Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Oh Angie, I would have been happy to have you join me bringing down the
wrath of the distance rider upon some very ignorant barn help recently.
These poor horses at this barn not only spend the majority of their days in
a stall (with a concrete floor), when the barn help "turns them out" in an
arena, they then harrass them with lunge whips! I happened to show up
immediately following such an episode to find heaving, sweating horses tied
to posts with -- surprize, surprize -- cramping muscles. A friend who knows
TTouch and massage was with me and between the two of us we were able to
walk out the horses, cool them down properly and work out any cramping, but
I'm still amazed that there weren't any severe problems.

I located the guilty parties and gave them a tongue-lashing. As most of them
were teenagers, I told them to look up tying-up syndrome on the web and read
everything they could find on the subject if they truly cared about horses.
I also lectured them on the basics of warming up and cooling down to avoid
cramping and muscle damage. And I talked to the barn owner about the
situation. He agreed with me and offered a teaching job to me on the spot.
:-))) I accepted because I thought it was an opportunity to make a
difference. 

I taught for 7 weeks and couldn't continue because something horrible
happened weekly. No amount of my alarm was going to change things. And I
hated for my beginning students to think that this is the way horses should
live.

Horses can be amazingly resilient creatures. :-(((

Deanna


Angie wrote:
I am always amazed to see people "warm their horse up" on a lunge line.
Of course, nobody walks them, they just start trotting.  Bringing a horse
right out of a stall and lunging it is just asking for a tie up. Amazing
it doesn't happen more often, but it's easy enough to see why they do
it...their mentors do. I'm so obsessive on the 15 minute walk first that
when I've had a fit horse who had to be locked up for awhile I have hand
walked them 15 minutes before letting them hit the field where I knew
they'd have a running fit.

Angie

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One of the great joys of being a pompous idiot is that you can do and think
whatever you want. 
~  Homer Safferwiffle

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