|
|
Post by horseguy on Nov 11, 2015 15:26:09 GMT
I'm old. Maybe the only advantage of getting old is you get a longer perspective on things. I started riding horses in 1953. I lived in a rural town that was becoming a suburb. A lot of people back then did not know what a suburb was. Suburb was a new word, like text is now.
We used to ride our bikes to go fishing in the creek, and to go camping in a woods we were not sure who owned.
I remember riding horses through a field as it was slowly being transformed into a development, the town's first. One day we'd ride up to a place that had a nice ditch to jump, it was gone, leveled. The next time we crossed that field there were trenches everywhere, soon to be filled with pipes and eventually filled in with dirt with fire hydrants sticking out of the ground. I think there were 2 or 3 fire hydrants at the "four corners" in town, now there were over 20 hydrants in the field where we rode. Next there were concrete curbs in the field, and finally paved streets. I cannot remember the day when it was no longer a field, but eventually we stopped calling it Mr. Chilcot's field and called it "the development". About that time we stopped riding there.
I was fortunate to get riding lessons. I had a lesson every day in the summer during the week, five lessons every week on a horse named Mud. Some kids never had a lesson. They rode auction horses their grandfather bought for them. Those auction horses would dump a kid on pavement and worse. We never wore helmets. Mud would kick me when I groomed him and when I mounted him. My legs were pretty much black and blue all summer long, but once in the saddle he was a good ride. To this day I can mount a kicking horse.
If I had to make a list of the changes from then to now, the first thing would be horses back then were a way to get somewhere or to do a sport. A good horse was one that would not dump you on a road and would help you win something. A really good horse was one that would get you somewhere none of your friends could get to with their horse, so they had to take a different route to catch up with you. That was the most fun. This is still true of fox hunting in very rural areas. In those days I can't remember people having pet horses that they groomed more than they rode. In fact my memory is of more than a few people who rode and hardly groomed at all, thus the old saying, "Ridden hard and put up wet". Horses were used.
One way horses were "used" was with ponies that could teach a kid to ride. These ponies seemed to live forever and were passed around in town. No one could remember the original owner. These ponies might stay with a family and teach a bunch of brothers and sisters for a while, but when they all could ride a little, the pony moved on. Kids were taught not to get attached, I guess, and that they would get a horse after they could ride the pony. Now people buy their kid a pony and after they learn to ride, the family retires the pony to a field until it gets fat and useless. All this (read ruining the pony) is done for sentimental reasons. The usefulness of the mount is now unimportant, as is the sense of community that needs these teaching ponies to teach as many kids as they can.
My list of changes would include the change from an equestrian community to a horsed industry. In an equestrian community there was a sense of doing things together. Sharing a pony is one example. Another was sharing information on horsemanship, about things like colic, lameness and training. It was sometimes having a older gentleman, a neighbor look at your horse and tell you it was done, degenerative navicular. Today it is a vet taking x-rays and offering expensive medications to prolong the horses life (read suffering). It wasn't emotionless in the community, but rather honest and truthful. If your horse became useless, it was done. People cared about the horses in the community, often more than they care about the people. If you had a horse with failing kidneys that needed to be put down, and the owner was too attached to put it down, a neighbor or friend would do it for them. They'd take the horse to their farm and never tell the owner when exactly the horse's life ended. They'd just say the horse had a good few days and never felt a thing, and it was never mentioned again. The next time the helpful neighbor saw the owner he'd ask, "How's your new horse?" People loved their horses, I think more than they do now, but they didn't make a big deal of it or make their horses into pets or any sort of self serving object. Horses were loved useful beings.
I miss the community. I miss that even into the 1980's I could send my kids off over a hill to a neighbor's farm to ride with their kids, and know that if something happened along the way a neighbor would lend a hand. There was a lot of freedom in that community. It was not perfect. People gossiped and complained about other horse owners, but we all managed to get along because we all had horses and needed one another sometimes. Now in the horse industry it is different. If the horse industry had a motto, it would be, "We're all in this alone." That sucks.
