Back when our daughter Emmie rode in 4-H horse shows, parents and riding instructors were not allowed to stand at the rail and give instructions to the riders in the show class as they rode past. Parents in fact did not participate at all with the the horses care and preparations during a 4-H show– this was part of the kids’ own learning experience, they were guided and supervised by their adult 4-H leaders.
So it brought back old memories to me when recently, at Deerfield Fair, Hubby and I observed a parent (or trainer) communicating via microphone and headset to a rider showing in a class. There was obvious 2-way communication, meaning the rider had a microphone too, and we could hear one side of the conversation as the lady standing practically in front of us told the young girl rider where to position herself and what to do with her horse as the class proceeded.
Lady in stands uses lapel-mike to talk to rider in hunter seat equitation class at Deerfield Fair Horse Show 2008. Young girl rider is in light gray jacket, on bay horse.
Frankly I feel this is cheating– and worse, I think it is detrimental to the children who have this forced upon them, because it does nothing for their own knowledge or self-confidence. To me all it achieves is instilling the sense that winning is everything, and undoubtedly the reason it is done is an attempt to gain more laurels for the training or breeding barn involved, and thus promote their businesses and fill their pocketbooks.
Horse showing is so subjective anyway… it’s all the opinion of a judge. It should be approached as a learning experience for the riders, but in reality it is more often a blatant showcase for those breeders and trainers whom the judge knows and likes. I wouldn’t be surprised if monies crossed palms under the table , especially at high-end shows where much prestige and high breeding fees are at stake.
If I sound like sour grapes, that’s not at all true. At this point in my life I am totally removed from all that sort of thing; I never did horse showing myself. When Emmie was showing as a backyard-trained young rider, she did extremely well in 4-H shows, open shows, and on the Arabian circuit, regularly beating out the high-end monied barns for ribbons and year-end championships. She came to understand that a judge’s opinion was completely subjective and not always fair, but she worked hard, did her best and often won anyway. Getting the best out of each horse she rode was the most important thing to her, and the lessons she learned about life were more important than the winning.
WHAT IS IT that makes our society so competitive? Can’t we be honest and fair and try to learn from each other instead of placing such importance on BEATING everyone else in a sport or endeavor? The worst part is that there are many horses who suffer abusive treatment and pain, all for the sake of winning acclaim for their owners or handlers.
Sharing pix from our glorious fall, which peaked on Columbus Day at our house… these are around our area, Lake Winnipesaukee, and central New Hampshire.
On the “Great Waters”… Looking across Lake Winnipesaukee at Mt. Washington (the very faint peak in left third of ridgeline)
On an island in Lake Winnipesaukee, looking towards shore
One of a nesting pair of bald eagles on Lake Winnipesaukee for the past two years. I observed their nest in early summer and they were definitely trying to hatch eggs, but I have not heard whether they succeeded or not.
a marina in Smith Cove
an island camp
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At a local Gilford sheep farm…
our lovely daughter Em, joining me taking sheep farm pix…
This info from Care2.com, a green living site with news, petitions you can sign or start, and Ecard greetings. Worth your consideration. I must differ with this report’s saying they are true dogs, Wikipedia’s definition (see at bottom) says they are NOT true dogs but are related, in the canid family… yet what does it matter, they are helpless animals.
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A startling investigation from last year shows that 80 percent of jackets mislabeled as “faux” fur contain raccoon dog fur. But amazingly, the inhumanity that these dogs face does not stop at being beaten and tortured for their fur. Recently, some 1,500 dogs that were bred for their fur have died after eating feed tainted with melamine, the same chemical that contaminated dairy products and sickened tens of thousands of babies in China (read story).
It’s horrific that U.S. law has yet to catch up with the realities in the fur industry. As long as killing dogs for their fur is profitable, and consumers are duped into thinking their jackets are “faux” fur, China’s breeders will continue to do it. Urge your lawmaker to cosponsor the Dog and Cat Fur Prohibition Act now, and end the cruelty against these innocent dogs. Petition to U.S. Congress, sponsored by Care2.com
While U.S. law prohibits the import and sale of dog and cat fur products, a legal loophole prevents our laws from protecting raccoon dogs, even though they are true dogs (they are members of the canine family native to the dense woodlands and forests of Asia). Nor does our law require the industry to label products with fur valued under $150.
