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  1. Consumer Education Is Their Goal At ratemyhorsepro.com—But?

    By John Strassburger, February 21, 2012

    I had a lengthy chat a few weeks with Debbie Hanson, creator of ratemyhorsepro.com, because I was working on a commentary about the equestrian ratings website for the March issue of the Horse Journal, the issue that’s out now. Debbie explained to me why she established the slick website a year ago, with the goal of consumer education for horse owners, and I expressed to her my concerns, as both a professional horseman and as a journalist.

    Many of the details of our conversation simply couldn’t fit on the single page allotted for my Horse Journal commentary, so I’m going to talk more about ratemyhorsepro.com—what it, or future similar sites, could mean to horse professionals and equine legal issues—in this week’s blog.

    I’ll begin by saying that I think their “Equine Court” section is the best part of the site. Debbie told me that she wanted to provide horse people with a single place to go to read legal decisions from around the country involving horses, and it’s a fabulous resource. I used it two weeks ago to write my Feb. 7 blog “Judge’s Ruling In Eventing Lawsuit Affirms Personal Responsibility.”

    You might think, because of this section, that Debbie is a lawyer, but she’s not. She told me that she has a “varied background” and has mostly worked in film and TV (but not as an actress). She does have first-hand equine legal experience, though, because she and her riding daughter were reprehensively defrauded by two “trainers,” whom she then pursued legally for years. The case climaxed in 2006 with the “trainers’” imprisonment.

    “I’ve become a voice for the horse industry. I want to help protect horses, horse owners and horse professionals. And one of the things I’ve found is lack of knowledge by owners and trainers of the legal system,” she told me.

    “The horse industry runs differently than any other, and it shouldn’t have to fall under another category,” but there simply are few legal precedents for equine issues under standard contract law, she said. Equine cases usually don’t fall easily under precedents for livestock or dealings between, say, lawyers or building contractors and consumers.

    “That’s how I got involved—I started lobbying for horse owners and pros, to protect both sides. You go before a judge, and the case often doesn’t make sense to him or her, and they have to find a place to put it in the state’s statutes. There should be something that addresses that. I’m fighting for those types of things,” Debbie said.

    Debbie insisted, “One of our goals is educating consumers and facilitating the promotion of horse professionals who conduct business with integrity.”

    But I have very serious concerns about any Internet rating system like this for, really, any type of professional. And my concern includes Angie’s List and Yelp. The ratings can be so easily skewed by one person who didn’t get along with a professional, because of personality, who then embarks on a vendetta. While Debbie declined to tell me exactly how many professionals have profiles on ratemyhorsepro.com, she later told me that it was “a few thousand.” When I looked at the section for trainers in Northern California, I found a relatively small sample of several dozen. And when I looked at the profiles of two colleagues I know well, a single person had rated each extremely negatively. In both cases, the only rating for each was a single, very negative rating, and the comments didn’t describe the professionals I know.

    Debbie assured me that their system prevents individuals from “stacking” negative ratings against one pro—one person repeatedly filling out the survey. “It’s all built and designed around a revolutionary new tracking technology to eliminate ratings stacking and competitor espionage,” she said.

    Consumers have to fill out an identification form and pay $5 to rate a pro or barn, and many people object to paying. But Debbie told me that it’s not an identity check—it doesn’t certify that you’re the person you claim to be or make any other evaluation of you. It just tracks how you use the site, and it won’t let one person rate a pro multiple times or let pros rate other pros.

    I asked Debbie what a professional, like my colleagues, could do if someone gave them a horrible review that they considered erroneous or unfounded or was the result of a personal conflict that had little or anything to do with horses.  What especially struck me was that there was no phone number listed on the website—no way to pick up the phone and get someone to help you. She couldn’t explain the lack of phone number, but she said that if you filled out the “Contact Us” page, someone would respond quickly, “usually within 24 hours.”

    Debbie added that they offer professionals a “challenge review.” She said that if you contact them about a review, “We will see what issues you have with a particular rating, and if it’s unfairly done we will see what we can do to help you, especially if it’s a legal case. We take it on a case by case basis.”

