Just Who Is Out of Control

I hate to say it, but I’ve been telling you about this scenario for a long time now. The too much information age is going to come back and bite us. While I agree that sharing the knowledge of our professions is a way to promote growth in our industry, it may lead to our demise. Think about this for a minute. The performance horse industry has gone from a tightly woven group of horsemen who had many secrets, to lets tell everyone about this. Because it is the American way, several entrepreneurial types started spreading the word of “how to” through clinics, magazines, radio, and television. This did cause more people to be aware of the equine industry and therefore grew the horse owning public. What a boon it was to the industry. Horse trainers, farriers, veterinarians, feed store owners, equine equipment manufacturers, and even saddle makers could now make a better living than they ever had before. The perfect scenario, right? I’ll let you decide.

While we have all been “booming” for the last several years we haven’t been paying enough attention to those organizations that will try and bring us down. I’m telling you that we had better get a handle on this. Just remember that a few years ago nearly the entire logging industry in Oregon was destroyed because of a few radical tree huggers and an owl that everyone laughed at. In Arizona, as well as other western states, how many cattle ranchers have been pushed out of business because the radical environmentalists found a rare turtle or lizard on their ranch? We can no longer sit home and say “Oh, that will never happen.” As evidenced over the last few years one bad incident can be exploited to a magnitude that will affect an entire industry. Remember, when you are broadcasting your industry across the airwaves many people will watch and form an opinion only with the information they have in front of them. The other thing is that many of the viewing audience can only understand part of the information they are getting because they have no background within the industry itself. Another downside to the information age is the amount of bad information that is provided. Inexperienced people tend to swallow up the bad information as well as the good. How they process the bad information is what may hurt our industry.

A number of years ago I had a horseshoeing client that trained hunter jumper horses. She was an average trainer with average horses, but had a great location. Of course the first three most important aspects of starting a business is location, location, and location. Any good trainer in this location would have made an above average living, while this particular lady trainer was able to get by.  The hole that I could see in her progam was that she never paid attention to detail. For instance, one day I showed up at her barn and was getting ready to shoe her favorite horse, Mr. Bonheur. She came up to me and said she wanted to change Mr. Bonheur’s shoeing as she had just read about her medal winning hero’s horse in a “Practical Horsemen” article. According to the article the hero’s horse started to perform much better when they changed a few things with the horse’s shoeing. Of course the average lady trainer wanted to make those very same changes to Mr. Bonheur’s shoeing job so she could win a prize. However, I knew if I did what she asked her horse would probably go worse than he already was. After a couple attempts of trying to explain this to her to no avail, I relented and said I’d do what she asked. Of course, I told a lie to help Mr. Bonheur.  Yes, I told her I shod him the way she asked. When I arrived for the next shoeing of Mr. Bonheur the average lady trainer told me how wonderful Mr. Bonheur was going and thanked me for changing the shoeing. Naturally I said you are welcome, but she never realized that I never changed one thing. This is just an example of how gullible the inexperienced public is when they see something in print or on the television.

Now, these radical groups have many very conniving methods to sway public support in their direction no matter how ludicrous the cause. So my suggestion on this, is for equine associations to be proactive in cleaning up their own messes before you give fodder to these radical organizations. I just heard that the National Cutting Horse Association has taken action which prohibits injections on the show grounds. Another part of this is that they will have cameras in the warm up pens at their shows. If you are a NCHA member you may want to double check this information. With big brother watching over your shoulder you may want to be active in the politics of your association. Finally, I have it from a good source that now there is a group within the White House that is going to push legal rights for animals. As horsemen we all have a moral obligation to do the right thing for our charges, but who wants Washington dictating what that might be? Since when are there any morals in Washington?