Good Morning Eventing Nation, and welcome to Friday! I don’t know about you, but my plans for tonight are centered mainly on going to bed around 7:30 pm, it’s been a long week to say the least. As horse people, we have to be creative about the ways we catch up on lost sleep because the barn starts at the same time every morning, and sleeping in is only an option on the one coveted day off that comes around every week or two! Hopefully you have a slightly more exciting evening planned than myself for this Friday night, but since we still have roughly 10 hours until closing time at the office or barn, here are some links to start your Friday off right:
The first order of business are the events taking place this weekend. For some strange reason, there’s only two horse trials in total this weekend, compared to the six to eight there have been every weekend for the past month or so. South Farm is running in Ohio and starts tomorrow, and The Horse Park of New Jersey Horse Trial is running in, well, New Jersey.
In some sad news for the horse community (or mule community rather) the famous combined driving mule, John Henry, passed away yesterday. John Henry had a long tenure in the driving world going back to the late-’90’s and was hugely successful. Later in life, he took to fox hunting and spent many years enjoying the countryside and companionship to be had in the hunt field. With his great conformation, wonderful temperament, and success both in-and-out of the show ring, John Henry did much to change the perception that mules were simply work animals lacking the quality to be successful riding horses. His owner, Kathleen Conklin, said about his last few days,
“John Henry was diagnosed with a tumor the size of a football under his heart. He wasn’t feeling well at the Orleton show last weekend, by his last class on Sunday he stopped dead during the first trot and would only walk out of the ring. John Henry was at the equine clinic at Oakencroft from yesterday mid-day but by this afternoon, he was in kidney failure, had a collapsed lung, and lots of fluid around his heart and in his chest cavity even after the vet removed four gallons. There was no other choice but to put him down as he was in a great deal of distress.He was my equine of a lifetime and I’ll miss him for the rest of my life. Thank you all for your support of John Henry during his driving career. I think that single-handedly he showed everyone just how nice a mule could be.”
I know that the loss of John Henry will be felt by many in the driving community and horse enthusiasts at large. If you’d like to learn more about him and the legacy he left behind, click here.
The Australian horse community has been under a heavy strain for the past few days with a scare of a potential spread of the deadly Hendra virus. Last week, a horse was diagnosed with the virus and died several days later. The five horses stabled on the same property as the affected horse each underwent extensive testing to determine if any of them were carriers of the virus. Those results came in yesterday, and thankfully all were negative. Although a welcome relief, Biosecurity Queensland Chief Veterinary Officer Doctor Rick Symons said that while the results were promising, this is just the first of three rounds of testing. Completing three rounds of testing is expected to take 32 days, and until that requirement is fulfilled, the quarantines on both the facility in question and the local veterinary clinic will not be lifted.
In case you were wondering, the Hendra virus originates in the native bat populations of Australia. The very scary reality of this virus is that it is communicable from horses to humans. In fact, horses really end up as the go-between between the flying fox bat populations and humans. The disease is almost never transferred from bat to human. Dealing with viruses is scary business, let’s hope this Hendra scare blows over and doesn’t upset the horse community in a large way down under. [Horsetalk]
It’s just been announced that two of the major horse sale search engines, SportHorseFinder and WikiHorseWorld, will be merging into one joint site. Just as in any situation which finds two competitors of the same stature in the same field, at some point you have to make an analysis as to whether the competition is still worth more than the strength that comes from joining forces. In the case of these two search engine/sale sites, combining seemed to be the right decision. A new name hasn’t been decided upon yet, but they are going to have to work at it because WikiSportHorseFinderWorld just doesn’t quite have the right ring to it. Maybe I’m a little biased, but I think that no matter how hard this new site tries, Sport Horse Nation is still going to be where it’s at. [Newswire]
USEA Member Story #66: Katie Rein
Social media do’s and don’ts from social media specialist Patricia from Ecogold on HJU
Best of the Blogs: A good kind of news week with Jessica Pye
That’s all for now, Eventing Nation. Have a great Friday, I’ll see you tomorrow.