    I then told her that I thought the tone of ratemyhorsepro.com was anti-professional, that the attitude seemed to be that we were all crooks and they were trying to stop us. For instance, I found no mention of the “challenge review” on the site.

    “We don’t think we are anti-professional. That was not the concept of ratemyhorsepro.com,” Debbie said. “I don’t personally think that is how it’s set up. We’ve put a lot of time into the ratings and the questions. It was very thought out. We’re always open to suggestions as to how we can help promote the good folks of the industry.”

    She added, “Our goal is to be more pro-professional, to really promote the good folks in the industry, to give them some exposure.”

    I would like to hope that this site can accomplish that goal, but I’m dubious about any online system based on people rating other people’s abilities or conduct, especially in the extremely passionate world of horses.

     

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  2. Farewell, Capt. Jack Fritz

    By John Strassburger, February 14, 2012

    Jack Fritz | USEF Photo

    The death of Capt. Jack Fritz, last Thursday, Feb. 9, brought back of flood of memories for me. Even though Capt. Fritz had been quite ill for the last couple of years, no longer able to arrange everybody and everything into the kind of order he envisioned, it’s still hard to imagine our horse sports without him.

    Our horse world would have been much different today, certainly less structured and less reliable, if not for all he did for the USEA, USDF, USEF, USET, USPC, IHSA and more. While I can remember him telling me sternly in an interview almost 30 years ago that he didn’t found or create any of the organizations that administer our sport, he was either present at their founding meeting or joined in soon afterward to shape their development.

    Capt. Fritz was chairman at the founding meeting of the U.S. Dressage Federation in 1973 and would serve on numerous committees (often as chairman) for the next 30-plus years. He took part in the founding meeting of the U.S. Eventing Association at the 1959 Pan Am Games and did so much more for the next 45 years. The organization that’s now the U.S. Equestrian Federation was founded five years before Capt. Fritz was born, but in the second half of the 20th century he was one of its busiest licensed officials (and committee members), serving as a judge and technical delegate for both dressage and eventing.

    As a history professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey, Capt. Fritz advised student Bob Cacchione in the founding of the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association in 1967, and he continued to counsel Cacchione about the IHSA almost until his death. He was a co-creator of the North American Young Riders Championships in 1981, and I doubt he missed one of them until the last few years.

    Two years after the U.S. Pony Clubs were founded in 1954, Capt. Fritz became a leader of the organization, and he, more than anyone else, shaped its educational and competitive programs for the next 30 years. Pony Club was how I first met him—in 1978 he judged my dressage tests at the regional rally and then at the national rally, and then he was the head examiner at my H-A rating. (He, deservedly, failed me.) Capt. Fritz was the USPC president in 1983-’84 (when I was on the Board of Governors) and then chairman of its Advisory Council for the next six years.

    But it was the U.S. Equestrian Team that for more than four decades held the biggest Fritz imprint. He was the vice president for administration from 1974 to 1989 and the secretary from the late ‘70s until 1999. He kept scrupulous minutes, and years of listening to him at meetings have long caused me to mimic him whenever I’ve chaired a meeting. I always close the meeting with Capt. Fritz’ motion for adjournment: “There being no more business to come before the committee, a motion was made and duly seconded and voted upon, and the meeting was adjourned.”

    All these accomplishments are why, 12 years ago, when I was editor of The Chronicle of the Horse, we named Capt. Fritz one of our 50 Most Influential People of the 20th Century in our Turn of the Century Issue.

    At any meeting, of any kind, Capt. Fritz was the guy who knew all the rules of any competition or all the bylaws of any organization, and it was only partly because he’d written most of them. Even the ones he hadn’t written, he’d read and understood, unlike the rest of us.

    Capt. Fritz wasn’t much for looking back. He was always looking down the road, driven by his philosophy of “this is how we should make this better.” He also possessed an amazingly quick, sharp and focused intellect, and he would often remind everyone of it, looking up from some document or book he was reading or editing to bring a wandering conversation back into line.

