


Stormy May, a graduate
of the United States Pony Club, and professional equine video producer,
is dedicated to promoting the harmonious relationship between human
and horse through quality riding instruction and educational videos,
workshops, and other products.
www.stormymay.com
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Horse Mangement Newsletter by
Stormy May
Selected articles from HMN's November edition!
To read the full newsletter, see back issues, or to join the HMN's
email list, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HorseManagementNewsletter/
* Note to Canadian
Pony Clubbers: Any Pony Club advice given below is based
on the US Pony Club Rule book, and should be confirmed with the
Canadian Pony Club rule book (available to download on the Canadian
Pony Club Website www.canadianponyclub.org),
or ask your DC.
Feature: A use for horse management skills!
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by Maggie Weems, DC Middle Marin Hunt Pony Club, Sierra Pacific
Region
In which The Whys and Wherefores of the
obscure to bizarre pony club rally horse management esoterica finally
became clear to me at Galway Downs. Full phase events and
FEI shows need them!
THE HEALTH AND RECORD BOOK, STALL
CARDS As it turns out, in international competitions you
need to have all sorts of records identifying the horse's identity
(color, marking, size, age, breed, whirls and swirls and cowlicks,
scars...can you believe descriptions of the horse's chestnuts?),
even a passport with photo! You are not allowed to move your
horse from its assigned stall without permission because folks are
constantly walking through, checking on the international level
competitors...
One of our teammate's vet had lost her
horse's vaccination records, and without an up-to-date record book
wasn't sure if she was qualified to compete or was current on vaccinations! At
the front end of the competition we needed resting rates for pulse,
respiration and temp which was followed throughout the competition
to make sure the horse was holding up to the stress of the new locale
and the competition, the veterinarian and organizing officials
asked questions and kept statistics regarding each horse's conditioning
schedule was noted (for the benefit of the horse, and for the national
organization records), the horse's and rider's show records were
important to confirm qualifications for the upper level competition,
record of feed and supplements because rules regarding performance
enhancing substances are extremely strict .... and oh yeah, if you
have a special vet prescribed thing, you need to take the note to
the TD...
LABELING When 277 competitors
all have the same brushes, rags, buckets, galloping boots, bandages,
pillow wraps, splint boots... and 4 of them are on your team coming
out of the same trailer tack room where contents have adjusted during
the haul--it's nice to know whose stuff is whose. Plus, scratches
became an issue... we sure didn't want to use an infected horse's
equipment on any other horse.
TACK ROOM and BARN AREA
Every morning and every night, we watered down the aisle and raked
it. Dust and scattered hay and feed makes everyone cranky, dirty,
itchy, watery eyed, sneezey, and hotter--not only does a dusty barn
area muck up your hard work at putting together a decent turnout
for the horse and rider, it also makes your cold beverage container
a little gritty, which is gross. Finally, topping off water buckets
in the dark, it was nice to not wipe out someone's pile of "junk",
i.e. their saddle rack and bandages and saddle pads and helmets...
because you pulled the hose tighter....
Since we were hanging out in the barn area,
keeping the stalls tidy wasn't just a good thing for the horse,
the people appreciated not inhaling ammonia fumes and having
flies under control. Having participated in a few rallies
and having the habit of putting up tackrooms at shows, we were pretty
aggressive about adding eye hooks and various small carpentry projects
so that all the equipment had a proper, convenient place to be put
away in.
Every morning and every night we put all
the rider equipment and each horse's equipment away in a designated
and labeled box, and took an inventory of what we needed for the
next day. Believe me, the very nervous riders slept and ate
much better and were much more pleasant to be around when they knew
where their stuff was. And the grooms consequently had a much
more pleasant time because they didn't have to suffer cranky riders
or guess if the rider had disappearing equipment from a last minute
adjustment the previous day! When tasks of feed and watering
had to be delegated, it was very nice to be able to say--grab the
bags labelled "Wednesday night" for each horse--and not
have to explain the special combination of oil, oats, flax seed,
etc. that each individual needed. Boy, and by the fourth day
(we were there for 7 days) you were feeling tired--competition adrenaline
fatigue and muscle soreness and never enough sleep or down time.
