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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.

The Infamous Quiz

Every year, the Heartland Region of the United States Pony Club has their annual Quiz Rally. This is an unmounted competition where members go and showcase their knowledge of horses by answering questions and performing various tasks. This competition is an ideal competition for members who might not have their own horse because you don't need your own horse for this competition. It is a very popular rally for younger members because after you go for a few years it gets old because it feels like you are sitting in school for a day.

This rally is one where although it gets many young members competing, it is the least anticipated rally of the year. This is because no actual horses are involved, it is held in a school, and it is all knowledge based which means you have to study before going.

This rally is coming up in one week so the younger members of our club have been preparing for the past few months. This weekend my friend and I are responsible for setting up a mock rally so that the competitors from our club can see what it is going to be like. Both my friend and I have competed in quiz for four years and now have an officiating position for one of the stations.

Of course I had to come home again this weekend in order to organize this for our members. Between tonight and tomorrow at 1pm, my friend and I have to make sure my barn is clean, put together about 12 stations with various levels of questions, and make sure everything is organized and correct to give the competitors the feeling of the real rally.

Normally, this would be very easy, but with this being my first year at college and me not being completely active with our pony club, this small task seems to become a rather large, daunting challenge. I only have the few weekends I am home to arrange this because everyone knows there is not much free time to work on things other than homework.

With both of our experiences at Quiz, we say that we are perfectly fine never competing there again and only helping. So, we have been roped into taking over what is called the Mega Room which consists of 10 tables with 10 matching questions. This sounds easy enough but when you have to come up with topics, have different difficulties of questions, and come up with so many questions it gets difficult. Not only do you have to come up with the questions, but we also normally make posters with the answers on them so they can match them.

Although this competition is not very exciting, it is a competition that requires everyone's participation. Whether you are a young member or an older member, everyone can have a job. This is the regions first rally of the year and it is a great way to start off the competitive season. Everyone looks forward to seeing old friends and catching up on the latest news of the winter. It might not be the most fun, but it is definitely worth everyone's time.

Weekend Adventures

This past weekend, I came home for the weekend. The purpose of this trip was to clean our barn up so that we could have our local Pony Club come out the following weekend for a seminar. I was pretty excited about this trip because it would give me a chance to spend a lot of time in the barn, ride my horses, and just be around my horses.

Things started Friday night when I got home and went out to clean stalls. Now, I realize that my parents are in charge of the barn when I'm away, but I didn't expect everything to be changed and moved around. I did not even know how to get in my own barn. Every door was locked and last time I checked we didn't lock our doors. After figuring out how to get in my own barn, I walked in to realize that everything had been changed or moved around. I had to search for things that normally had a specific place.

After eventually making it through the Friday night chores, I knew that the barn really did need to be cleaned up and things needed to be put back in their proper location. I was ready to tackle this project over the next two days and make this barn look as spotless as a barn could. I woke up the next morning (well, technically it was afternoon) and I was ready to get started. My mom had other plans though. She was the one that wanted me to come home and clean and now she wanted to go shopping. I couldn't complain because I do like shopping, but this was my first clue that this big job was not going to be done.

After a long day of shopping, I convinced myself that I was going to wake up early on Sunday and work on the barn for a good part of the day before I had to come back to Purdue. As you can guess though, this didn't happen either. I woke up around 10am on Sunday and knew it wasn't even worth it. Instead, I decided to go out and ride my pony, Luke.

To some, this might sound like loads of fun, but I knew he hadn't been worked in a while and was going to be crazy. So, after many failed attempts to just get in the saddle without him trotting off, I was successfully aboard. For the next 30 minutes, I found myself doing tiny little circles with him just to make sure I had some kind of control. After that amount of time and getting very dizzy, we were able to walk around the whole arena without trying to unseat me. I decided to quit on a good note and not push my luck. Needless to say, I came home this weekend too and I still have a dirty barn to clean before Saturday and I still have a pony that needs to be worked more. One of these days, I will accomplish everything I want to do in the time frame that I want it done in. Until then, I guess I will just have to improvise. (The picture is not my barn, my barn is not quite that bad, but it was used for emphasis.)

The Nightmares of Importing

Most horse people look at importing horses as such a luxury that only people with money are able to afford. Unfortunately, the lady I have been training with for 11 years now had a horrible experience with importing a horse from Sweden. She was interested in finding a horse that could compete at the top levels and thought of importing as the best way to make that happen.

