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Post by horseguy on Jun 25, 2016 11:37:15 GMT
I have an idea for a fantasy column kind of bloggy topic here that would be a compilation of my life's experiences in the horse world. It would begin with an old horse trainer retiring and looking back at his life and times from the present horse world. (I know, it sounds like a summary of my entire posts here) It would be a humors look at current an past incidents, observations and mistakes as a not so gifted rider who ran with scissors became a teacher who somehow became committed to a life with horses.
The title, Ego Hill Farm, is the name of a farm down the road from the old guy's farm, named after the creeks that passed through it. Ego Hill is run by a young woman who's wealthy parents purchased the farm for her so she could pursue a career of passion with horses that she loved since she was a little girl. Her grandfather was actually a farmer and his son is called the Gravel Baron in the story. This is because his father answered an ad in the local penny saver requesting gravel samples from local gravel pits. The grandpa submitted stone samples from his farm's gravel pit for quality testing by the State Road Commission. The best gravel would be used to build the Interstate highways throughout the State.
And so our story begins. Grandpa's gravel years ago won the best in State. By the time the gravel pit was dug deep enough to build the entire Interstate it was 200 feet deep, swallowed up the farm, drained all the neighbor's wells for miles around, and no one really worked in the family after grandpa's small box of gravel won the prize. The son drove luxury cars, played polo and secretly loved being called the "Gravel Baron" behind his back. The daughter ran Ego Hill Farm, loved to travel to Europe, had the fanciest trailer rig money could by and repeatedly was dumped by a series of boyfriends.
Oddly, the Gravel Baron and the old guy had a relationship of sorts. They both played polo. The had mutual "friends" like Bill, who married into money and would disappear from the polo club for weeks while on a mission. Upon Bill's return in a new car to the club after a disappearance, he would say things in answer to "where have you been?", like "Do you know how hard it is to find a polo green Corvette with a saddle leather interior and matching convertible top in a 4 speed with the 427 engine?" Lots of no's from the club members followed. Then, "It took me three weeks to find this one. I had to go to Indiana to pick it up." Bill sure stuck with a problem until it was solved.
The story will be a series of not so untrue tales of life of a practical horseman selling polo horses to the rich and not so famous. The old guy, the Gravel Baron, Bill and others will tell their story of the horse would from the 1950s to the present in the form of Ego Hill Farm.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. |
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Post by horseguy on Jun 26, 2016 13:26:27 GMT
In the world of polo there are only a few "types" of participants. You have the Gravel Baron types who came into money a few generations ago. There are the Bills who recently married money to elevated their lives to polo, the old money who fit polo in between numerous other equally expensive pursuits like auto racing (racing not watching), and then there are the "pros", who make a living swimming in the water owned by the loaded amateurs. In pro sports typically the definition of a professional is very narrow. In pro football or basketball the pros are an elite few making millions from their sport. Not so in polo where the rich arrive in the sport with and because of their wealth, not the other way around. Since money, not skill, is the gateway to playing polo very often skill must be purchased. It is this dynamic, that can lead to almost anyone who can hit a ball while riding a horse becoming a useful hire for a "patron" who is often learning to ride and to play the game at the same time.
While at the top level of the game there are a few pros, mostly Argentines, who make a good living off the sport, the majority of non-Argie paid players make a wage similar to a double B Minor League baseball player. These below the poverty line professional athletes are forced to supplement their income by selling horses and other things (in the 1980s cocaine) to the well heeled amateur players. These mallet swinging horse traders carry wads of cash in the game pants and spend a great deal of their game time observing the skill, stamina and value of every horse on the field. For them the game is not unlike a car dealer's auction where the bidders drive in and around each other at tops speed, often making physical contact while placing an offer. My favorite of these was Timmy Baraquin, a Louisiana barn hand of a oil rich Gulf of Mexico family who grew up exercising polo horses. He parlayed a dead end bayou farm job into an international athletic career until he died of a drug overdose.
