{"id":533,"date":"2008-11-24T08:25:44","date_gmt":"2008-11-24T12:25:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thegreathorse.com\/blog\/?p=533"},"modified":"2016-10-23T13:02:59","modified_gmt":"2016-10-23T17:02:59","slug":"book-characters-targa-the-mongolian-warpony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/2008\/11\/book-characters-targa-the-mongolian-warpony\/","title":{"rendered":"Targa the Mongolian Warpony"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eclipsed by Shadow<\/strong><\/em>, is the first volume of the new trilogy adventure, \u201cThe Legend of the Great Horse,\u201d which begins a journey that traces the history of horsemanship. In the story, the heroine, Meagan Roberts<\/em>, is taken back through time by her horse, Promise<\/em>. Meagan must survive humanity\u2019s brutal past armed only with her knowledge of advanced horsemanship of the 21st century.<\/p>\n

One of the interesting things about our relationship with horses is how slowly it developed. For many millennia mankind struggled with \u201cconquering\u201d the horse, when in reality simple humane treatment and empathy was the path to tapping into the equine potential. Today\u2019s sensibly schooled horses could literally canter circles around primitive man\u2019s poorly \u201cbroken\u201d and brutalized mounts.<\/p>\n

In the story, Meagan is dropped off in various time periods and must fend for herself. One such era is during Europe\u2019s Dark or Middle Ages, when the enlightened horsemanship of Greek antiquity has been forgotten and brutality was again the norm of the day.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\""Mongolian<\/a><\/dt>\n
“Mongolian Steppe” by David Edwards | National Geographic<\/span><\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/h4>\n

It was in this era that Mongolian nomads burst from their ancestral homes on the Asian plains to pillage and ransack from Russia to Poland, throughout India and the Middle East. Meagan lands amidst the united armies of Genghis Khan and is given a Mongolian warhorse mare she names Targa<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The mare is typical of her breed: stocky, short-legged and pony-sized. Meagan succeeds through empathizing with the mare and employing modern riding techniques that provide strong yet humane guidance. Their association grows into a real horse-rider partnership.<\/p>\n

Targa <\/em>illustrates how unchanged the horse\u2019s nature is after many millennia of human \u201cdomestication.\u201d Horses are simply too old a species to have become more than superficially adapted to mankind\u2019s demands. Targa<\/em> responds to Meagan\u2019s enlightened empathy as horses do today; horses of primitive man would have done the same if given the opportunity.<\/p>\n

The rampaging Mongolians cherished their horses, and their horses responded. This responsive cooperation with their riders led to wiping out alien societies, but there was no malice in the Mongolian warponies. Despite talk of the military \u201cgenius\u201d of Genghis Khan, had Western society remembered their enlightened horsemanship instead of traveling down the path of war and brutality, they likely would not have been overrun by the superior skill of their Asian raiders.<\/p>\n

There are many lessons in history, but one of the foremost is how spectacular are the results of empathy and harmony.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eclipsed by Shadow, is the first volume of the new trilogy adventure, \u201cThe Legend of the Great Horse,\u201d which begins a journey that traces the history of horsemanship. In the story, the heroine, Meagan Roberts, is taken back through time by her horse, Promise. Meagan must survive humanity\u2019s brutal past armed only with her knowledge … Continue reading “Targa the Mongolian Warpony”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[134],"tags":[118,28,30,128,127,119,129],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14722,"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions\/14722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegreathorse.com\/book-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}