    His mental capacity was one of the many things three friends of mine recalled when I asked them for their memories of Capt. Fritz: Denny Emerson, the former international event rider who’s one of the best teachers in the world, because of his own sharp mind; Ben Duke, who grew up near the USET headquarters in Gladstone, N.J., and played his own key role in shaping the USPC’s educational programs; and Katie Lindsay, an event organizer and official for longer than she’d like me to recall.

    Denny, who was also the USET vice president for eventing when Capt. Fritz was there, steered me to what he’d written in a blog on his book’s website (http://howgoodridersgetgood.wordpress.com/). He recalled, “Jack wasn’t ‘easy,’ and he was so toweringly intelligent that he suffered fools (and teenagers) only marginally, but, as the current saying goes, Jack ‘always had your back.’

    Denny added,  “I’ve sat through hundreds of meetings with Jack. Sometimes he was patient, sometimes irascible, but always, always, he was there. Jack could be fussy, opinionated, professorial, even pedantic, but he was usually right.”

    Recalled Ben, “My favorite story is from when Jack was president of USPC and I was a young, very inexperienced and very new member of the Board of Governors.  We were in a meeting of the governors, and there was something (I’ve long since forgotten what) about which I was very passionate and felt Pony Club should make some substantial change in order to accommodate my passion.  Jack was up at the head table, and he set his eyes on me as though they were the barrels of two high-caliber cannons.  Then, one by one, he shot those cannons right at me, explaining, none too gently I might add, that my place as a young and very new Governor was to listen, to absorb, and to think—not to change Pony Club policy.  His aim was perfect, and I did everything but fall right out of my chair.

    “And, I now know just how right he was.  I have served on many boards since then, and I’ve always remembered Jack’s wonderful (albeit abrupt and ruthless) lesson about board service and what makes an effective board member. Jack was a real teacher, and I always have appreciated the fact that he quickly and very effectively ‘put me in m place’ at that Board of Governors meeting.”

    Katie recalled working with Capt. Fritz when she first organized the three-discipline competition that became the North American Young Riders Championships, back in 1981. She remembered, “The first year the competition was run under the auspices of the FEI, Jack became my guide. Not only did he clarify the often-cumbersome rules to me in plain, non-Swiss English, but he also gently guided me through the potential political pitfalls and obstacles that could possibly impede our progress. I was in awe of his mind then and always shall be.

    “Jack was not always easy, however,” Katie continued. “His capacity to tolerate fools was not one of his long suits, and he was often impatient. He could, however, sum up a tedious committee rambling in about six ell-chosen words.

    “Sadly, he did not go gently into the night. Life had become a struggle. Rest in peace, my friend. You shall be missed,” Katie beautifully added.

    But, I don’t think that Capt. Fritz wouldn’t want us to waste time grieving his departure. He’d want us, instead, to be improving something, moving forward, going somewhere.

    Meanwhile, up in heaven, I’ll bet he’s rounding up his former cohorts Jack Le Goff, Neil Ayer, Col. Donald Thackeray and Lowell Boomer (and others too), and they’re going to teach the angels how to fly better so they can compete in a series of angel three-day events. And he’ll tell them exactly what he thinks of their performance when he judges their dressage tests. Those angels better start practicing now.

     

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  3. Judge’s Ruling In Eventing Lawsuit Affirms Personal Responsibility

    By John Strassburger, February 7, 2012

    Last week, a judge in California issued a summary judgment in favor of eventing trainer Kristi Nunnink in a lawsuit brought against her by Karan Eriksson, following the death of her daughter, Mia, in November 2006. Mrs. Eriksson charged Nunnink with recklessness and negligence after Mia fell on the cross-country course and died at the Galway Downs International Three-Day Event.

    horsejumping

    Riders and trainers are ultimately responsible for their horses in competition.

    Mrs. Eriksson also filed lawsuits against the event, the course designer and other officials, and the USEF and USEA after the fall, but the court had previously found no responsibility on their part and had dismissed these suits in a similar summary judgment.

    I hope this decision brings closure to everyone in this extremely sad and difficult experience.