Timmy Baraquin was a hell of a rider. He could make a piece of crap polo horse look like it was worth a fortune or the other way around, if it would benefit him. Guys like Timmy relied on lower level horse trainers like me to provide them with inventory. Stories about his horse deals are as incredible as they are countless. One time during a game at a very private eastern polo club that few players have ever visited, Timmy saw a horse ridden by a trainer like me named Paul Herber. Paul trained a half dozen to a dozen decent polo horses a year, and did a little real estate on the side. At the end of the game Timmy walked over to Paul, said he liked the horse Paul played in the 4th period, and asked, how much? Paul said $5,000, Timmy said $3,000 and they agreed on $3,800. Cash came out of dirty white game pants, lead rope was handed to Timmy who slowly walked the horse to the other side of the field where they were getting ready to hand out the trophies.
We all walked together to the trophy table in from of the VIP tent. Standing there was Rob Weelth, game pants clean, no sweat on his jersey, Fortune top 200 bank account. Rob started playing last year, and he loved the game best when it was over so he could "be" a polo player at the tent. Paul and I stood there as Timmy took Rob aside and gave him the great news that he had found him a new horse. Rob was visibly excited as he looked the new horse as if it had been flown in for him. Rob never noticed this horse in the 4th chukker and asked, "How much?" Timmy said, "Only $20,000". "Wonderful, have him tied to my trailer", and Rob returned to being the center of polo groupie post game attention. Timmy had made $16,200 in the time it took to walk across the 160 yard width of a polo field. Paul and I knew that neither of us could have made that deal. We sold wholesale much of the time and the Timmys sold retail. That's how it works. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. |
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Post by horseguy on Jun 27, 2016 13:39:18 GMT
I want to say one more thing about Timmy Baraquin. I told the story of how he made $16,200 on that 5 minute horse sale. It happened in 1982 when a dollar then would be equal to $2.50 today, so to grasp Timmy's profit, you'd have to multiply that, and you would see it was a $40,500 gain for him in today's dollars. Paul sold the horse, which he probably bought at an auction or off the track for $500, for $3,800, or $9,500 in today's dollars, so he made out fine. I just want to give readers a feel for what kind of cash was floating around polo horses back then. Those times were a fast and lose financial period with terms like "gogo banking" (named after gogo club dancers) were used to describe business practices.
But here is the best Timmy Baraquin story ever, and then I will move on. After Christmas all the wealthy polo players and patrons from all over the country migrated to West Palm Beach or Boca Roton to continue their play. I'd travel down there once in a while, but never played there. This concentration of wealth would attract the best polo pros in the world to a single location for 4 or 5 months. This is where Timmy made serious money, but never as much as the day someone walked into his Florida barn and told him that one of his customers had just been arrested by Federal agents. This customer was president of a large Midwestern bank (that he essentially owned) and it was more of a Ponzi scheme than a real bank. Timmy played on this patron's league team, sold him horses and otherwise made this rich criminal happy.
Timmy, being experienced in his craft of borderline legal activity, realized immediately that the Feds would send trucks to his expansive home and to his barn to confiscate this now locked up amateur polo player's property. They would take his horses, most of which Timmy had sold to him. It was afternoon in the barn and Timmy sprang into action like a volunteer fireman. He gathered up his grooms, got them into his crewcab dually, hooked up the 12 horse stock trailer and headed inland to Florida's central farmlands with the pedal to the metal.
At the first rundown house with a nag behind it Timmy stopped, knocked on the door and asked if they wanted to sell their horse. After a couple "no's" followed by an increased offer, Timmy owned the horse. He repeated this purchasing process past sundown, when he had to use flashlights to look into rural "farmette" pastures in search of live horses. After acquiring 12 back yard geldings and mares of all ages for under $5,000 1982 dollars, he drove flat out to the dark barn of the arrested banker. He and the grooms unloaded, bathed, clipped and otherwise beautified Timmy's newly purchased nags in the style of polo horses, and one by one replaced the dozen real polo horses in their stalls with the spruced up fakes. The total horseflesh value Timmy loaded into his trailer, as the sun started to rise, from that West Palm Beach barn was around a quarter million dollars in 1982 or over $600,000 in today's dollars. As predicted, the Feds showed up that morning and confiscated the banker's "polo horses" by ceremoniously loading them into two shinny trailers and driving them to who knows where.
