Summer Memories

Honestly, I am starting to find it difficult to find things to write about. I never thought it would be possible for me to run out of things to say about horses. Unfortunately, that day has come. For this post, I think I will talk about my summer and what that will include with the horses and how it will be different from the school year.

The most obvious change between school and summer, is that I will be at home and will take over the daily care of my horses. During the year, my parents are in charge of making sure they get hay four times a day, grain twice a day, and a clean stall to sleep in at night. This means that in the summer, there is no such thing as sleeping in. I am up at 8am normally ready to go out to the barn. I will admit, I will normally roll out of bed at 7:59, throw my boots on and go out in my pajamas to do the morning feeding.

Also during the summer, I have a lot more free time in order to ride. In the perfect world, I would be able to ride both of my horses in the same day. Due to an accident that occured while riding though, I am not able to ride more than one a day. In the summer of 2005, I took a bad fall off of my horse and about a week after that started having back pain. When I went to the doctor, they told me I had a stress fracture in my lower back that would always cause me trouble. They were right, I am not able to ride both horses without experiencing severe back pain. That means that I have to rotate which horse I ride everyday which can get a little annoying.

Throughout a normal summer, I would be competing in anywhere between five and ten competitions. This summer, however, I will not be competing. There are a couple factors that play into this decision. First of all, I have not been able to ride on a regular basis throughout the year so my horses are very fat and out of shape. By the time I come back to school, they might be back up to their top performance. Secondly, I will actually have a job this summer that requires 40 hours a week which means that cuts down on my riding time too. Thirdly, the horse that I would normally compete will hopefully be sold by the time competitions start.

This summer, I am looking forward to being able to spend some time not just around my barn but hopefully at other barns with various horses. This will help me improve my riding by using different types of horses. I am hoping to ride everyday this summer and be more motivated to continue riding all through next year. The school year provides added complications when it comes to my riding schedule, but summer gives me a blank slate to start clean and begin anything I want to pursue.

What's the Big Difference?

When I'm at home with my horses, I am surrounded by other people who enjoy riding English just as much as I do. Now that I have been at Purdue for awhile, I have realized there is a whole new world of Western riders out there who are convinced that Western is the only way to go. This has been an ongoing battle for quite sometime between the equestrian community.

In my experiences, one major difference is the horses that are used for each. They are so completely different. Western horses always seem to be dead heads who can not find one thing scary or one thing to shy away from on the trails or in a show atmosphere. English horses on the other hand, or at least the eventing horses, are always on edge, ready to run fast and they are never hesitant to shy away from that trashcan that has been there for the past year or any other potentially scary object.

One weekend, two seasons ago, the horse park was hosting two different shows. They had an english show on one side of the road and a western show on the other side of the road. The routine at an English eventing show is that you drop your horse off, make sure they are settled, go out to dinner, and go to the hotel until the next morning of competition. The "westerners" however, are just starting to crank the music up and get loud and roudy around 8pm. Also, the worst feeling is walking your horse to your first class of the day, feeling like they are on cue, listening to you the whole time and then having them come completely unglued underneath you because one of those cowboys is swinging a rope over their head 50 yards in front of you.

Now, it might sound that I am completely bashing on the western community and this is not true at all. In fact, two weekends ago, I took one of my friends home with me and she is one of those crazy "westerners" and she talked me and my family into buying a western saddle. So, if you were to walk into the tack room of our barn now, you would see five english saddles and one very out of place western saddle. I honestly can not wait until this summer when I have the opportunity to play around a little bit in the new saddle.

The other major difference is the riding position of the two disciplines. English riders are always very proper and are always looking to create nice straight lines with their body. One of these ideal lines is from the ear to the shoulder, then the hip and the heel. It seems to me from the uneducated eye, that the style of western is more laid back. They always seem to have their feet in front of them and just be perching up there on top of the saddle.

Even though it might sound like I am very biased right now, you must understand that I have been riding english for 11 years and I don't adjust well to change. However, this summer I am looking forward to doing some trail riding and possibly trying my hand at some barrels or pole bending. You never know, next year I might be able to come back to Purdue as one of those crazy, barrel racing "westerners".