I just lent a pony to a good friend. It's a good pony that has taught a lot of kids. I bought this pony from the breeder and promised to train it many years ago. She wouldn't sell that little mare until I promised to train it well. I did. It was a independent little cus, so it took a lot more training than I planned on, but I made that pony useful. A lot of kids and small adults learned to ride on her. She also helped a lot of horses. being a dominant little mare, she kept a herd in line, making sure they went to the water trough plenty of times on a hot summer day, or when she was put in a small paddock with a colicy horse, she kept the sick horse moving through the night when I was too tired to keep walking it.
I never came to truly like that pony, but I did learn to respect her. She was and is very useful. I don't need her any more since I quit teaching regularly. My friends can use her and that is what they will do. I said I might need her back, but I doubt it. I used to tell my students when she was bad on a mare day that when I retired, I'd find the nastiest, stuck-up, bratty little girl I could find and sell her to her as payback for all the times at the barn I'd hear, "Mr. Bob, Mocha will not open her mouth for the bit". I'd walk over to her and she'd often open her mouth just because I was standing there next to her.
Me bridling Mocha on a mare day for a student
So now Mocha has moved on in what is left of the equestrian community. I miss her today, but I wonder if I will next week. I know I will miss the community but I am thankful for my friends who drove to pick her op on a rainy day when they probably had more important things to do. Thanks to them for reminding me the community still exists.
|
|
|
|
Post by thorncroft on Nov 11, 2015 19:11:16 GMT
So.. here are the grateful friends... that now have "Mocha" in the barn (we also have a Latte so there might be a coffee thing going on here!). She walked out into our aisle and just sneered at the horse in the stall that surprised her by standing up from sleeping... that's all.. took the bit (P.S. no mare day YET!!) and went into our arena like she owned it. Played with the games, balls, hoops, bells and whistles then went for a jog. Perfect... Bob... we are not only grateful for the loan... but as always taken aback by how your horses behave, their schooling and ability. Wish I knew how to upload a video... but then you can see her on face Book tonight. Nothing like good old fashioned true horsemanship... thankyou again Bob.
|
|
|
|
Post by thorncroft on Nov 11, 2015 19:16:27 GMT
Oh.. P.S. you are NOT that much older than me!!
|
|
|
|
Post by horseguy on Nov 16, 2015 17:44:57 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by jimmy on Nov 19, 2015 15:52:54 GMT
Horseguy. We were free range kids back in those days.
Nowadays, our parents would probably charged with child abuse!
That one thing that is different today.
|
|
|
|
Post by horseguy on Nov 20, 2015 12:53:15 GMT
Free range kids, great way to think about it. That we were. I think back then mildly neglecting a child was considered "character building" but now the same treatment would, as you say Jimmy, most likely be considered child abuse.
I know that "neglect" sure made me think differently than kids do today. I always wanted to ride as many horses as I could. My parents absolutely didn't care. The only comment I might have gotten was, "don't break your glasses" (wore specs since I was 6). There was a guy in town who collected horses. He didn't keep them as pets but more as decorations for his farm. He had a maybe 4 or 5 at any given time. His attitude was, "Sure you can ride them." They were pretty rank.
I got on one that bolted and took off for what seemed like miles and busted through two wooden fences. At the time all I could think of was, I'd better fix those fences before anyone finds out. And I did. Today the parents of a kid who had that experience probably would sue the guy, but only because the kid would complain to mom. The value then was don't tell people about how stupid or incompetent you were. Now it's some sort of badge of honor for a kid to be victimized by their own stupidity.
