Junk Mail?

This entry is very random compared to the others that I have been doing recently, but it is on my mind right now and has been since I got home. Ever since I walked in the door, I have been going through my mail that has been sent since last time I was home last week and there is a lot of junk mail.

Now, you are probably thinking that people always get junk mail and this is nothing special. Unfortunately, all this junk mail is ads or letters wanting me to subscribe to this horse magazine or buy this horse product. I have never seen so many advertisements trying to accomplish the same result with so many different products.

Honestly, I am a college student so not only do I not have the money to be spending on these types of things, but I don't have the time to sit down and flip through countless magazines all talking about horses. Don't get me wrong, my mom andI subscribe to three magazines every year. These are monthly magazines and I do look forward to receiving them every month and seeing what topics are in them this month.

There is nothing wrong with magazines or advertisements for that matter. The problem comes when your mailbox gets deluged with never ending advertisements. You start to not even care what they say or what they are offering, because you just want to get rid of all of them.

When you see that you have a stack of mail after you have been gone for a little while, it makes you feel important. However when you go through and realize that you have to throw away everything but one letter, it makes you feel like you are no longer important to anyone except the Alumni association from your high school.

Do these companies that send these out seriously not have anything better to do with their time? Has it come down to simply sending out postcards saying "Subscribe to the Perfect Horse and your horse will never be happier"? Have they never heard of this new thing that everyone is using called the internet? If they would simply catch up with the 21st century, they could advertise on the internet and people could search for them instead of them searching for every equestrian on the planet.

You know that this is annoying and it would be so much better if they would use the internet, save some trees, and stop bothering people every day with their advertisements. If they are doing that bad in sales, maybe they should considering something else besides just marketing more. With economy the way it is right now, I feel like the last thing most people are thinking about spending money on is a magazine subscription.

Work...or Play?

My most recent equine adventure actually involves a study that is currently being run at Purdue's vet school. I was contacted in November about the possibility of me helping with this study because my name was given to them as someone who likes horses. Of course, I immediately jumped on the possibility to do what I love while making a little money on the side. I was interested and excited to learn more about this study and just exactly what I would be doing.

The study is testing a treatment for heaves which is a common problem in horses. It involves airway obstruction due to mucus build up in the esophagus. This problem is triggered by dusty environments with poor air circulation. We are testing one specific treatment for this to see if it is effective or not.

I was ready to get started even though I was not sure exactly what they needed me for. I attended the initial meeting and figured out they needed students to be in charge of feeding the horses, handling them for some of the testings, and shaking moldy hay to trigger the heaves to start. You are probably thinking that this sounds cruel because honestly, I thought that when I first heard about it. However, these horses are monitored so closely that if anything is not looking right, they are immediately pulled from the study.

Unfortunately, schedules did not work out for me to help in the first part of the study, so I had to wait until the horses were brought back for the second round of studies. This means that I only started helping this week. I was pretty excited that on my first day, I had already been shown how to pull blood. I think I failed to mention that I get very light headed at the sight of blood or needles. Somehow though, I managed to watch her show me how to do it and watch other people pull blood on six horses all together. By the end of this I was ready to sit down.

Thursday night was the first night that I was actually scheduled to go to the barn and feed and shake hay for the horses. Unfortunately, two of the six horses had already triggered after three days. This is a process that is supposed to take 2 weeks. So, they did not get any moldy hay, but the other four did.

I enjoyed seeing the horses, since I only get to see mine when I go home. Thursday night, I felt like I was back where I belonged, in a barn around horses. All of the horses in the study are very cute and I love being able to not only see them, but also groom them, pet them, and just be around them. I am definitely very happy that I was contacted about this study and I am hoping I learn something from being in this and helping out wherever I can.