I continue on undaunted in my quest to have the horse replace the bald eagle as our national symbol. The horse, despite all it has done for us, is not even our national mammal. The bison is. Ask yourself, how many of our plows or harvesters have been pulled by either the bison or the bald eagle? It wasn’t bison or bald eagles who made Lewis and Clark’s history changing trek possible and as I recall, Paul Revere wasn’t riding a bison or a bald eagle when he warned that, “The British are coming, the British are coming.”

The bald eagle has been our national symbol since 1782. None other than Benjamin Franklin objected vehemently to the pick. In a letter he wrote to his daughter he said, “For my own part I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly... besides he is a rank coward.”

Is that what you want to represent your country? 

The horse is as perfect as a species could possibly be and there’s no existing mammal on earth that is older than the horse. The genus Equus has been a resident of our planet for 40 million years longer than man! Just consider, without the horse there would be no Kentucky Derby, no PRCA, no jackpot ropings, no Budweiser Clydesdales maybe even no cattle business.

Greek chariots were pulled by horses 1500 years before the birth of Christ. The Pony Express, made possible by the horse, did a better job bringing the mail than our present day post office does. For thousands of years the horse was the most precious and noble gift a person could bestow or receive.

In 1900 one hundred and thirty thousand horses worked in the streets of Manhattan which is ten times the number of yellow cabs there today. And I have a photo of 32 horses pulling one grain harvester and I counted at least 19 such harvesters working in one field at the same time. Horses fed our country and died in our wars, one and a half million of them dying in the Civil War alone! I could go on and on like this documenting what the horse did to build this nation. 

Just name me one thing the bald eagle has done other than look good on our coins, flags and letterheads.