The most amazing thing about this fabricated tale (read the disclaimer below) of a half million dollar Federal heist was that Timmy quietly moved those dozen very high quality polo horses on to new homes in less than a week, and nobody said a word. The polo community just kept on doing what it did best, playing the game. In fact, when this "mission impossible" nights work was ever discussed, it was described as an act of heroic empathy for animals. Timmy was a "good guy" for saving these fine horses from those Feds who would have done awful things to them not knowing their true inner value. Timmy had found them new homes where they would be happy doing what they did best. Ya gotta love Timmy. He could empty someone's wallet and they'd thank him afterwards. Too bad he snorted himself into an early grave. He was a great polo player.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. |
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Post by horseguy on Jun 28, 2016 18:59:30 GMT
I retired almost year ago. I had moved to the farm with the creeks 16 years before. When I bought it with my woman partner, who since left, it was a mess. The nearly half mile driveway was a goat path a car could no manage, much less a truck pulling a horse trailer. My polo career was ended by a back injury. The land was cheap and near the Interstate Highways, one north/south, the other east/west. It was a good location for a horse trainer with a geographic reach. It was perfect. Many years followed building the cross country course, the 100' x 200' arena, and all the other work to make it a horse farm. My friends with horse farms in suburban Philadelphia were moving away under development pressure too. Most moved one county west, but I wanted to move only once more so I went further west where development pressure would be less and the land cost lower. I planned to retire from this farm
I was one of just a few professional horse farms in the area when I arrived. As the years wore on, more arrived from NJ and eastern PA. Those people also saw the Interstate and the cheap land. By the time I left there were all kinds of stables run by people from many states. But one farm that was already in the area when I arrived, it was the Gravel Baron's rolling breeding farm with its miles of fine wooden fences. I knew him from the small eastern polo community. I'd played against him several times here and there. This heir to a man who had the good sense to mail a cardboard box of gravel from the farm pit was not going to set the wold on fire, to use a phase my mother's phase. In the south, they would finish every description of a man like him with, "Bless his heart". I didn't see him much, bit each time I did, he had gained 10 pounds it seemed.
It was the Gravel Baron's daughter who presided over Ego Hill Farm. She had grown up in the area and taken riding lessons at the most prestigious barn in this non-horse community, Spirit Acres. Given that the local was an island of equestrian ignorance, it could have been a worse place to learn to ride, but it was passable with some quirks. My favorite quirk was the Thursday night "Open Lesson" at this stable. I had never encountered anything like this teaching concept. Anyone remotely connected to the farm could arrive at the stable between 6PM and 8PM very Thursday, be assigned a horse, mount up and ride in the group of the night, and receive instruction from the instructor of the evening, usually a teenage student rider there. The only thing this format lacked was a bull horn. There were all sizes of horses and riders, all levels, all ages, all everything and what they shared was time on a Thursday nite to ride. It reminded me of a condensed ride in a public park with someone shouting. I could see it made money for the owner.
It was there that Lily, the Gravel Baron's daughter and future proprietor of Ego Hill Farm, began her equestrian career.