    Here are a few paragraphs from the judge’s decision [http://www.ratemyhorsepro.com/equine-court/civil-matters/karan-eriksson-et-al-plaintiffs-vs-del-mar-eventing-inc-et-al-defendants.aspx]:

    “Equestrian competition, especially involving participation by riders experienced with their horses of choice and such competition courses, is a vigorous sports event. There is no evidence that KRISTI NUNNINK evinced even simple negligence, much less the ‘recklessness’ or ‘direct, willful and wanton negligence’ that the Court of Appeal determined would have to be shown to take this case out of the ambit of the primary and express assumption of the risk doctrines, both of which operate to negate the duty element in negligence and bar lawsuits like this.

    “Decedent [Mia Eriksson] exercised her own judgment in jumping course fences that she fully viewed beforehand, primarily assuming the risk of that vigorous and dangerous sport, especially after she was eliminated and required to exit the course. Decedent’s mother, on behalf of the minor decedent, expressly waived any right to recover for any accident, such as the instant one, expressly assuming the risks thereof.”

    “The conditions that plaintiffs [Erikssons] blame for decedent’s death were as open and obvious as they could be, especially to an experienced competitive rider, and decedent actually walked that same course, and warmed up on the same horse, before the competition. NUNNINK was merely the trainer, not the event sponsor, installer, supervisor, qualifier, inspector, designer, or maintainer, and so had no duty regarding the course conditions. There is and can be no evidence that KRISTI NUNNINK breached some duty regarding her training of the decedent, legally causing decedent’s demise.”

    This, I think, is an important legal opinion for eventing and, really, for all horse sports. It affirms the importance of personal responsibility when training and competing horses.

    The judge notes that any type of riding is a risk sport, but especially eventing because of the challenges of the cross-country phase, and his words are a reminder that we must be as fully prepared was we can be for competition at any level. As riders and owners, we must fully accept our responsibility to our horses, to our sport and to ourselves and our families. We must do everything we can to prepare ourselves and our horses for the challenges presented to us by the competition, especially on cross-country.

    The judge also noted that Mia continued on course after she’d had the maximum number of four refusals, ignoring the FEI and USEF rule eliminating her from competition. Knowing and accepting the sport’s rules is a matter of personal responsibility.

    What does this decision mean to trainers?

    For one thing, I think it demonstrates the importance of signing—or not signing—the entry form. To me it affirms that we trainers must carefully consider whether a horse is in our care, custody and control. Mia’s horse, Choreography, was not in Kristi’s barn; he was kept at the Eriksson’s training stable several miles away. While Kristi gave me lessons, she did not oversee his daily care, exercise or training, and so she did not sign the entry form. Her mother, Karan Eriksson, did, and the judge found this a key point, especially since Mia was a minor. He considered Karan Eriksson’s signature as primary evidence of parental consent for her to be competing in that event.

    When I lived in Virginia and competed as an amateur, before we moved to California to establish our training stable, I trained with advanced rider Sharon White, shipping my horse to her farm weekly or twice weekly for lessons.  So I signed my entry forms as trainer, because my horse or horses were not in her care or control. I fed, medicated and exercised the horses, and if something bad happened (for instance, a fall or perhaps a positive drug test) I didn’t want her to be held responsible, because I was.

    This case, and others, is why the USEA entry form has signature lines for “trainer” and for “coach,” a coach being a person from whom the rider takes instruction but is not responsible for the horse.

    Today, at our Phoenix Farm, we do not sign entry forms as the trainers of horses who are not in our barn—because we are not fully responsible for their preparation. So far, it’s never been an issue, and after this judgment it’s a practice we will vigilantly continue.

    The judge also found for the limits of a trainer as one person. He noted that Kristi is not a veterinarian, was not the course designer, and that she had other training and riding commitments at the event. She could not magically leap up and stop Mia on course, nor did she have a responsibility to do so. That responsibility rests with the rider.

    To me, the most important message in this opinion is that we are responsible for ourselves whenever we compete. It says that, while we certainly should seek the direction and advice of trainers and coaches, and that event organizers and officials should never relax their incredible diligence to our and our horses’ safety, the assumption of risk ultimately falls upon our shoulders, as riders and as horseman.

