Thanksgiving

By |2018-01-11T09:03:57-05:00November 22nd, 2017|COTH Posts|

Danny, my top horse, had emergency colic surgery at the end of October. To make a long story as short as possible, I learned that, because he’d had a brief hospital stay in August of 2016 for a non-surgical colic, I was ineligible for the colic surgery coverage I’d thought I’d had through my equine insurance; I’d thought coverage was reinstated a year after the incident, but it’s a year after the date of renewal.

If you think that’s a weird and arbitrary way of deciding when to reinstate coverage, join the club. But rules are rules, and my underwriters decided that insuring large numbers of my own horses, sending multiple clients their way, and also having my liability coverage with them for more than 20 years was an insufficient reason to bend the rules. So I was on my own.

This was not good news. To add insult to injury, Danny continued to drain from his incision upon his return from the hospital, and a culture showed an antibiotic resistant infection. In spite of having no other symptoms —no fever, no wonky vitals, no problems gastrointestinally —the consequences of an antibiotic-resistant infection getting away from you are severe. So he’s back in the hospital, looking at a two week stay to treat the infection with the only drug to which it does respond, naturally one that is incredibly expensive.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!

Danny Ocean Colic Fund Online Auction

By |2017-11-19T08:20:18-05:00November 19th, 2017|News & Events|

Hello, friends. In October of 2017, my top horse, the 9 year old Dutch gelding Danny Ocean, underwent lifesaving emergency colic surgery, and later developed a complication that is requiring a longer hospital stay and expensive treatment. Shortly after surgery, I learned that I didn’t have sufficient insurance coverage to pay for any of it. Never in a million years would I have let Danny go for want of surgery coverage, but this realization has made my life a lot harder. To help pay for this lifesaving surgery, I’m hosting an online auction, with items and services graciously donated by the equestrian community.

See those items here! The auction runs from 12p Sunday, November 19 to 6p Monday, November 27, EST.

If you want to help directly, you can contribute via PayPal here.

Getting A Life

By |2017-11-19T08:16:04-05:00November 7th, 2017|COTH Posts|

One of her pieces of advice on how to attract sponsors was to read, or listen to, the daily news. She encouraged us all to be able to talk about things other than horses, to have an engaged mind across a broader pool of subjects than just our profession.

It’s good advice on a sponsorship front, but I remember hearing it and thinking that it was good advice on how to not to chew off your own arm as a horse trainer. Life with these easily injured and chronically frustrating creatures can tear your heart apart, and if you’ve got nothing else, then you’ve got nothing else.

Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!

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