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Post by horseguy on Jul 10, 2016 14:48:31 GMT
It's been a year since I left the farm. The anniversary over the 4th of July was difficult. It has taken a year to sink in, I'm no longer a farmer, no longer a lot of things. I left polo 17 years ago and hat was difficult. I was relatively old for a polo player when I gave it up, but the horses were still in my life every day. Now it's very different. Polo has many traditions. It's British, so it's full of very specific do's and don'ts. The teams line up facing the sideline, the national anthem is played. Men around the field take of their hats, but the players leave their helmets on, which I believe is a throwback to military helmets being left on during a national anthem. The umpire comes out and the teams face him in two columns side by side and he bowls the ball in between the teams. That's how the game starts. At the end they had out the trophies and the national anthem of the winning country's teammates is played. You hear the Argentine national anthem a lot. Every polo club has a recording of every polo playing nation's anthem. Many have flags of these countries as well. When my son was a young teen his baseball hero was Ricky Henderson who played for the Oakland A's. They were going to play the Yankees in NYC, and my son wanted to see his hero in person, so we went to the game in the old Yankee Stadium. The national anthem was sung and we stood up took off our hats and sang along. A feeling of strangeness came over me that I couldn't figure out. And then it hit me. I was not sitting on a horse. That's a lot of polo, when you feel odd not being in the saddle when the anthem is played. In that moment of realization I realized how immersed I was in the sport. I got hurt, tried to come back as I had so many times, but that last injury to my back was too much, my body was too old to recover. I went back to the farm and that's when I got serious about completing my old style cross country course. When I was young xc courses were on the worst land. If the land was tillable or even good for pasture, it was employed for farming. What was completely useless was left for cross country. That's why there was always a slide included on a course. Land suitable for a xc course was too dangerous to let valuable cattle out on it. That's where we rode and we rode as fast as we could back in the day. There were patches of good footing but most of it was soft by the creeks, rocky up the hills, vine covered in the woods and more. Now cross country courses look like golf courses to me. Young people would come and school at my course and complain about it. "Too slow", they would say. "For you maybe", I'd say. Then an older person would come and school and give unending complements about how it reminded them of this hunt club course or that old time course in upstate New York built after WW1. A competitor woman came a distance for a private clinic once and we were out on the course. She asked me about my riding career and I told her I was primarily a polo player but was injured, so I was by then teaching and training a few horses for eventing. She asked, you mean you do this kind of riding because you can no longer ride in a polo? Yes, I said. She shook her head and said, polo riding must be pretty difficult. Yes. So, I left polo and now I have left the farm. It's sinking in. Link to a farm camp |
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Post by horseguy on Jul 13, 2016 12:48:47 GMT
Ego Hill Farm is a composite of contemporary stables. The profile is simple. Run by a woman 25 to 50 years old, instructors who came up through Hunter Jumpers in the age of specialization, meaning they have done nothing else but H/J until eventing began to take hold, and they took their crest release, on the flat riding method into the new trend. Most believe that Hunter Jumper equitation classes are more or less the same as dressage. They think that all jumps, on slopes, in varied footing and fixed so they will not fall down if struck, and can be effectively jumped the way Morris taught even though most never heard of Morris. These instructors grew up riding fully trained arena horses. They have little or no experience training a green horse. They are to an old timer, frauds. When I closed the farm people left for other stables. Most went to Ego Hill, run by the owner describe above and in prior posts. One student left my farm with her young horse, a very agile, sensitive mount with substantial potential. This horse is the type that dances under you and make you laugh. The horse has abundant energy lacking direction but seeking purpose. I had this good young rider riding this 3/4 broke young horse in my big unfenced outdoor arena. She got scared a few times, and I'd hop on the horse and smooth him out. The student would remount and continue. The horse didn't have a malicious bone, just a wonderful excitement at being part of a team, even if he didn't know quite yet what a team does. The best part of this horse is you can get "in" him and he likes it. When they moved him to Ego Hill no one there would ride him. He scared them. The instructors, the better students, no one would get on him. He got a reputation and the young owner, lacking support for her ability and the horse's willingness, gave up on him. The parents had enough money to pay the board, so he sat. I received an email after months asking if I wanted him, but by then I was busy with my new life. I have no idea what happened to this gifted, sweet energetic horse. At Ego Hill Farm there are no failures except in the horses, like this good prospect who "failed". The owner takes credit for everything good that happens and blames someone or the horses for everything else. That's how it is today. Some of you will remember a horse I bought named Magnum. He was a very talented big Warmblood who was abused. I fed him for a year, and I was tossed on the ground countless times as he made is very practiced moves unseating my old body. He was too quick and smart and completely committed to not being trained. Students, parents, helpers watched me struggle with him. I failed. I gave him away as a trail horse, which he liked as long as you never tried to teach him something new. If you read the old US Cavalry officer journals, trainloads of horses would arrive at an Army Post. One Colonel wrote in his record, "Good lot of horses arrived today. Got them all ridden. Only two men with broken bones." In my lifetime, it was believed that it was up to riders to make horses useful. Horses didn't fail. Riders did.  |
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Post by horseguy on Jul 27, 2016 16:20:21 GMT
I read car magazines. I am not into cars these days, but I was many years ago. The magazines are a way of staying in touch with that period of my life. It's interesting to read about them because the car world and the horse world are not that much different. I just read an article about an award winning custom car builder who is a little younger than I am, but of the same generation. He remembers when every high school student took shop classes, and it was there that he and I discovered our car interest. But now he blames the cost cutting measure of having shop classes only in the tech high schools, and available only to a limited number of kids, for the shortage of young adults interested in building cars. He says, "Now they just want to buy them".