But even so, somehow I have managed even recently to get kid as students who had that same kind of independent responsible character. Some parents are still allowing some free ranging, I think. I think to ride well a student needs some of that.
|
|
|
|
Post by horseguy on Dec 4, 2015 15:18:43 GMT
One way that the horse would and equestrian sport has changed in the past 50 or so years is specialization. I recently reread Cavaletti by Reiner Klimke. In it he discusses walking, trotting and cantering over series of Cavalettis.  Kimke specifically says that dressage horses should NOT be canter over lines of Cavalettis because such work will develop muscles that are counter productive for dressage. This book was written in 1966, about 50 years ago. I was surprised to read that advice, but by then the military riders were pretty much gone from Olympic competition. You would still see some international competitors wearing their military uniforms from Brazil, Argentina and other countries that still had active cavalries, But for the most part, civilian riders were the norm by the 70's and teams were selected from the best riders who showed up for trials. What followed was a wider program of special breeding for the specific disciplines. European Warmbloods came into great notoriety for dressage. Thoroughbreds fell out of favor because their movement did not please the eye of the beholder of more German style dressage. Specialized eventers discovered that a good dressage score was absolutely necessary to be competitive and the Warmbloods seeped into jumping competitions in Combined Training, now Eventing. Eventers soon learned that the Warmblood alone was usually insufficient to get a combined score, so TB blood was reintroduced in WB/TB crosses, which to my mind is a full circle back to the typical war horse. Change is inevitable. It has over the past half century come in big ways to the horse world. In the 1980's polo players made a foray into cloning to get the perfect polo horse until they discovered the complexities of aging in the cloning process. My question is whether or not these changes are improvements or just changes. Some changes have obviously been mistakes, like Rollkur, the crest release, and a few others. If I had to pick one area where change has been a clear improvement, it would be equine nutrition. When I began riding the choices were pretty much whole or crimped oats. Still, I tend to reject specialization because it narrows the rider and the horse. Cavaletti work at the canter developing the wrong muscles for dressage sounds awful to me because if we don't develop a horse's muscles in the most universally athletic way, we essentially have limited what we love. Why? I think the answer would be a selfish one. |
|
|
|
Post by jimmy on Dec 4, 2015 15:42:14 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by horseguy on Dec 5, 2015 15:20:38 GMT
I finally got to watch this 1964 dressage clip on another computer. (I think I need to reload my media player, my video not working still) Only one military rider. That was how it was in the late 50's and 60's. You still saw some uniforms into the early 70's. The riding was transitional too, I thought. The various riders were at different degrees behind the vertical with their upper bodies. The military rider being more vertical, as was the last rider, who I like the best. The horses were "imperfect" with a wider variation in conformation than we see today.
With specialization has come uniformity of horses, style and precision. While the military horse was a bit clunky for a refined dressage competition, I could see it in battle. Some of the others were very fine and less of the general use horse than the first.
Interesting clip. WW2 was over. Military riders were getting old. Civilians were reshaping equestrian sport. I miss the diversity of horses like what we saw in the clip.
|
|
|
|
Post by horseguy on Dec 8, 2015 17:47:19 GMT
I encountered another aspect of change. I's around the subject of danger and safety. Horses, even the best of them, can be dangerous. 1,000 pounds moving around can get into trouble. I think most people who have been around horses know that almost always when something happens that is dangerous, it's over before anyone really knows what happened. Therefore, the only practical way to stay safe is to be always vigilant about potential danger, so you can anticipate it.
I am typically the person who sees trouble coming and warns students or other riders, only because I have spent many years full time around horses. Up until recently most people usually appreciated my warnings of danger, but recently I was in a situation where someone was offended when I "yelled" at them to get out of the way of potential trouble. I yelled to make sure they heard me over the sound of a near by motor running and because of the distance between them and me. Still, they were offended.
Years ago the US Pony Club national organization did a study of horse related member injuries. The study found that 75% of the Club's injuries, large and small, happened on the ground around a horse as opposed to while riding. My personal experience would agree with that study. So, now in a world where friend has become a verb and so much has changed, it is apparently wrong to shout a safety warning to a fellow horse person who might be in danger. I think this is strange, but then again a lot of new things are strange to me.
|
|
|
|
Post by jimmy on Dec 9, 2015 0:40:20 GMT
I would have to agree about people getting hurt more on the ground.
