Today I received a call from Tufts with the final necropsy report on Kroni. He died from a “vascular accident,” a blood clot near his poll. He basically had a stroke.
Kroni enjoying a vacation in Vermont.
In many ways, learning this has given me relief. Since he died, I have spent many hours wondering what I could have done differently. Should I have taken him to Tufts earlier? Had I caused the problem by giving him an IM shot? Had one of the vets missed something?
Now I know that the answer to all of those questions was no. We could not have saved him and nothing anyone did caused the problem. It was simply very bad luck.
Kroni at the Patriot's Day Reinactment. I regret that I won't be able to participate in this event any more. It was great fun.
I am grateful for the exceptional care that he received during the last week of his life and for the thorough work performed at Tufts after his death. It is good to have some closure.
Riding off to rouse the Minute Men. I'll miss our rides together
This seems an appropriate way to start the day here in Massachusetts given that we had our first snow of the season overnight. I saw this poem on the Chronicle of the Horse Forums but a reader let me know that it originally appeared in the February 2006 issue of FresNotes, the monthly newsletter of the Fresno Chapter California Dressage Society.
This adorable photo is from www.rockinjranch.com
The Warmth Of A Horse
When your day seems out of balance
and so many things go wrong …
When people fight around you
and the clock drags on so long …
When some folks act like children
and fill you with remorse …
Go out into your pasture and wrap
your arms around your horse.
His gentle breath enfolds you
as he watches with those eyes …
He may not have a PhD
but he is,oh so wise!
His head rests on your shoulder
you hug him good and tight …
He puts your world in balance
and makes it seem all right.
Your tears will soon stop flowing,
the tension will be eased …
The nonsense has been lifted.
You are quiet and at peace.
So when you need some balance
from the stresses in your day …
The therapy you really need
Is out there eating hay!
The Diving Horses of Atlantic City's Steel Pier jumped 60 down into a special tank.
I know this topic has been covered before — Behind the Bit did a posted on this several months ago — but tonight I came across some amazing photos of the diving horses of Atlantic City in the Life Magazine collection on Google. It is such a mind-boggling stunt that I still find it difficult to believe that this was a regular attraction for more than 50 years. I can’t resist adding to the other posts out there.
I grew up making regular visits to the Jersey shore, and although I never got to see the horses dive (there were diving horses on Steel Pier from the mid 1920s to 1978!), they were a legend. The act was created by Dr. W.F. Carver who was riding across a bridge in 1924 when it collapsed, sending him and his horse 40 feet into a river. The horse executed a dive and the two swam safely to shore. He created the act to replicate this feat.
In the Atlantic City shows horse and rider plunged 60 feet into a special tank (eventually the platform was lowered to 40 feet then 35 feet). Sonora Carver, the most famous of the riders (and Dr. Carver’s daughter-in-law) always stated that the horses were not forced to jump under duress. This reminiscence was published by Susan MacDonald in her story, Christmas Essay: The Diving Horses of Atlantic City.
Sonora Carver was the most famous rider of the diving horses. She became blind after a dive caused her retinas to detach but continued diving for 11 more years.
“The High Diving Horses were always my favorite. I must have seen at least six of them over the years. They each had their own style of diving. One would wait a good five minutes before jumping – he would hold his head up and watch the seagulls fly by. Some dove with their front legs straight out, while others tucked up their legs as if they were going over a jump. One horse would twist in the air and land on his side, making it dangerous for his rider.”
“The riders (all women) would suffer one or two broken bones a year. Most of the injuries came from getting out of the pool of paddling hooves. They made it look easy, but it wasn’t. Years ago a rider by the name of Sonora Carver (in the late 1920’s) went blind from a bad impact with the water. The jump was sixty feet at that time, but was then lowered to forty.”
“Another horse, I think his name was Patches, drew quite an audience. After making so many jumps he no longer waited for his rider. He would charge up the ramp to the tower and take a running jump off the diving board, leaving the rider behind. A couple of the girls tried to leap on him as he flew by, only to be left sailing through the air mount-less. One day, he got up so much speed he almost overshot the pool. Needless to say, they retired him. One year they even had a high diving mule.”
An article in the New York Times featured an interview with Arnette Webster, Sonora’s younger sister, who also participated in the act. It gives some additional insights:
Arnette was 15 when she took her first plunge on a horse. ”What impressed me was how Dr. Carver cared for the horses,” she said. ”Wherever we went, the S.P.C.A. was always snooping around, trying to find if we were doing anything that was cruel to animals. They never found anything because those horses lived the life of Riley. In all the years of the act, there was never a horse that was injured.”