That's how it is at Ego Hill Farm. They just want to buy them. The gifted young gelding moved to Ego Hill became a orphan. I have seen so many good horses culled out because they require skilled training. The contemporary barns do more sorting that training.
Ego Hill is a composite farm. It includes Hunter Jumper barn I worked at back in the 1980's, after I divorced and the farm was sold, where I got a job because I was willing to work with a "wild" horse named Luke. He'd been sorted out, but he remained there because he was a gift from the head trainer/owner's father before he died. He'd become a nasty pet. I started working the in the spring and by the time of the barn's summer big summer show he was pretty much trained. My youngest daughter was 9 then, been riding 5 years. She was spending some of the summer with me and I secretly had her riding the "renegade" horse Luke when no one was around. A few days before the show she began preparing him with baths and clipping. The barn students her age were impressed she could handle him, but when they asked her why and she said it was because she was going to ride him in the big barn show, they were speechless.
my youngest daughter at 8 years old
My daughter continued to work him after hours before the show. I had ridden him in lessons and got him socialized. The day of the show she came out of the barn mounted him and joined her first class. The students gave her a lot of room but he was fine. My daughter won two blues, a red and a yellow on Luke that day. He went on to become a valued member of the lesson string there. The 80's were the height of the Hunter Jumper scene. Morris was a rock star. That's when the new standard of buying a horse to win ribbons was established. Since then I have seen kids with gift horses worth thousands of dollars cast aside and replaced, sometimes multiple times, until the kid started to collect ribbons. "Now they just want to buy them". All the fun and character building of training a horse or building a car have gone out of style and I don't think that's going to change. |
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Post by horseguy on Aug 15, 2016 12:50:18 GMT
I don't do facebook. It and all the other sites like twitter, instagram, kik and others are remaking and replacing social constructs in what I think are a destructive way. The real time format only encourages the "what have you done for me lately" types.
I do however manage the facebook account for the bakery only because Karen doesn't have the time. I post about new breads, new retail locations selling her breads and other things bread lovers want or need to know. In the process of doing that I will skim over the timeline of her friends which includes my family members. That I think is useful, like knowing my sister is vacationing in Maine. I think my sister doesn't tell me these things because I never take vacations.
And in the timneline there are posts from some of my former students. Today I asked Karen to unfriend one of these because I got tired of seeing a typical narcissistic teen posting unending pictures of her riding a horse I got off the track and retrained, and expressing all kinds of appreciation for her new instructor she's had for a little over a year. This rider's back in her pictures is often hollow over a jump, yet her instructor posts glowing comments like "You've come so far in just a year". This is so typical of contemporary stables like Ego Hill Farm. Teen brats encouraged by young trainers who ignore things like a hollow back and who form bestie friendships with their students to hold them captive at their barns, complete with lots of facebook pics of the instructor with her admiring students at a table in some chain restaurant.
My instructor was professional. He taught me to ride well. I respected him for his ability to be the teacher I needed and to keep the focus on what needed to be done. He was a military man who never wasted a word. I always remember how when a young rider had his saddle slip and come round to the horse's belly how he would halt the lesson group and stand silent as the boy picked himself off the ground, caught his horse and resaddled. He had the discipline to let the experience teach. I have no doubt that he had plenty to say about carless young boys not knowing how to tighten a girth, but he knew that silent eyes staring at the result was the best lesson. I often think it is a good thing that people pass on from this world because if they were made to stay and watch how their work is degraded by following generations it might be too painful. I taught this teen brat for years. She was not an easy student in that she had more interest than ability. She came from a big family and as a result had limited resources, so I made exceptions on her behalf in order to help her progress. All this for what? Now she chases ribbons and can't post enough about her riding on social media. I am thankful that my instructor never had to endure social media and that Karen unfriended this former student. By the way, Karen has a gluten free bread that doesn't taste like cardboard.