She worked with many high class, top of the line trainers and after a trip over to Sweden, she thought she found the perfect one. This trip was a week long trip of looking at horse after horse with these trainers trying to figure out which one would be the perfect fit for her. Apparently, she rode at least five horses everyday and had a very hard time choosing which one she wanted to bring home. But, at the end of the week, she had picked a Swedish warmblood mare named Bella.

So, the process began of getting Bella over to Indiana. Once Kate, my trainer, came back there was still a lengthy process of quarantining Bella over in Sweden for a few weeks and then also quarantining her over here in the States for a few weeks. This time period is just used to reduce the risk of spreading any diseases from Sweden to the United States. This time was very hard for Kate because she was like a big kid and just wanted her "new toy" to be over here so she could play.

That period of waiting was over, and it was finally the day Kate could go pick her up and bring her home. You could feel the excitement in the air around the barn to see this "magnificent, Swedish princess". You could only imagine my dismay when I had to call Kate while she was on her way back with Bella and tell her that she couldn't bring her back. The reason for this was that one of the other horses at the barn had decided to get sick that day and no one really knew what it was. I didn't want to take any chances, so I decided to warn Kate and let her do what she wanted. She didn't want to take any chances either after spending so much money to get her here, so she stopped and waited a couple days before bringing her home.

Bella was amazing! She was so talented and even made Kate learn a thing or two in order to keep up with her training. Whenever Bella was being worked, everyone would drop everything just to watch this horse's way of gracefully gliding over the ground making it look like her feet never touched the ground. After about a year though, everything went wrong.

Bella started coughing a lot when she was worked, so Kate had a few tests done. It turns out, Bella was allergic to almost everything that was around her. This "Swedish princess" turned into a "Swedish pain in the butt". She had to be on a special diet, in a special stall, with special bedding. Unfortunately, things got worse instead of better. The only option was to bring her to Purdue for a surgery that would help her get over the allergies. The operating team knew something wasn't right after the first incision. During surgery, Bella's stomach literally exploded due to excess amount of pressure and she passed away.

This story is not a normal story of how imports normally end, but it does show that things can go wrong no matter how much money or time you put into a horse. Everyone at our barn still looks up to this horse and speaks about her with the utmost respect. She taught everyone alot and needless to say, I don't think Kate will be importing another horse anytime soon.

Start Your Engines...

It is that time of year again. All competitors know the official start of the season has come when entry forms for the spring shows begin to slowly trickle in. This is when the nerves start. Many people who have been showing for a long time now will try to tell you that they don't get nervous, but I am here to tell you everyone gets nervous.

It is around this time when people start making goals for this season and picking and choosing which shows they absolutely have to compete in. It is also the important time to figure out how much money you can really spend on shows, hotels, gas, and equipment. For some people these decisions could include being at a different show every weekend of their summer all across the midwest. Unfortunately, for others, this decision is made easier by only being able to go to one show during the season.

I always would find these decisions hard because I never could decide if I wanted to do a multitude of smaller shows or just pick a few of the bigger shows and travel a little farther to compete. Once every detail of the season is planned out, the real work begins, actually preparing for the shows.

Preparing for a show, suprisingly starts months in advance to make sure everything runs smoothly. First and foremost, you must make sure your horse is fit enough to compete. Most outsiders do not think about this very important step in preparing. You want to make sure your horse is performing his best and therefore, you must condition them for whatever they will be doing at that particular show.

Some of the smaller, but no less important tasks to preparing for a show is making sure you have a hotel if you will be there overnight. Also, you must check over your trailer and tow vehicle to make sure it is in good shape and will actually get you to the show. These minor details might not seem very important, but without these there will be no competition for you or your horse.

At the beginning of the year, you also must make sure your horse is vaccinated and that you have a copy of that record in your vehicle because without it, you might not even be let into the show grounds. When I competed at Championships, one of my teammates did not have her copy and they would not let her onto the show grounds until she had a copy. This required her going to the show office and pulling a copy from the papers she had sent in with the entry. This could have ruined the whole competition for the team before it had even started.

The part of preparing that I personally like the most is packing. When you start packing, you know that the competition is close and is going to happen. Packing can be challenging though, because not only do you have to pack for yourself but you also have to pack for a 1000 pound animal. This means that you have to analyze everything that could possible go wrong and pack for that. After packing, the only thing left to do is to load your horse in the trailer and hit the road.