The challenge for the riders, Mrs. French explained, was to remember ”to keep your head tucked down to one side, so that when the horse raised his head as he jumped up at the bottom of the pool, you wouldn’t get smacked in the face.”
It is clear that her sister’s loss of sight from detached retinas was due to one bad blow or a number of blows, yet Mrs. French chooses to dwell on the joy of diving.
”The movie made a big deal about having the courage to go on riding after she lost her sight,” she said. ”But, the truth was, riding the horse was the most fun you could have and we just loved it so. We didn’t want to give it up. Once you were on the horse, there really wasn’t much to do but hold on. The horse was in charge.”
This video, created from a series of still photos, gives you a sense for how long the jumping horses were an attraction.
There are some wonderful photos owned by Life Magazine that cannot be embedded but are well worth a look!
In this photo, a woman trains a horse to jump by offering it a carrot. I don’t know about your horse, but I don’t think mine would consider a carrot to be enough of an enticement!
Dimah the Diving Horse climbs the rampDimah, one of the diving horses, climbs the ramp to the diving platform. It strikes me that if a horse didn't want to jump, it would be darn hard to get them up the ramp for five shows a day.
Here you get a feel for the steep drop of the jump.
This ramp looks a bit lower than the ones at Steel Pier but you wouldn't catch me jumping my horse off!
Those readers who want to learn more about the diving horses might enjoy renting the Disney movie Wild Hearts Can’t be Broken. It’s a nice family movie even if Sonora Carver didn’t think it was all that accurate.
Vernacular (ver⋅nac⋅u⋅lar) (noun): the language or vocabulary peculiar to a class or profession; jargon, argot, slang.
We enjoy a sport that is rife with words imported from other languages and specific to esoteric concepts. Since many of us learn the terminology from reading in books and articles, when you add the challenge of pronunciation to the mix, the results can be both amusing and mortifying.
I’ve used that thread as a starting point and added a few of my own.
One of my most embarrassing moments came after I had purchased a high-end Canadian saddle off of eBay. While I’d certainly heard of Schleese, I had no idea that it was pronounced Schlay-za; I’d always thought it was Schleeze. I’d been proudly telling people of my purchase. I took solace in the fact that most of the people I told didn’t know how to pronounce it either!
The list below is of other easily mispronounced words. In some cases, the correct pronunciation is still up for debate! If I’ve gotten it wrong, please let me know. Ariat = Derived from Secretariat, it is pronounced Air-ee-at”. Piaffe = Pee-aff Mattes = Mats or Matt-iss, depending on who you believe. Antares = An-tar-eeze Devoucoux = de-voo-cou Equine = ek-kwine or eek-kwine Fjord = Fe-yord (apparently not Fee-yord, which is what I’ve always said). Holsteiner = Holstyner or Holshtyner Pikeur = Pie-kur Trakehner = Tra-kay-ner Hermes = Air-mess, not Air-mays or Her-meez Albion = Al-Bee-uhn Akhal Teke = Ack-ul-teckie Bosal = BO-sil or bozzle Grulla =Grew-ya Keuring = kuurrring Irish Draught = Irish Draft Chaps = “Chaps” if you’re English, “Shaps” if you’re Western Chambon = Sham-bone De Gogue = I’ve always said De Gogg. I’ve seen Dee-Gow and De-Gawg Baucher = I’ve always said Bow-sher; apparently it’s Boo-shay. Maybe it’s one of those British vs. French pronunciation things. Chef D’Equipe – sheff day-keep Courbette = Cor-bet Passier = Pass-ee-ay Puissance = pwee-sonce Chincoteague = shin-ka-tig Selle Francais = Sell Fron-say
Yet another great commercial from Budweiser. This video makes me think of Freedom, my TB. Freedom was always my spare horse . . . the horse that I thought would eventually become my hunt horse. I had him in training and was slowly asking him to do more. When Kroni died this fall, he got moved up to the “first string” over night. Luckily, like Hank, he was ready!
This picture shows how a bent elbow enables a soft connection to the horse's mouth.
One of the secrets to maintaining an elastic connection with your horse’s mouth is to ride with a soft, bent elbow. When you straighten your arms and brace you are unable to follow the movement of the horse’s mouth so you are holding rather than supporting. You also lose the benefit of your body’s core.
I know one of my bad habits is to straighten my arms and drop my hands. Even worse, I don’t even know when I do it! However, I got a tip last weekend from Ellen O’Brien, the director of CANTER New England. Here’s an exercise you can do on the ground to increase your body awareness. I’ve been doing it for a couple of minutes a day and I can certainly feel the difference.
Hold a plate in each hand with a few marbles on it. If you can walk around the house and keep the marbles balanced, then your elbows are bent correctly.