Please urge Congress to close this loophole and protect animals from this terrible fate today:
Here’s some pix and vids from our October Fall Foliage drive in Hancock, NH, put on by Granite State Carriage Assoc. of course. This area has great colors and dirt roads for driving. This time we went just for a day instead of horse camping, taking Glendale and Gilford to continue their pairs training.
Hubby and the boys… and gorgeous fall colors! What could be nicer!
Peaches got to come this time, she just loves to go with us!
She was in back with me, we had the side-mounted facing seats in the Eagle carriage…
Playing around with artsy camera views on a leisurely walk.
Glorious fall in New Hampshire!
Before crossing this bridge over a stream, they had to stop and take a good look at it first. The sound of the water was pretty loud, it was sorta dark underneath… you know, scary! Might have been a bear hiding down there!
Our friend Kim and her family stopped by and took a spin too. Kim got to drive a pair for the first time!
CONNIE’S NOTE: This came to me in Email, I am assuming it is legitimate but I have not verified…
Could you please pass this along to anyone who is looking for a quality registered Morgan?
Hickory Hollow Farms in Lunenberg, MA is in trouble. Dot, the owner is an elderly woman who fell and broke her hip.
She can not care for her horses or work, and she is desperate. She is willing to sign all of her horses over to anyone who will help her.
I am trying to arrange a bunch of people who will come out with trailers and help take the horses. There are mares, stallions, and geldings.
She needs our help. There are 14 horses so if anyone is near her, even taking one will help her. This is an emergency situation and she is calling out for help before this turns into a starvation situation. Please pass this along to anyone willing to help.
I am driving out tomorrow mornng, with another local rescue, and a few others willing to help. Anyone who seriously can help, please put them in touch with me. I will not pick up horses for people, I need people with their own trailers to help and bring the horses with them. I am back up to 19 horses, and I only have a 2 horse trailer.
Thank you so much!
Eagle Lake and Frenchman’s Bay beyond, Cadillac Mtn. to the right– from “Around Mountain” Carriage Road
Jordan Pond, seen below the Carriage Road at the “Slide”
crossing Cobblestone Bridge
All the boys on top of Day Mountain…
attracting attention of hikers on Day.
The Carriage Roads are also great for bicycling!
Picnickers near Long Pond
a section of grass roads on private Rockefeller land
Under one of the stone bridges near Stanley Brook
Wildwood stables, returning home after an outing
Back at the campground (our truck and trailer on the right)
Born to harness!
This was our last day– we had the hoof boots on their hind feet, because they had gotten pretty worn by then. (Usually the boots are used on their front feet, which take more of their weight…) The Carriage Roads are really abrasive, being similar to stone dust. It’s like they were walking on coarse sandpaper.
Here are training-oriented videos of practicing in Acadia with our driving pair. Of course, everything we do with them is practice and training, but these vids show examples of some unusual things horses have to get used to, and some things you try to practice repeatedly, to improve their (and YOUR) teamwork.
CANTERING PRACTICE
Day 5, TONS of FUN doing some extended cantering, gentle uphill grade on fairly soft dirt footing. With each canter session they seem to get a little smoother.
YOUTUBE COMMENT: it would be nicer if the bay stoped playing and kept his face on the road
MY RESPONSE: Good eye! it certainly WOULD be nicer, and we hope he’ll outgrow this annoying little habit of play-nipping at his older brother (who is 5)…. since the bay is only 3 he’s got time to grow up! We did shorten his outside (right) rein some and that helped quite a bit. Honestly, we’re not overly concerned about it at this point, & don’t wish to nag him with corrections and potentially sour him to the whole idea of driving. : )
This was our training/conditioning schedule while in Acadia:
WEEKS BEFORE: driving as a pair since mid-July (see previous blog posts on pairs training)
DAY BEFORE: trailered to Acadia, 6 hrs. standing in trailer eating hay. Being trailered can tire some horses, especially ones that are nervous about trailering; our guys probably fall asleep.