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  4. A Few Tips For Selling Horses

    By John Strassburger, January 31, 2012
    trotting horse

    Have the horse you have for sale fit and ready to be tried by a buyer.

    Giving anyone “a few tips for selling a horse is a challenging task, and evaluating a horse you’re considering buying is usually time-consuming and fraught with disappointment. And our country’s current economic malaise doesn’t make either task –selling a horse or buying one – any easier, because horses in the same price range can have a very wide range of ability, soundness and training or competitive experience.

    Last weekend, my wife, Heather, and I accompanied two students who were each looking to buy a new horse. We looked at seven horses over three days, at three different stables in the San Francisco Bay area. These horses were priced from $1,000 to $7,500, the range at which we find the majority of horses offered these days. And two were lame behind, one clearly had a physical problem in her back or withers that was making her practically hysterical, and one was so green and poorly started it could do nothing but wander around a round pen.

    But three of them were lovely horses. One student has already bought one, and the other student is debating the merits of the other two. We’re planning on taking her to ride both horses again.

    Recalling this weekend’s horse-shopping experience (and others in the past), I have a few tips to offer any readers who are trying to sell (or thinking about trying to sell) a horse.

    First and foremost, the horse should be sound and in reasonable working condition, enough that he can stand 45 or 60 minutes of work while the potential buyer tries him. There’s no better way to guarantee that a potential buyer will drive away unhappy than to bring out a lame horse. You probably won’t find someone who’ll buy a lame horse, so don’t waste their time and yours.

    To be fair, the seller had warned us that one horse (whose price was nearly free) had what she considered a “bridle lameness” (an unsoundness caused by his owner’s riding), so we were expecting to see a problem. But the gelding was really lame, and he was understandably ornery about it. We didn’t even try the other lame horse, a lovely Thoroughbred who’d raced dozens of times until a few months ago, because he’d obviously smashed his right hip into the starting gate and was uneven just walking around the field.

    Second, the horse should be going reasonably well under saddle, unless he or she is an unstarted young horse. The horse shouldn’t buck, rear, slam on the brakes or bolt when someone asks for a walk-trot or a trot-canter transition or jumps over a crossrail. When this happens, it’s especially annoying if the seller has assured me, “Oh, he’s quiet and easy to ride.” In my experience, horses that react this way either have a physical problem (usually in the neck, shoulder, back or hip) or they’ve gotten away with doing whatever they want with a previous rider and object to being told what to do. Either way, I’ve not come to train or fix your horse, and I’m going to drive away annoyed, either because you’ve lied to me or because I’m not going to suggest that our student to take on someone else’s problem.

    Those are my two biggest pieces of advice.  But tip No. 3 is to have the horse ready for the potential buyer to see and to ride when they arrive. Have the horse waiting in a stall or a nearby paddock. Don’t make them trek to the back 40 or make them wait 15 minutes while you retrieve him from there. That probably means that the buyer will have 15 minutes fewer to evaluate your horse, because they’re annoyed or because they have somewhere else to go—perhaps another horse or two to see.

    And when they arrive, your horse should be ready to be seen. He should be groomed as if he’s going to compete. That doesn’t mean he has to be braided (although some sales barns do braid their sales horses to be shown), but he should be spotlessly clean, trimmed and, preferably, shed out or body clipped. He shouldn’t look like a horse who just came down from the Mongolian steppes.

    The saying goes, “You only get one chance to make a first impression,” and it’s very true when selling a horse. If a potential buyer’s first impression is that your horse is poorly cared for and that you haven’t a clue what you’re doing, they’ll look at your horse with a jaundiced eye, an eye that’s looking for holes and problems.

    If, though, their first impression is of a well-cared-for horse, they’ll at least start to look at him as a good horse they’d like to have.

    The bottom line is: If you really want to sell your horse, you need to have him prepared to show off. If he’s as ready for sale as if he’s going to a show, you’re chances are much better than if you just ignore him (and his problems) and hope a sucker comes along.

    You’ve probably heard the saying, “What’s a horse worth? What somebody will pay for him.” Well, it’s an even truer saying today.