Put a few marbles on two small plates. Hold one plate in each hand and walk around the house (put your thumb on top of the plate, like you were holding reins). To keep the marbles on the plate you need to keep your elbows bent and soft; just how you need to hold your arms when you’re riding. If you drop a hand, you get immediate feedback!
Here’s another way to visualize the correct position: imagine you have 10lb weights hanging off your elbows. The idea being that your elbows should have a bend in them and act as a well oiled hinge and should never be braced. If you have a “weight” hanging off the elbow it makes it much hard for you to straighten your arm and lock your elbow.
You can see how the rider's hand position supports his horse.
To illustrate how much more effectively you can use your core with a bent elbow, try this exercise with another person: Hold a lead line with your arm locked straight out and leaning slightly back. Pull the line with your arm like this, while your friend pulls you back. Most of the time you will end up off balance and be pulled forward. Now stand in the horseback riding stance, with your knees bent, everything aligned, hands out with limber elbows and pull and release. This allows you to feel how a balanced position and soft elbow lets you follow your movement without being thrown off balance.
While many people associate the bent elbow with dressage, a soft elbow and a steady hand also enable you to achieve a good jumping release. So regardless of your discipline, concentrating on your elbows will help!
Add ICE in front of the names you would want paramedics to call if you were injured or ill.
These days most of us carry our mobile phones with us all the time, even when we ride. Our most important numbers are stored in its memory but nobody, other than ourselves and maybe our close friends, knows which of these numbers belong to people who should be contacted if we were involved in an accident or taken ill. Yes, there are hundreds of numbers stored but which one is the contact person in case of an emergency? Hence this ‘I-C-E’ (In Case of Emergency) Campaign.
The concept of ‘ICE’ is catching on quickly. It is a method of contact during emergency situations. All you need to do is store the number of a contact person or persons who should be contacted during emergency under the name ‘ICE’ ( In Case Of Emergency). It’s simple: just put the acronym ICE in front of the name(s) of who emergency personnel should call. For more than one contact name simply enter ICE1, ICE2 and ICE3 etc.
The idea was thought up by a British paramedic who found that when he went to the scenes of accidents, there were always mobile phones with patients, but they didn’t know which number to call. He therefore thought that it would be a good idea if there was a nationally recognized name for this purpose. In an emergency situation, Emergency Service personnel and hospital Staff would be able to quickly contact the right person by simply dialing the number you have stored as ‘ICE.’
Like many great ideas, this is a simple one to execute and it could make a huge difference. Program your cell phone with ICE numbers today.
As I mentioned yesterday, when I received the Butterfly Award, part of my responsibility was to choose at least one new recipient.
I read several really cool horse blogs on a regular basis, but they’ve all received numerous awards. I decided to find at least one blog that deserved more recognition and which had not already been showered with accolades. I came up with three:
These blogs focus on the retraining of three retired racehorses owned by CANTER Mid Atlantic who are now in training in foster homes.
In an effort to chronicle the ups and downs of Thoroughbred Retraining, we have several people who have volunteered to write about their day-to-day experience with individual horses. This will provide a wonderful learning opportunity for the Thoroughbred-buying public, as well as being an amazing opportunity for our horses. You will read about the good, the great, the bad, and the ugly. Our hope is to bring each horse from the racetrack to recognized competition.
Fostering an OTTB is a wonderful experience. If you have an empty stall in your barn and are near one of the CANTER affiliates, you should consider it seriously! Every horse that comes into a CANTER program is there because it needs that extra help to transition to a non-racing career. Some are purchased by CANTER because they are at risk; others were donated by caring owners or trainers. These three horses have landed in great situations because they will have the groundwork instilled in them that will make them far more attractive to the buyer/adopter who might not want a horse that only knows how to gallop and stop!
CANTER is an amazing organization, made even more so by the fact that it is run completely by volunteers. This means that all the money that is donated goes directly to help the horses. With so many rescue scams out there soliciting money, it is good to know that you can contribute to an organization that truly makes a difference and does it completely above board.
I’ve been following the retraining of Dixie Rumble with special interest. My first OTTB was a son of Dixieland Brass (Dixie Rumble’s grand sire) and I have a fondness for the line. My gelding had the absolute best temperament ever but was kept from being competitive (both as a race horse and a competition horse) by a stifle problem. Still, I was able to place him in a non-competition home where his personality was an asset and his stifle could hold up to the job.
Later, I fostered a TB for CANTER New England (of course I adopted him!) and would happily do so again. In the meantime, everyone should be aware of the efforts that CANTER undertakes to help retiring racehorses find their next job. These blogs do an excellent job of chronicling the retraining experience. These foster “moms” and their equine “children” are very cool indeed.
