---------------------------------------------------------------- New Rider Newsletter February 13th 2002 Issue 4 ---------------------------------------------------------------- In this Issue 1. February Competition 2. New Shopping Area 3. Coping with long box rest (4) - a personal story 4. Help us with Schools and Holidays 5. Unsubscribing details ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Introduction Welcome to the first newsletter of 2002, so we'd like to wish a Happy New Year to all our readers. I hope you had a good break at Christmas and for those in the UK are not currently too deep in mud or under water. We've been working away on the new shopping area which is explained more below. It's a completely new system, much clearer and better than the previous one. Also, don't forget to have a go at the February competition, it will close at the end of the month. More details further down. If you've lost a previous copy of the newsletter we will be adding them to an archive which you can find at http://www.newrider.com/Other_Bits/newsletter.html Mike Tomlin mike@newrider.com --- February Competition ---- This month we have gone for a quick and easy competition and the prize is 2 sets of reflective leg bands by V-Bandz. These new products use a combination of reflective and fluorescent material to ensure you and your horse are seen on the roads. Entry is easy and can be found at http://www.newrider.com/Competition/index.html The Christmas competion to win a portrait of your horse by Larri Davison (http://www.newrider.com/Features/index.html) was won by Debbie from the West Midlands. Hopefully we will be able to show the finished picture on the site. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ --- New Shopping Area --- As mentioned in the last newsletter we have been working on a new shop for the site. We have teamed up with Equimix Saddlery in Stourport to run the shop. They have over 25 years experience in the equine retail business and will be sending out the orders. We are still adding products to the shop but rather than wait untill it was finished we thought we'd unveil it early. You can see the shop at http://www.newrider.com/shop/erol.html We can accept all the usual credit cards as well as faxed and posted orders. We have all the Heather Moffett products with free postage to the UK and the seatbone saver is reduced £3.00 from the normal retail price. Also on offer is the new Nick Skelton book 'Only Falls and Horses' and specially for us, Nick will sign each copy. The range of V-Bandz reflective gear (featured in the competition) is also in the shop. With the high number of accidents I think these are a very wise purchase if you have to use the roads, and they are all reasonably priced. For this initial stage of the shop we have restricted the online ordering to UK destinations only. If you are ordering from outside the UK just drop us a line with what you'd like and we'll be happy to let you know the exact delivery charge. We'll be bringing full international ordering back online soon. Keep checking back as we'll be filling up the areas in the shop as fast as we can. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ --- Feature: Coping with Box Rest (4) --- Following on from the previous newsletter, Sarah concludes the story of Tango's box rest... Hmm, 10 weeks of box rest. That’s not fun at all if you are a ginger horse. Stewart and I decided that some serious Tango entertainment was called for. This involved giving her a thorough grooming morning and evening which she really enjoyed, so much so that she started to groom me. She may have been on box rest, but she was the shiniest horse in Berkshire! We started hiding carrots round her stable, but Tango’s hunger (as clearly we were starving her) meant that she found them far too quickly. We gave her ad lib hay which she seemed to like to play with as well as eat in an attempt to give her something to do all day. We asked all the liveries at the yard to have a chat to Tango when we weren’t at the yard. That worked well to a point, so long as the person who came to talk to her was a calm and quiet person. We carried on with leaving a radio playing in her stable for 24hrs a day. Tango by this stage would have been a superb guest at any dinner party as the things she must have learnt from Radio 4 all day and all night must have been amazing! After she had been back at the yard for a couple of days, the farrier came to shoe her with the bar shoes. That went well and I was very glad that Tango had met him a few weeks earlier as he was new to her so her first encounter wasn’t with him shoeing which was nice. It was amazing how much sounder she walked after being shod. The few steps back to her stable were so much better than the hobbly steps she had taken out the stable to be shod. The 10 week period actually went quite well, and Tango was amazingly well behaved. I think by this time she had grown resigned to a life incarcerated in her stable. Poor horse. It was then time to travel back to Liphook for a general check up and more x-rays. I hired a different horse transporter who was happy to spend time loading Tango and all went well. At the hospital, Stewart and I were absolutely on tenderhooks. When we got theverdict from John Walmsley that Tango was right as rain and was to be brought back into work I could have kissed the vet! We then had to start a slow fattening plan to get Tango ready to be turned out again in July. With a warning from John that Tango might be a bit ‘full of beans’ to ride after so long off work, we left the hospital happily. I don’t think I slept that night as I was so excited and nervous about riding the next day. I got on outside the stable and walked round to the school with Stewart next to us holding onto us with a lunge line ‘just in case’. We just did a few laps of the school in walk (with the occasional spot of piaffe and a couple of caprioles) and