The Amazing Diving Horses!

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Horses have lived alongside humans for thousands of years, they have been our friends, helped us work the land, and provided us transportation. "The amazing diving horses!" is just one of the amazing things about horses that will surprise you.

The amazing diving horses, well hard to believe was a stunt that dates back to 1881 when a wooden bridge gave way underneath William F. "Doc" Carver of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, plunging him and his horse into the river. The incident grew into a franchise for Carver who ended up turning the stunt into a traveling act that he and his assistants, performed at county fairs for years afterward. The diving horse was an exciting and thrilling sight for the spectators who bought into the idea that horses leapt off the platforms because they loved to entertain. The stunt was later introduced to Atlantic City in 1928, where a horse and rider would leap from a tower of about 40 feet high, into a waiting 12 foot pool. Recently thousands of people came together in the seaside town to protest the revival of the Atlantic City Steel Pier's legendary diving horse.

Sadly the amazing diving horses were solely a means of entertainment and didn't enjoy doing the stunt. These Steel Pier horses dove up to four times a day, seven days a week when the attraction had its peak years, and the death defying feat was encouraged by using cattle prods, electrical jolts and trap doors. Sonora Webster Carver who was one of the most famous of the diving horse riders always insisted to interviewers tilt end of her very long life, that the horses were pampered like stars. She like to say they "lived the life of Riley."

To read more about this story, visit the website link below to the "Ecology," website.

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