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Post by horseguy on Aug 17, 2016 15:51:49 GMT
I think about the 4 year old horse that left my farm with a student for a new barn as I prepared to move away. I would have enjoyed training that talented prospect. He was light and playful, but he scared every rider at the new barn, scared everyone including trainers and an 11 year old girl was riding him at my barn when he left. The horse was was abandon. I emailed the mother later on after I heard how he was left in a stall and never ridden. I offered to help even tough it would have meant me boarding another horse and at that time I had six. The mother told me I didn't understand the circumstances. That was puzzling. Many months later I got an email asking if I would buy him. Buy then my life became more complicated here and had no time.
The Ego Hill Farm mentality is uncaring of horses and their talent. They would not agree but things like letting this horse like this go tells the story. They mask incompetence with fun pictures posted on facebook. I hope that young prospect found a good home.
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Post by horseguy on Sept 7, 2016 12:27:39 GMT
Ego Hill Farm is not just a Hunter/Jumper barn. They do some fox hunting as well. Here is a true story about one of their hunts. A few riders from Ego Hill went off to a hunt meet to distant hunt club. As with all equestrian activities connected to Ego Hill, the most important thing was that the rider have fun and fully enjoy their activity. It's always about them. These Ego Hill riders trailered the night before to get to the hunt club and so as to be prepared for the early morning hunt. When they woke up it was pouring rain. The ground was already soaked from the spring thaw and the additional rain made much of the footing into a thick soup. But this was the weekend hunt day and the wealthy members of the hosting club had to have their weekly hunt literally "come hell or high water". The Huntsman, an Irish paid Staff member, advised against the hunt sighting dangerous footing. But he was quickly overruled by his betters.
The Ego Hill crowd in attendance was happy the hunt was still on, having driven a long way. "Release the hounds" and off they went. The skies cleared and the riders took this as confirmation that they had made the right decision. They hit on a fox and had a decent chase. The footing was awful and careful riders began to fall behind. Not the Ego Hill riders. They put their horses through the mud with full abandon and rode in the front as Ego Hill riders are meant to do.
Then one of the up front riders put his horse into a bog and the horse broke its leg. The hunt stopped. The stragglers caught up. It was a horrible scene. The Irish Huntsman, as all Huntsmen do, carried a small revolver. He went to the Master of the hunt and asked permission to dispatch the horse with the visibly broken leg. The Master, knowing the owner, told the Huntsman to consult with the owner, which he did and heard the following (remember this is a true story), "If the horse is not put down by a vet my insurance company will not pay". Apparently the horse was quite valuable and insured.
I'll back up a little here to explain I heard this story from one of the riders who drove the distance to be a guest at the far away hunt club when he returned home. I asked how was the hunt, and he answered, "Terrible, we got stalled for a long time waiting for a vet" and then I heard the whole story as if it was a major inconvenience for the riders.
Cell phones came out. Everyone there called every vet in the area to see which one would slog through the deep mud early on a Sunday morning to put down the horse. A vet arrived an hour and a half later. At that point I told my "friend", who was at this hunt, that if I had been there I would have gone to the Irish Huntsman and asked to borrow his gun, which I am sure he would have lent to me, and finished this crazy story then and there before a phone call could be made. My "friend" was not shocked to hear this from me.
The vet arrived and you can imagine the condition of the horse. He pulled out a syringe and the owner stopped him to ask this, "Before you put him down, could you try some intense pain killers so he might be able to walk to the road where it will be easier to get him onto the render's truck". This owner apparently didn't want to pay a farmer to drag the horse to the road after it was put down. The vet, amazingly, but out of fear of losing a wealthy client, accommodated the owner and gave the horse a big dose of pain killers. The owner tried to get the horse to walk but could not. Finally almost two hours after breaking the leg, the horse was put down and the hunt resumed. And remember, I was told this awful tale as if it was a story of a stalled hunt where riders had to stand around in a wet field.