all went well. I could have cried with joy at riding my little Tango again after so long. After about 4 weeks of walk work we started to trot. Luckily this milestone coincided with a lesson I had booked with Sue Carnell. I was glad to have someone on the ground to help, just incase! As it turned out, the trot work was not exactly calm, but not totally mad either! Sue said I needed to work on slowing everything down. All started to go well with riding. Tango was clearly much much happier on box rest with her little ridden outings. Being ridden made her much braver on the yard, and she was generally much more relaxed with life. All looked like it was going well. At the end of May I took Tango out into the school, got on, and she was hopping lame. She wouldn’t put any weight on her near fore and was clearly in a lot of pain. I lead her back to her box and immediately called the vet. We got an emergency appointment at Liphook and sorted out transport to get there. I was warned by my vet that this may well be the end of the road for Tango as she had had so many complications and her quality of life was looking very poor if she needed another long period of box rest. I think that night was the longest one of my life before we loaded Tango up and took her back to hospital. John was very concerned about her lameness and ended up keeping her overnight to run more tests on her. He then reached the verdict that she had concussion laminitis (goodness knows how) and that she needed box rest till she healed. Stewart and I agreed that we were prepared to give her one more month of box rest, then it was no longer going to be fair on her to keep her on box rest and we would then need to make a decision as to whether it was fair to keep her suffering, or whether she could manage to live happily (though a bit lame) out in a field as a pet. After 3 weeks box rest, there was no clear sign of improvement. We tried a last ditch attempt at a cure by moving yards. It sounds mad, but if she was to be retired she needed to be at a yard where she could be out 24hrs a day, if she got better she needed a yard where she could be out 24hrs a day and have a good sand school and if she didn’t get better, then at least we had tried a change. We found a super yard literally 2 minutes from where she was kept currently. I arranged some ACP from the vets and lead Tango to the next yard with another horse walking next to us as I wasn’t sure how Tango would respond to her first outing in a month. As it turned out, she was immaculately behaved. She settled into her new stable very well and I think liked the change of scenery. Two days later, my vet came out to see Tango to check and see how she was. He wanted to do every type of lameness test that has ever been invented. We did this in the school and the flexion tests followed by flat out gallop with my being dragged around had to be seen to be believed! Anyway, after 40 mins of testing, Justin had to agree that Tango was 100% ok and ready to be brought back into work. Seeing as she had had so long in a stable, he agreed to riding in walk for 2 weeks, then turning her out with the other horses for short periods, building it up to her being out 24hrs a day over about a month. After I had ridden her in walk for 6 weeks then we were to try trot. Luckily this time she came back into work calmly and remained sound for the first fortnight. I shall never forget the moment as I turned her out for the first time in over 10 months and watching her charge around like a fool. It really was magic. Progress continues to be made. Here we are 6 months after that turn out moment and I have a horse who is back to jumping, taking me for gallops round the field and who is improving in her flatwork. Tango is now living out 24hrs a day and I really think she couldn’t be happier. After all that time she spent in a stable, I really just couldn’t ask her to go back to being stabled, even overnight. I think I owe her that after all she has given me. Have you got an interesting story or technical article that you'd like to share via the newsletter? Let us know. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ --- Help us with Schools and Holidays --- We have over 1000 UK riding schools listed in our schools database, many of them with extended details including photos. We would like to keep adding to this database to make it a really useful resource for riders and need your help. If you use a school or know its owners, have a look to see what details we have on them. http://www.newrider.com/Riding_Schools/search1.html If they are not complete do encourage them to send us more details and pictures. This is a free service and details can either be submitted online or we can post out some forms to be filled in. We have recently opened the new Holidays section which features details on over 130 UK holiday destinations. For those centres that sign up for our extended service, more details and the Latest Offers facility becomes available. For any reader that can introduce a riding holiday centre to our listings which results in them taking the extended service we will send you an introduction cheque for £20. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ***************************************************************** --- Advertising Information --- The New Rider newsletter reaches thousands of horse riders and in-situ adverts can be very effective for promoting your products or services (after all you are reading this advert now). Find out how to get YOUR sponsorship ad in this newsletter. Ask about our special discount for multiple ad insertions! ***************************************************************** ---------------------------------------------------------------- You are currently subscribed to the New Rider newsletter as: To unsubscribe visit the web site at http://www.newrider.com and use the newsletter subscription box to remove your e-mail address.