Read all about our last educational events of 2017, some great opportunities in 2018, and Jennifer Drescher’s successful trip to the USDF Finals in our December e-newsletter! And if you’re not receiving it directly in your inbox, be sure to sign up.
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!
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.
A million years ago when I was young and adorable I attended USDF’s Young Rider Graduate Program, a two-day conference on how to be an adult in the horse business. It was a very informative weekend, with speakers on a huge range of subjects from professional liability to marketing to sponsorship, and one of the speakers was Jane Forbes Clark, who is a major player in ownership of team horses across several disciplines.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!
I started riding at 11. I took lessons on horses that were only vaguely sound, with ill-fitting tack, who received a bute a day to keep them teaching two lessons a day, six days a week. I rode in arenas where motor oil was used to keep the footing from being dusty, and at barns where horses were kept in standing stalls all day long.
Going to college in New York I went on a hack around Central Park where we rented livery horses who lived on the second and third stories of an apartment building. And now, as a professional, I’ve had clients bring me horses in trailers with holes in the floor, or who share their fields with barbed wire or rusty cars.
I’ve also seen horses in top performance barns, with phenomenal care, get hurt. Get sick. Die. I know of a horse who got cast in his stall, fractured his leg, sent a piece of bone through the femoral artery and bled to death in the middle of the day. I knew a horse who was put on the lunge line to get some exercise on a brutally cold winter day, too cold to ride, only to buck once hard, land just so, and shatter a pastern.
In 20-plus years with horses, if it’s two things I’ve learned, it’s these: 1) that the one Universal Truth in horses is that there are no Universal Truths; and 2) horses are livestock trying to become deadstock. If they can find a creative way to injure or maim themselves, they will.
Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse.
The Regional and BLM Finals may be in our rear view mirror, but we’ve got great events coming up, including a Michael Barisone clinic and a clipping clinic with Liv Gude. Read all about it, and some great new additions to the farm, here!
Join us in welcoming again Michael Barisone, US Olympian and trainer of Olympians in both dressage and eventing. Auditing is $35 if prepaid or $40 at the door, and lunch is included. An RSVP is requested even if paying at the door. Ride times are below.
MONDAY
10:00 Torrey Wilkinson & Talisman BHF, 12 yr PRE-cross Mare by Temerario VII, Grand Prix
10:45 Liza Broadbent & Victorious, 15 yr Dutch Gelding by Patijn, Grand Prix
11:30 Beverley Thomas & Fiero, 10 yr GOV gelding by Fidertanz, 1st Level
12:15 Lunch
12:45 Lisa Hellmer & Aniko, 11 yr Oldenburg Gelding, 4th Level
1:30 Dorie Forte & Froelich, 15 yr Oldenburg Gelding by Festrausch, Grand Prix
2:15 Judy Sprieser & Stratocaster, 11 yr GOV Gelding by Sir Donnerhall, 4th Level
3:00 Lee Phaup & Rainy, 14 yr Hanoverian Gelding, Prix St. Georges
3:45 Ali Brock & Viva, 5 yr Westfalen Gelding, First Level
4:30 Jean Loonam & Red Hot Chili Pepper, 11 yr Hanoverian Gelding by Royal Prince, 2nd Level
5:15 Ali Brock & Cheraton, 5 yr Swedish Gelding, Third Level
TUESDAY
7:30 Liza Broadbent & Victorious, 15 yr Dutch Gelding by Patijn, Grand Prix
8:15 Jean Loonam & Red Hot Chili Pepper, 11 yr Hanoverian Gelding by Royal Prince, 2nd Level
9:00 Lauren Sprieser & Havanna, 5 yr Dutch Mare by Lord Leatherdale, Training Level
9:45 Ali Brock & Viva, 5 yr Westfalen Gelding, First Level
10:30 Dorie Forte & Froelich, 15 yr Oldenburg Gelding by Festrausch, Grand Prix
11:15 Ali Brock & Cheraton, 5 yr Swedish Gelding, Third Level
12 Lunch
12:30 Lee Phaup & Rainy, 14 yr Hanoverian Gelding, Prix St. Georges
1:15 Beverley Thomas & Fiero, 10 yr GOV gelding by Fidertanz, 1st Level
2 Hannah McSween & Avatar, 11 yr Dutch Gelding by Art Deco, 3rd Level
2:45 Lauren Fisher & Eureka BBR, 8 yr KWPN Mare by Sir Sinclair, 3rd Leve
The year 2016 and the first few months of 2017 were really professionally, and personally, incredible. Ella and I had a fantastic end to our partnership, culminating in a great relationship with her new owner. Two other significant horse sales let me make a down payment on a house, and put two exciting new young horses in my life. Business is booming.
I’ve got an incredible farm in Florida sewn up for the 2018 season. I’m dating a fantastic guy. I came home from Florida in the beginning of this year knowing it would be a transition from having a finished product to show to focusing on the youngsters and on my clients, but I was ready. I started a new nutrition program, shed some pounds and felt fantastic; and I started running again and working with a personal trainer and just really felt prepared for it all.
But what goes up must come down.
Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!
Get approached to blog about your experience going to the 2009 USEF Festival of Champions, not because you’re all that good a rider, but because you can write well, spell correctly and turn in consistent work.
Start writing. Be excited about how easy the ideas come at first. New boots! How to bathe a big gross gray mare! Go to the show and have your horse colic for the first and only time in her life.
Spend all night at her side, and when she’s out of the woods and you go back to your hotel room to catch a bit of sleep, realize that you have to share the story with others, because you’re a blogger, and you have to Tell The Story. It won’t be the first time where you feel like you owe a piece of your life to your readership. But don’t quit.
Read the rest at The Chronicle of the Horse!
Dressage At Lexington, upcoming clinics and new faces. There’s nothing slow about our mid-summer! Read all about it in our August e-newsletter, and sign up to receive it directly in your inbox!