DAY 1: drove about 4 miles, mostly level, walk/trot
DAY 2: rainy, so we rode them about 2-3 miles, mostly walking
DAY 3: drove about 9 miles, walk/trot
DAY 4: DAY OFF FOR REST
DAY 5: drove 15 miles, more walk than trot, plus some cantering, rest stops
DAY 6: drove 6 miles, with nearly half of it extended uphill trotting, a little canter; none of the Carriage Road hills are very steep, but 2 miles of this one was about the steepest uphill encountered in Acadia (to Day Mountain summit). Of course, 3 miles uphill means 3 miles was also downhill!
RETURN DAY: trailered home 6 hours (resting/eating hay); then they ran around in their pasture, quite happy to be back home in grass again!
CONDITIONING THEORY– how much work is stressful?
When paired up, and assuming they are sharing the load more or less evenly, we figure Glen and Gilford each do about half the amount of work they would be doing if driven singly over the same distance. At present, Glen the younger guy lets his big brother take more of the load when they’re walking (he appears a little bored walking and more prone to pestering his brother!) But then Glen gets more animated and more “forward” when they trot, so in trotting HE is often more “in draft” (pulling more) than Gilford is.
ROAD-WORKING EQUIPMENT EXPOSURE An unusual challenge– meeting road rollers, graders and dump trucks on the Carriage Roads doing washout repair work (the aftermath of torrential rains brought by Hurricane Hannah.) The boys were unruffled.
Video: pair encountering grader and dump truck on carriage road
In our minds the current imbalance in “draft” of our green pair tends to even out their shared work, which is roughly half walking and half trotting. I would also say that Gilford, who is steadier when just walking along, possibly works a little harder than Glen does for the whole session because PULLING at a walk is actually a bit more difficult than pulling at a trot, where momentum helps the trotting horse(s) out. This is OK too, since Gilford is 2 years older and better able to work a little harder. As Glen matures, as he gets more SINGLES training pulling by himself (which we will keep doing), and as they become more experienced together as a pair, we should see them (especially Glen) become more consistent, and thus more equally “in draft,” at all times.
EXTENDED DOWNHILL TROTTING, TEMPO PRACTICE
Practicing some downhill trotting– the carriage brake is being used to slow the carriage, and also the horses are holding it back themselves somewhat, through the harness breeching behind their butts. By watching their traces (the leather straps along their sides which attach them to the front of the cart) you can tell by the slack that they are not “in draft,” ie. they are not pulling any weight. We pass an anxious dog and get a view of Eagle Lake and Cadillac Mountain to the northeast.
As to how difficult is their driving job?– Our Eagle carriage is lightweight compared to most 4-wheelers of comparable size, plus it rolls very easily. It is actually lightweight compared to our oak Meadowbrook 2-wheel cart. We removed the rear seat from the Eagle while in Acadia to make it as light as possible. In addition, we observe the horses’ energy levels and their breathing while we travel, and we can tell when they are getting tired or winded. We do not push them hard, keeping in mind that Glendale is only three.
PASSING HORSEBACK RIDERS Passing other horses (video), other carts and horses, draft teams and wagons, bicyclists, hikers, hikers with dogs… all such things are necessary parts of their continued training, as encountered in Acadia.
During this week of driving in Acadia, the boys got stronger each day and were both energetic when we started on our drives. We fed them extra grain rations and plenty of hay because they were working more frequently. We gradually increased their mileage each day, and we gave them one full day off for rest. We used their hoof boots on their front feet the whole time, because we knew from experience that the Carriage Roads are extremely abrasive. On the last 2 days, I moved Glen’s boots to his hind feet, just because the hinds were getting worn down pretty badly.
HALT TO TROT TRANSITIONS, TO IMPROVE RESPONSES
Practicing transitions on level section of road, going from “halt” to “trot.” This gets into fine tuning of their responsiveness. They are great with voice commands, though they do need more practice on standing quietly! It helps that they have heard spoken commands ever since they were foals being ponied alongside their momma mare.