     

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  5. Training Young Horses In Eventing

    By John Strassburger, January 24, 2012
    Phoenix Torchwood

    Phoenix Torchwood, shown here early in his training, has started competing.

    Training young horses to compete in eventing is the core of what I do at our Phoenix Farm, and last week I took the three members of our current roster of young horses to their first competition ever. It was the January schooling combined test and cross-country school at Twin Rivers Ranch in Paso Robles, Calif., a competition that’s been the starting point of our eventing season for the last five years.

    This Twin Rivers schooling event suits our program at Phoenix Farm beautifully, because the timing allows us to introduce young horses to the sport or to introduce them to the next level. It’s also a really good event for our students to get in some great competitive practice in a relaxed atmosphere.

     The two 4-year-olds I took to Twin Rivers were Ianto (Phoenix Torchwood), a Thoroughbred-cross gelding whom we bred, and Boogie (Bravo’s First Class), an Oldenburg stallion owned by our farm manager, Roxanne Rainwater. We started both of them under saddle, and I’ve been pointing them toward this debut since last fall. I have to admit, though, that about a month ago I felt like a middle-school drama teacher trying to get her students ready for the school play. It just seemed like an impossible challenge as I gave them lessons in flatwork, jumping and going across the country. But, like that drama teacher, I reminded myself that I’d done this many times before and that the key was to do it the same way I’d eat an elephant—one bite at a time.

    I’m very pleased to say that both Ianto and Boogie went eagerly and confidently, and that they learned a great deal. In fact, we feel with Boogie that we basically brought home a different horse.

    Boogie, who is a naturally powerful and enthusiastic jumper, thought the cross-country school, which we did on Saturday, was the most fun thing he’d ever done. He eagerly jumped the fences, went right in the water (and I’d never ridden him into or through any kind of water—not even a stream—before), hopped right over the ditch, and just attacked the up banks. And then he turned around and carefully hopped down the banks. I could feel him think, “Hmm, I don’t think I want to fly off this!”

    And then, on Sunday, Boogie warmed up for both dressage and show jumping like a gentleman, never spooked in the dressage ring, and eagerly and happily jumped two show jumping courses. We were thrilled, and I’m now pointing him toward his first USEA-recognized event, at Ram Tap next month.

    Ianto is much less physically mature than Boogie, and since he’s 7 or 8 inches taller than Boogie, he’s still developing the strength and coordination to get his giant-sized body to do all the things I’m teaching him to do. Ianto is kind of like a high school sophomore who suddenly grew to 6’4” and has become the starting center on the basketball team.

    Still, Ianto just kept, as I like to say, “going to the jumps.” He kept saying, “OK, where’s the next one?” He too jumped everything the first time I asked him on the cross-country course, was relaxed and obedient in the dressage (if a bit confused by the little ring), and then willingly jumped the two show jumping courses. Ianto is going to be a willing and fun partner for a junior or adult amateur rider.

    My belief that Boogie and Ianto had each grown up quite a bit was substantiated when I jumped them for the first time after the event, exactly a week later, on a windy, rainy morning. I’d set up a gymnastic line of four fences, with guide rails between the jumps, a much more complicated and demanding exercise than they’d seen before, and they each worked very hard to figure out the exercise as we added more jumps. Neither horse refused or ran out at any time, and it was humorous to see how pleased with themselves but mentally tired they were afterward. They’d really used their brains and learned more about moving their legs and feet.

    Last year Twin Rivers was the competitive debut for another of our homebreds, Phoenix Amani, who’s now 5. After that start, she completed two beginner novice and two novice events, and since I’m planning to move Amani up to training level this spring, Twin Rivers was her introduction to that new level. She schooled very eagerly over the cross-country course, but I think she loved that part a bit too much! At Twin Rivers, the dressage and show jumping rings overlook the cross-country course, and so on Sunday her only “fault” was that she kept looking out at the cross-country jumps. I could feel her thinking, “I’d sure rather do that again, instead of going around the ring!”

    I don’t mind having that problem to deal with!

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