There's a story Bryan Nuebert tells of his time working with Tom Dorrance. Bryan broke a lot of colts, a lot of mustangs. Injury was an accepted risk.
One day Tom comes back around to check in on Bryan's progress, and says something like, "I see you're learning how not to get hurt"
A lot of the skill we develop is seeing that trouble shape up, and either getting the heck out of harms way, or doing something about it ahead of time.
With beginners, they don't know what's possible. They don't know how quickly things can turn hospital bed bad.
|
|
|
|
Post by horseguy on Dec 26, 2015 15:32:30 GMT
new rule: Breaking a frangible pin on Cross-Country results in an automatic 21 penalties
I went to the USEA (United Sates Eventing Association) website to look at current rules after the bit post on another thread. I shouldn't do that. There I found the new Cross-Country frangible pin rule. A frangible pin is a device put on a cross country jump so that when struck by a horse or rider, it falls down.  It's a safety device that looks like this.  I am against these sorts of things and thus in opposition to the USEA. Does this mean I am against safety? On the contrary, I feel I am more concerned with safety than the USEA. Here is why. First of all, mechanical devices malfunction. None are 100% effective. Therefore, devices like this create a false sense of security, and worse, they encourage unqualified riders to jump cross country jumps that they and/or their horse are not equipped to jump. It's the bungee jumping principle. Sure it's safe, until the statistics of people killed or maimed get compiled and the insurance companies stop insuring these kinds of "safe thrill seeking" bungee businesses. I trained a lot of eventers and fox hunters during my career. I never had a serious injury in a student rider. Why? Because I never permitted a rider to move up to a level they were not qualified to ride safely. I had some that refused my advice, and I stopped coaching them. I coached several students to top five placements nationally at their level in both Pony Club and USEA, and they went on to national ranking level coaches. I believe that is how it should be. Without minor league baseball coaches, we wouldn't have major league baseball, and without college football coaches, we wouldn't have the NFL. We need coaches at all levels, and I can argue that we need better coaches at the lower levels or we will fail at the top levels. Which brings me to the frangible pins. They are in fact devices to reduce the perception of danger so that both riders and coaches can move up levels inappropriately and with false confidence. These pins support an illusion of progress in riders and the sport that is, I believe, dangerous to horses and riders, and they will ultimately diminish our standing as international competitors. Additionally, I think they will have a negative effect on the wonderful sport of fox hunting where it would be impossible to place frangible pins on every downed tree that must be jumped and every board or rail fence in the way of a chase. These frangible pins essentially reduce cross country jumping to stadium jumping, and that alone will suck in more Hunter/Jumper show riders, who have come up through a clueless system regarding danger, into cross country situations that are over their heads. These pins will, with their support of the illusion safety and quality of rider, further reduce our international competitiveness and, as I said, undermine the skills necessary to continue real fox hunting in natural terrain at a time when natural fox hunting lands are disappearing to "civilization" in the form of malls and development. Frangible pins are a bad idea. Dumbing down a sport is not necessarily the path to increased safety. Consciousness and illusion free reality is always the path to safety. |
|
|
|
Post by horseguy on Jan 5, 2016 16:07:01 GMT
It's the New Year and a time to catch up and move forward into 2016. In catching up with people I have worked with last year to see where they are with their horse, I contacted a woman who called me three months ago to evaluate her recently purchased horse. The horse was lame and the diagnosis was navicular disease. Before I went to see the horse she emailed me some video of the day she went to buy the horse at a horse dealer's farm. In the video it was clear that the horse was ouchy, but in true horse dealer form, the dealer/rider made the horse look to an average horse buyer like the horse was accomplishing all that was asked of her without resistance or pain. The dealer was a very good salesman.
I arrived and entered the horse's spacious pasture. I saw a horse in pain unwilling to walk very far to graze. Advanced navicular. Nice horse, well put together, nice disposition, cripple. Being an old school traditionalist, I recommended a lot of pain killers and told the owner of the eventual end of this horse's life. She was sad, but then she told me optimistically about her "specialist vet".