This is Ego Hill Farm at its "best". It is the narcissism of wealth and entitlement. It is 30 people willing to allow a greedy horse owner to inflict hours of needless pain on a horse. As someone who rode with the old school Hunt Masters, the story is completely unbelievable. I can think of one Master of Fox Hounds who if a horse owner had suggested putting off dispatching a horse with this level of pain and injury, would have taken the Huntsman's gun and put it to the greedy horse owners head (for effect only) and then shot the horse himself in a most professional way. This is where equestrian sport has come today. What was unthinkable 60 years ago is now condoned by an entire hunt club and a vet. Not all riders today ride out of Ego Hill Farm, but too many do. Horses suffer as a result.
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Post by horseguy on Oct 6, 2016 21:39:50 GMT
We have been watching the Showtime new show Billions. It's about a very rich guy who trades stocks, and has a big home in Greenwich CT. In the show the wife of the billionaire, like him came from humble beginnings. Her sister, a cook, complains that they never do the old things they did together like cruise the neighborhood, go back to the old corner bar or hang out at the mall and shop. They go out drinking at the bar, get bored, so the wife calls the family helicopter pilot late at night and they cruise the area at a couple thousand feet. They arrive at the mall where the mall owner personally opens it so they can shop after midnight. It's good to be rich. There is a polo club in Greenwich, a private one really. It rained in the morning when I was there once. The field was wet. Polo is a game like baseball that gets called on account of rain. Polo is dangerous, but on a wet field it's kinda crazy. I had a "rain horse" named Bunny. I'd hop on her if it began to rain. In the few minutes before the umpire called the game, Bunny and I could usually run up the score a little. Anyway, everyone agreed the field was too wet in Greenwich that day by the afternoon game time. The owner of the club had his helicopter pilot blow dry the field at about 50 feet. It took about 45 minutes, 300 yards x 160 yards. It's good to be rich.  |
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Post by horseguy on Oct 16, 2016 14:23:53 GMT
It's fall, fox hunting season. I didn't hunt once last season and probably won't this season either. Horse is not fit. I can't find a farrier I like, the barn is disorganized and I can't do much about it. My horse life is just too off to go and hunt. Maybe next year.
This morning was our first real frost. I cannot see evidence of it in the city but the weather forecast said it would have come last night. The first frost is a turning point in the hunt season. Hunts go out "cubbing" (meaning training new hounds, puppies really) and there is so much brush that he fox has a great advantage. With each frost the brush melts away and the hounds can run much faster on a scent. Staff horses must be fit to keep up with the pack.
I have sold a lot of hunt horses. I once sold a very good staff horse to a Master of Fox Hounds who was also the Huntsman, not an uncommon combination of roles. It was around this time of year when the hounds can run hard that I received an email from this MFA about a coyote chase. It seems that they hit on the coyote scent and my former horse got it right away from the way the pack moved off and sounded. The horse knew what to do and kept up alongside the pack. The rider was a bit surprised at the energy with which this horse did its job and felt he needed to be reined in a little or he'd run to the next county. You must remember this horse had a lot of hunting experience and knew all the subtleties like staying close enough to the pack so as to not lose them, but never so close as to interfere with them or the scent line. The horse would not listen to the rider's hands checking him up, which only increased the fear of a runaway horse, something a Huntsman can ill afford to be riding. They rode for miles in a straight line, as coyotes will do, and then made a turn of direction.
The turn of the scent line slowed the hunt and the Huntsman was happily surprised that their horse slowed and turned without incident and without much cueing. Then the email said, "We took off very fast in the new direction after the turn to catch the pack, and my horse caught up with the pack and then quickly slowed down to keep a respectful distance.
What a nice email it was. This MFH was confirming what I already knew, that this horse was about as good as Staff horses get. It took a few killing frosts to open up the territory so he could show his new owner that he could hunt hard and always remember his job. You can't ask for more than that.
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