will be able to know the joy of owning, caring for and riding horses,” she writes in the preface.

Hill knows what she’s talking about too. She’s owned and cared for horses most of her life while living in seven different states (from Alaska to Arizona to Michigan) and Alberta.

And she carries the theme of caring for horses, safely and properly, while protecting the land around them, throughout her informative text. She offers advice on manure management, providing adequate water for horses while preventing them from polluting streams and ground water, weed control, fly control and landscaping, all with the goal of protecting or even improving the land on which you keep your horses.

Obviously, Hill’s audience is readers who keep their horses on their own property. So the most useful section provides design plans for both the entire property–from 2 to 20 acres–and for barns for two or more horses. These plans emphasize using as much of the property as possible for turn out and grazing, with a wide variety of options, but her plans also stress efficiency and safety. Her designs even show where to plant trees to provide windbreaks, block sun, or to shield your barn or manure pile from your neighbors.

The book’s first section is really a primer on horse ownership and basic stable management and will probably be of little use to Chronicle readers, but the next two sections are a valuable resource to anyone thinking of keeping their horses at home for the first time or thinking of moving to a new farm. And it even has an index and a full page of recommended reading, for more on such diverse topics as composting landscaping and government regulations.

John Strassburger