We have the New Bolton Center here in PA run by the Univ. of Pennsylvania Vet School. This vet hospital became famous a few years ago for saving the famous race horse Barbaro. Oh wait, Barbaro died. These vets had sold a bill of goods to the racehorse owners on how they could perform miraculous surgeries, that the horse ultimately endured, but ended with the horse being put down. The vet god of science had failed.
The owner of the navicular horse had on good advice called a vet who also worshiped the same miraculous vet god. He recommended a three month course of very expensive "advanced" pharmaceuticals as a cure. When I left the farm where this navicular horse was living in pain, the owner told me she had hope that the three months of drugs would make her new horse "lightly rideable", according to the vet. So, after three months I followed up and emailed her with a New Year greeting. Answer, No change whatsoever in her horse.
What is Different about Horsemanship Today? is the title of this topic. What happened to this woman is part old fashion horse dealing and part radically new crazy talk from vets. Back in the day when I admired almost all large animal vets, a woman like this would have been counseled by a vet to look for another horse to ride because this horse she was dealt was never going to be useful. The vet would have explained that she had been taken advantage of by a horse dealer, an all too common occurrence, and that she had better cut her losses. The vet would have told her how honest buyers get fooled and not to feel too bad about it. I really liked the old style vets.
But no, this vet was going to save her cripple horse with miracle drugs if she was willing to spend a lot of money. Back in the day a vet would have advised her to spend that hard earned money on a sound horse because a horse's job was to be rideable and her's never would be. But today horses don't need to have a job. It's nice if they are rideable, but mostly they need to be a pet the owner can care for, and what better way to care for this horse than to spend more than she paid for the horse on drugs.
What is Different about Horsemanship Today? The answer is the contemporary horse would is irrational and some people will exploit a lack of reason to get money out of your wallet and into theirs.
|
|
|
|
Post by rideanotherday on Jan 6, 2016 11:14:12 GMT
Which is why I am typically a vet's worst nightmare. I learned how to give shots and vaccinated all my own horses. Saved a lot of money over the years.
Don't blame the vet for reading your client like a book. She bought a horse and now she feels responsible and wants to do what's best for the horse...which is making his life as pain free as possible. That won't make him useful, but it will make her feel better. The problem started with a soft hearted person going to a horse dealer, who also read her like a book.
I'm reasonably experienced. And I take someone with me EVERY time I go to look at a horse who isn't interested in buying it. It helps to have that 3rd party, hopefully somewhat jaundiced eye go over the horse at the same time.
Horse dealers and others who take advantage of a person haven't changed at all. There might be more of them around though.
|
|
|
|
Post by horseguy on Jan 6, 2016 18:18:01 GMT
Don't blame the vet for reading your client like a book. She bought a horse and now she feels responsible and wants to do what's best for the horse...which is making his life as pain free as possible. That won't make him useful, but it will make her feel better ... Horse dealers and others who take advantage of a person haven't changed at all. There might be more of them around though. Does it make the horse feel better or the owner? I horse on pain killers that will not move around to graze is, in my view, not feeling better at all. On the other hand, the owner feels (incorrectly I think) that she is doing all she can for the horse. She feels satisfied that she is a good horse owner. That's a big change from only a few decades ago. Not only did people want a useful horse years ago, they also felt a horse's life of chronic pain was not caring for a horse, and that it was selfish to keep it alive for one's own gratification. As for blaming the vet, I do. In what you write I read that a horse dealer and a vet are held to the same cultural standard, which is let the buyer be ware. Vets should be held to a higher standard. They are hired as professionals to give professional advise and service, not to push drugs that have little or no hope of a cure or improvement. Telling a client that a crippled navicular horse would become "lightly rideable" as a result of medications is crazy talk. If such a cure was available, news of it would spread through the horse would like wildfire. I do have some blame for the owner for not researching this more. |
|