R.I.P. Chief of the Promise

Sunday was a good day...or so I thought. I got to sleep in, had lunch with my friends, and watched a movie. That all sounds great, right? Well it was until I got a call from one of my best friends back home. Sarah and I met through horses and have been friends for about 10 years. When I get a message from her asking me to call as soon as I get a chance, I know it can't be good.

So, I call Sarah back and she informs me that one of our good friends is having to put her horse down on Tuesday. This news is unfortunately not really surprising to me. This horse is not only very close to the owner but also very close to Sarah. When Sarah was looking for her first horse, she was only interested in borrowing a horse not owning a horse, so through pony club she found Chief.

Chief is a very special horse who has been around for 27 years. If you are familiar with the Indiana horse community, you have most likely heard about or seen Chief around at some show or other outing. He is a tall appaloosa who has the heart of a teddy bear. In his prime, he was shown at preliminary level which is a higher level in eventing consisting of roughly 4 foot jumps. As he aged, he helped beginners learn the ropes and would perform any task he was called to do.

Instructors felt comfortable putting a five year old on him because of his willingness to please. Anyone who entered the barn was automatically drawn to Chief due to his puppy dog eyes and quiet expression. He served two generations in the owner's family and touched the heart of so many others.

Chief will be greatly missed. Anyone who laid eyes on this horse knew he was something special. My thoughts and prayers go out to the Mundt family and Sarah. Thanks for sharing this great horse with us.

Spring Break

Most people who have horses in their backyard would be happy to go home for Spring Break and ride everyday. However, this was not the case for me. As I have mentioned before, I have one horse stabled with my trainer and 2 horses at my house right now. I was excited to get some free time away from school to be able to ride, but I was dreading it at the same time because I knew my horses would be hyper since they hadn't been ridden.

I don't know how aware of this you are, but when you leave a horse for a long period of time and don't ride them they get hyper. Especially if you continue to feed them the same amount of food. So, I knew when I got on I should be expecting a rodeo.

I have been having a particularly hard time with my pony lately because he is enjoying his life in early retirement and he never wants to have to work again. I am slowly trying to convince him that he will work and he WILL be happy about it.

I decided to start my break off by riding my horse who is at my trainer's barn because I figured he had been ridden more recently and it would be good for me to exercise him while I was at home. I was excited to ride until I brought him into the arena and watched every other horse rider combination quickly evacuate. That should have been my sign. I got on and before I could even think about it he was rearing. Now, in all fairness I don't mean like vertical in the air rearing, I just mean his front feet were no longer on the ground.

He does this quite frequently, so I decided to kick him to ask him to walk forward instead of jumping up and be done with that nonsense. We were done with the nonsense until I asked for a nice slow trot and he pulled that same stunt again. By this time, I decided to give up and go into where my trainer was teaching so she could help me through this. Once I did that, he was much better and I had survived my first ride of Spring break.

That all happened on Wednesday and I was in know way rushing the ride on my pony because I knew that would be even worse. Saturday came and there were a lot of younger riders coming over to our barn for lessons that day. I decided it would be a good idea to hop on my pony while they were riding because if he saw other horses working maybe he would think that he needed to work too. He didn't understand that and it only made things worse.

I got on with the older group of riders and was ready for everything to go wrong. I knew that I could expect a buck when I asked for canter, but all I was doing was trotting in a circle. I have had this pony for almost 11 years now so I know him pretty well and I could feel the energy about to explode. He was like riding a pony on energy drinks. I was just trying to work out the energy and not do anything special.

We were trotting the same circle we had been trotting for the past 5 minutes when he decided to make things interesting. Completely out of nowhere, he decides to buck. You must understand when this pony bucks (as seen below) you better give up on trying to stay on him. Some people say it is like he is doing a handstand on his front feet. So of course, I go flying through the air without the greatest of ease. I land on our lime arena floor thinking to myself, "Did that really just happen?" I am sitting there, look up at my pony and he looks like he is asking himself, "Mom, what are you doing down there?"

Let's just say, we excused ourselves from that lesson and I went and worked him even harder. I was looking forward to break being a relaxing time to ride both of my horses and enjoy some quality time at the barn. I never expected to come back to school with my back all scraped up and carrying around a bottle of Tylenol everywhere I went.

Background

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.