Just a quick note to say that photos from the May Dressage Schooling Show are on-line.  We’ve uploaded the photos from the full day, including shots of every single rider.  They’re on our photos page.

-Michael

Clever Marketing

When you spend time walking around an event like the Equine Affaire you get to see up close and personal how the marketing wheels in the horse industry are turning.

I suppose it didn’t take a marketing genius to come up with this one: a pink manure spreader.    The facts are pretty clear.  Women are the vast majority of riders in this country.  Horses leave behind a pile of manure every day.  Put these two together and ta-DA– you’ve got yourself a pink manure spreader.

I’ve never seen a pink manure spreader before but hey- why not?  Do they have to be red?   If women are going to be using them pink seems like a perfectly good color.

I did notice that it was the little manure spreader that was pink.  The bigger one was still red.  It’s an interesting marketing gamble.  I wonder how many the Mill Creek Manufacturing Company will sell?

-Hollie McNeil, Owner/Trainer:Riding Right Farm, Author:40 Fundamentals of English Riding

Hair Everywhere

Yup, it’s that time of year when hair is everywhere.  I wonder sometimes how much horse hair I’ve ingested over the years.  Think about it.  Six to seven days a week I’m in the presence of horses and this time of year their shedding coats look something akin to a snow flurry. That hair is truly everywhere.  It’s in my hair, on my face, in my eyes, and always going in my mouth (can be somewhat disgusting really).

All this hair makes you rethink what you’re going to wear to the barn.  If you’ve got a fleece jacket or vest you can pretty much count on being a furry mess before you leave the barn.  Fleece can act like a magnet to loose horse hair.  Sweaters aren’t too much better.  It was chilly yesterday morning so I put on one of my favorite wool sweaters I picked up in New Zealand years ago.  By the time I made a mad dash to the grocery store yesterday (before my family starved) there was no doubt what I had been doing all day.  Standing in line as my items were being scanned I looked down at my blue sweater.  Umm- it looked a little more white than blue.  Good thing I don’t embarrass easily because frankly I was a mess.  It looked like I took half the hair in the barn with me.

Its a common misconception that horses shed based on heat.  Shedding is more aligned with  minutes of day light hours and how much sun the horse is taking in.  Mother Nature has her own way of dealing with building up the winter coat in the fall and taking off the winter coat in spring.  Soon enough all the horses’ coats will be ready for summer and we’ll still be cleaning up the hairy debris left behind on everything from saddle pads to girths, blankets and our clothing.

-Hollie McNeil, Owner/Trainer:Riding Right Farm, Author:40 Fundamentals of English Riding

Cool Quadrille

For Fun Friday this week, a quadrille (four horses doing a synchronized dressage performance) with a bit of a twist.  This quadrille was performed at the Canadian Royal Fair in Toronto in November.  The twist is that the lights in the arena were turned off and lights on the horses were turned on.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hollie McNeil, Author:40 Fundamentals of English Riding, Owner/Trainer:Riding Right Farm

February Morning

Just a quiet look at the farm in February (not your normal February, mind you).

Enjoy our Fun Friday:

Click here to view the embedded video.

-Hollie McNeil, Author:40 Fundamentals of English Riding, Owner/Trainer:Riding Right Farm