Everyone seemed to be on their feet, moving, from dawn to dusk,
literally. And everyone was put to work-- We were pretty efficient,
much less time lost this show looking for shampoo or the black crop
with the blue stripes, or Hannah's arm band--or the black short
haired brush for Chuck, or a rag to dust off boots or whatever the
thing was that was needed on the that instant or the rider would
turn to ash and blow away.
Lots of tack cleaning. All the time.
Much of cleaning boots. We did not
have a sponge drying basket per se, so had to improvise. Otherwise
the
sponges got gummy and stinky-- or lost. I think we had one
all purpose
cleaning sponge by the end of the week...
LABELING SPONGES
It is totally possible to label a sponge it appears (and it would
be totally
stupid to have a little tag hanging off the thing or to have it
in a plastic
bag), when you are running a vet box between phase C (end of
steeplechase/roads and tracks phase) and cross country... as it
turns out
the industrial synthetic sponges that can hold lots and lots of
water were
the best. Forget natural sponges. At a full phase, the rider
has a pit crew
that cools down the horse, with buckets and buckets of ice water
and sweat
scrapers and ice flying, and horse walking ... repeated in a confined
area
for all the competitors as they come through -- everyone who has
identical
looking equipment. Nice to have the labels. you also
don't want to offer
the horse a drink of water from a bucket that has just had liniment,
or
diluted alcohol rub for cooling down, hence "WASH ONLY"
in big letters...
AND we actually did wipe out the horses' eyes and docks and mouths
(so
knowing which sponge was which was reassuring, the disposable wipes
were the
best).
By the way, our horses were spotless for
their many many formal inspections
and jog outs.
Hmmm, we needed to talk about music ahead
of time, but had not. There was a
lot of turning on and turning off and turning up and turning down
of various
sources of music, news, soothing and irritating.... I for
example like
southern rock, loud at all times. Someone, I haven't identified
who yet,
really did not!
NEUTRAL ZONE--UNAUTHORIZED ASSISTANCE
You normally can't talk to your rider when they are competing on
pain of
elimination. But right after steeplechase, the pit crew was
allowed to
observe the horse and rider, hand off electrolytes, get instructions
about
time/timing, check shoes, adjust boots, etc. in a very small area
between
steeplechase end and start of last roads and tracks--one individual
was
delegated to do the team's communicating so the rider wasn't getting
input
from 5 different directions -- in the authorized assistance/neutral
zone!
EXTRA EQUIPMENT We brought
extra horse shoes, halter and lead rope, lots of rags, a girth,
galloping boots, clean dry gloves, crop, girth, bridle, stirrup
leathers, stirrups, saddle tight (!), saddle pad... down to the
vet box. When Rose came through the finish flags for phase
C, she had three minutes extra plus her 10 minute allotted time
to recover and get to the start box for cross country. We
set up two rows of buckets with ice water, scrapers and huge sponges.
Our stable manager, pit boss, met rider and horse at finish line,
rider dismounted answered some officials questions, took some electrolytes,
went to sit, while the stable manager raised the stirrups, loosened
the girth and started walking the very sweaty, blowing horse.
The vet crew took the horse's pulse, respiration
and temperature. The clip on the thermometer became very important
as the horse started walking away with the thermometer in place,
and then pooped the thermometer out! The horse was walked
through our cooling station. There were 6 of us plunging huge
absorbent sponges into icy water, getting as much cold water as
we could on the poll, legs, chest, croup, then belly and flanks,
water on, scrape it off, horse would walk, come back, water on,
scrape it off, an official counting down the time. We did
a safety check on the equipment, wiped all the sweaty wet equipment
off, wiped the horse as dry as we could, the vet cleared the horse
to go on to the next phase, girth was tightened, our rider was off!