STALL TIME They did nothing else in their off time in Acadia except stand in their stalls. Looks like they’re napping here!
Their day off we brought them out a short time for hand-grazing and to stretch their legs. They both were lying down ovenights for sleeping, which indicates they were quite relaxed in the barn. (You can tell they lie down by the shavings stuck in their manes and tails every morning.)
STANDING “PRACTICE”
Obviously they are not so good at standing quietly after their pretty long uphill trot! Antsy, in fact. I’m not sure why they both kick at themselves when they first stop– my guess is, being sweaty and breathing pretty hard at this moment, their harness girths are feeling itchy to them and they are trying to scratch; there probably are some gnats around their heads too. Then they go to rubbing their heads on each other trying to scratch their faces. What a pain! Once Gilford actually rubbed Glen’s bridle completely off! I was right there to re-bridle him, it looked like his throat latch had come unbuckled…
High standing water beside the Carriage Road at Long Pond. You can see this water is at same level as the pond. The Carriage Road seen at lower left goes off to the left and was underwater, about a foot below the pond surface, where it passed the pond.
There’s no video here, because we chose NOT to undertake a water hazard! At this lower end of Long Pond, the Carriage Road itself was a foot underwater on our first day’s driveout, for about 150 feet distance. There was visibly flowing water in two places, runoff from the pond which was moving towards the nearby ocean. I got out on foot to take a look at it.
Had we attempted to drive them through this water, there would have been no safe options for retreat. The road underwater was not much wider than our carriage so we could not have turned around; pullout to our left would have run the horses into coping stones or a ditch; pullout to the right would have taken them into coping stones or into the deeper water of the pond.
The water over the Carriage Road was behind me as I took this picture of Hubby waiting for me to see how deep it was! (Don’t ask me why I didn’t take a pix of the water over the road– duh!)
Given the fact that I wasn’t wearing waders and did not feel like wading through ahead of them to check it out, and also because there was a very real risk of underwater gullies or soft spots which we would not have been able to see while crossing, we decided that this was NOT the place to introduce the pair to water crossing. It would have been like asking for a negative experience to attempt it, and potentially very dangerous, so we turned around and went back the way we had come.
NOT WADING THROUGH WATER
Here IS a video of them being driven across the same road 2 days later, after the FOOT-DEEP water had receded. We approached it from the opposite direction this day, so the pond (obviously) is on their left. Much nicer conditions to get them pretty close to water without setting them up to balk at getting their feet wet! As you horse folks well know, horses can get real goofy about walking through water, even just simple puddles. And yes, they SHOULD be able to drive through water, but in training WATER we will plan it in advance, work with them each INDIVIDUALLY first, and set them up to SUCCEED easily and NOT to become nervous or frightened!
Different horses besides our own, plus scenery on the Carriage Roads!
On Bridge Tour, tour wagon pulled by draft team crosses stone bridge below Jordan Pond. Driver Ed Winterberg is the manager of Wildwood Stables; he jokes with us to “Get a horse” because we are on our bicycles this day!
Friesian horses, pair in harness at Wildwood Stables, starting out for their own drive on Carriage Roads.
Nice looking Shire, a draft horse, pulling a 4-wheel cart.
Panoramic 360 view from top of Sargeant Mountain. Starts overlooking Bar Harbor and a cruise ship to northeast, moves to Cadillac and Pemetic Mountains, open ocean view to south and west, Cranberry Islands, Swan Island, Somes Sound westerly and the mainland towards Ellsworth to north.
Percheron and Haflinger horses pulling carts, on their way to the Carriage Roads. There were numerous drivers while we were there; in years past there usually have been more riders than drivers.
We pass a Wildwood teamster with a pair of Clydesdale-Hackney crosses, very fine looking driving horses. Gilford seems to want to meet them closer up!
One of Mr. John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s creations, a stone bridge with nearby waterfall on “Around Mountain” Carriage Road. There are sixteen bridges in Acadia, each one unique. This was on the horses’ day off, our bicycle-riding day.