While we didn't use any of our "extra" equipment, some
folks in the station next to us borrowed some of ours....
TOOL BOX
I actually used the jack knife a couple of times, to open up hay
bales, to
take down odd bits of rope and twine left around by the previous
barn
inhabitants, and to cut off a pinney that had too many undoable
knots
because our rider had no time to fool around before he got to his
next
horse... I suppose he could have put the second pinney over the
first one.
We didn't think of that... We used hammer and nails in the
tack room, screw
driver and Allen wrench to change a gullet, replaced a battery in
a cross
country watch. Duct tape--for cross country boots, to patch
a tear in a
sheet... to close up a feed bag, to label a box... to write new
ride times
on and paste over the old ride times on the cards next to the stalls...
super glue to reinforce the sticky bit so we could fasten hooks
on the
cement wall to hang halters next to stalls. We might add a
bicycle tire
patching kit. Some weird kind of desert thorns did in 4 different
bicycle
tires by the second day of the show, so folks had to walk/run from
the barn
to wherever on errands which could be tired and cranky making...
FIRST AID KIT
We used betadine scrub, band-aids, a couple tubes of triple antibiotic
ointment (the people kind on the horse's-- we had to find out if
the "pain"
reducing triple antibiotic ointment would introduce an illegal substance
into the horse's blood stream, it didn't), vet wrap, rubbing alcohol,
regular betadine, witch hazel, rubber gloves, Vaseline, ... and
that was for
the horses that didn't get hurt. Aspirin for the grooms' headaches
and sore
muscles and here's a wild story, one mare who shall remain nameless
(but she
was a chestnut and was previously involved in a midnight ride with
Jose)
split open her face with her stall confinement hi-jinks. Still
unclear how
she actually managed to open up a four inch cut, where her blaze
should have
been, I think someone reported seeing bone... anyway, head wounds
create
lots of blood that needs to be soaked up. Then a vet came,
twitched her,
stapled her head back together, and the rider leapt on and had the
most
brilliant cross country ride of their partnership! Not a training
technique, but was quite an interesting experience. After
her ride and cool
down, the mare got a proper stitching up, and seemed extremely content
and
proud of her performance.
FORMAL INSPECTION
Our trainer and his horses were formally inspected 5 times over
the course
of a week, and safety/bit checked. For the jog outs we worked
it out so
that the horses' hooves weren't dusty when we got there... and the
rider's
boots were shiny even if they had to walk too.
Our horses received many compliments for
their "exceeds standards" turn
outs. The officials seemed to appreciate the effort, the riders
were more
relaxed and confident, and it was a total psych-out for the other
competitors. Our horses and riders looked awesome, all the
time!
BRIEFINGS ETC.
There were all sorts of competitor briefings, meetings, introductions,
course changes, rule announcements. Time was a big deal.
Organizing course
walks, hacks, hand walking, feeding horses, feeding people, grooming,
tack
cleaning, warm ups, cooling off ... you'd think with 7 days it wouldn't
all
be so tight for time... We definitely made use of our notice
board. Riders
and grooms never seemed to have time to eat, so folks took turns
replenishing coolers of drinking water, snacks, sandwiches...
KNOWING THE RULES
Dude, you have 30 minutes from when the times are posted to challenge
scores. At that level of competition, folks checked, and knew
the
rules. No one wanted to be eliminated for a whip that
was too long or an
official timing error or a volunteer who scored a run out when
the rider
clearly called circle before a cross country fence, or losing to
someone who
hadn't crossed through the finish flags and so on. When we
were all
completely baffled about a dressage score relative to another dressage
score
(three judges marks could each be pretty different on any particular
movement depending on tastes and particular perspective) it helped
to know
what the FEI rules were that set out the parameters of what was
scored and
what was not.
Anyway, lots and lots of examples... test
me. Send me a note about your
biggest pet peeve regarding horse management and what the goofiest
piece is
and I'll give you a for instance...
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