Road Safety Update

BRITISH HORSE SOCIETY MAGAZINE:

a Letter to the Editor

Dear Jo,
An e-mail I wrote to Jo Browne at HORSE Magazine after the 'GreavesleyGate' scandal.

I think it’s important that everyone remembers horses are creatures with their own ideas about what is safe and what isn’t, and they can’t be ‘fixed’ , ’once and for all’.

A horse is perfect for what he is: a fast, fit, flighty creature who considers safety his primary focus in life, above all other considerations. The reason we love them so much is that despite all these things, they choose to be with us, to let us touch them, ride them and ultimately ask them to be ok in unfamiliar and scary situations – I might add we’d NEVER force ourselves to face our fears...so why is it ok to make our horses do it? The fact that they do trust us, that most horses with sensitive training out on the roads alongside road users who are kind and thoughtful, a horse can become comfortable with traffic, but it only takes one scare to put all that work back to the beginning, and some horses will never recover from a fright, and neither might the rider.

I feel so cross and saddened that there are people we share our planet with that have so little empathy for their fellow creatures that they’d be willing to risk the safety of all concerned..who are these people?

I think I must be very lucky indeed, because iIhave the nicest drivers in my village...cyclists on the other hand.....are a bit better at slowing down!

Thanks for reading my rant,

Shelley

Road Safety

... a rather alarming letter from a motorist Roy Greavesley.








HORSE MAGAZINE: AUGUST 2012 ISSUE

Anyone who has read the JULY issue will have noticed on the letters page of HORSE magazine a letter from a motorist.

If like me you were so upset and cross by the sentiments of the motorist that you couldn't bring yourself to reply, worry no more Karry Gardner has spoken for us, what a brilliant letter, and despite her accident as a child she still loves horses!! 

Now, before I get all cross and emotional as a horse lover, here are a few FACTS:

The Law of the Land or what's commonly known as the Highway Code and what it says regarding horses on the road or 'vulnerable road users'.

Once an individual has applied for a licence to drive he is accepting these regulations and guidelines, it's his obligation to demonstrate not only the skill to operate a vehicle but an duty of care to fellow road users.  

Now most of us riders would rather be riding on a bridleway and not have to ride on the roads at all, but there aren't nearly enough bridleways  around so a certain amount of roadwork is necessary for most of us.

Whilst we all wait with bated breath for the 'Greavesley Report' to be published so we can finally tackle  the 'problems' most of our horses have with traffic on the roads, we'll just have to carry on with 'mollycoddling' them and do the best we can when drivers drive past us without any thought because they're in a hurry and don't believe anything or anyone should slow them down, though some feel 'obliged to' at least Roy did slow down. 

We'll eagerly await any new technique, where we can 'teach' our horses to leave behind every natural instinct in their millions of years of evolutionary development.  With little insight or any experience not just of horses, but of other human beings or creatures of any kind, it's wrong to suggest we can make another living creature bend to our will when every primal instinct is to the contrary....

....and all of us creatures get scared, not just horses, is there a programme in the pipeline to cure us humans of our fears too?

The point is, not only does this kind of simplified approach seem to lack any kind of empathy with the living creatures we share this planet with, because horses have humans on them too, it assumes horses can be fixed 'once and for all'.

I shudder to think!

Horses don't need to be cured, they need to be understood.

There are so many things in our environment horses might be worried about, not least the traffic, but it's because we're in the traffic when horses get scared that means it's the drivers that we are asking to deal with a situation and be kind and courteous.   As a rider, it's conceivable we may never identify the thing that's spooked our horse when we're on-board, he sees things and hears thing completely out of our range, it's what he's built for.  A vastly superior sense of potential danger that has kept horses pretty much unchanged for millions of years.

A thoughtful and courteous driver can make all the difference in a tricky situation, and can even make a situation so much better and safer for a horse, he could even save his life and that of the rider by slowing down and giving a scared horse room to move and think.

...and for all those such brilliant drivers out there, and in my experience there are many more of the nice ones than not, we thank you very much.

SOME THINGS A MOTORIST MIGHT LIKE TO KNOW ABOUT HORSES:

...and they've been around much longer than humans!

*A horse lives in a world of constant safety assessment, he is acutely aware of his surroundings and makes second by second behaviour adjustments depending on which dangers he perceives.

*Horses have prey animal instincts, if they decide there is a threat to their safety, they will run to achieve an approximate quarter mile distance between them and the foe. They will turn to face the threat and reassess.

*A horse needs time to think, an average of seven seconds to size up a situation, where he will often ‘plant’ himself rigid to the spot in order to give a problem his complete attention.

Horses can react in surprising ways to perceived foe, that’s why it’s important that horses are given lots of room by any vehicle passing them.

*A horse is an intelligent and powerful creature, millions of years of instinct development mean he judges danger in different ways to humans, and though not a natural fighter, he can and will defend himself if he feels that is the only way to avoid certain death – if the horse wasn’t like this, it would have died out millions of years ago...eaten.

*Horses take exception to unexpected things to maintain their own personal feeling of safety – and being safe is the most important thing to a horse...even more important than food.  It is difficult for humans to understand these reactions, because we are the opposite of horses, we are predators and have developed a very different existence. All we can hope for as keepers of horses is an understanding of our horses needs and give them the space they need to express them and to help them manage these reactions.

Cyclists and vehicles: ‘please pass slow and wide’

In the City of London

CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?

John couldn't believe his eyes when walking to work one morning he spotted a policeman giving a road user a road violation ticket. Near St Pauls, in the City of London.

The thing that makes this amusing is the policeman was mounted, and the road user was a cyclist!

That's just funny.

Safe Bridleway Riding 2012

ANOTHER MILESTONE FOR SAFETY:

Whilst I have been busy with my other blog: tomandhenry.blogspot.com.  things have been happening on the safe riding front.

New Safety for Riders and Cyclists initative in certain parts of the country will have a positive effect on our interaction with each other when we share our open spaces. This one featured in Your Horse this month highlights a partnership for safety between the Forestry Commission of Wales and The British Horse Society - well done!!!

All it takes is some breathing space, stopping, chatting and understanding.

I still have large groups of club cyclists tearing down my lane, but now they slow down, keep quiet and are generally respectful.  And of course the more pleasant encounters Tom & Henry have with these bikes, the happier they will be meeting them.

An Update to my Update:

Yesterday morning we were driving to the station: the same dark windy country lane we travel every day to work... there was a runner on the other side of the road (the correct side since there's no pavement, he was quite rightly in the road).

Obviously a healthy type jogging at 6.30am, the irony of his lack of attention to being seen and therefore being safe at all clearly lost on him.  Sure the paramedics would comment on his great muscle tone as they dragged him in to the ambulance!

The point to this? for heavens sake, wear hi-viz, be seen, be safe.

Riders, even if it's not dark, if a car can see you even a few seconds earlier, it could save your life, and that of your horse too since in all likelihood the car would see him before you.

Trakehner UK Newsletter

Hello fellow Trakehner lovers!


I have just written my first Tom & Henry story for the TRAKEHNER UK Newsletter.  I have started with a little background, and if I am asked to write one every issue (thrice anually), I will endevour to write the amusing stories as they happen, and they happen all the time here at chez Rand.


Anyone familiar with the Holme Grove website will know that Susan publishes letters, stories and photos of her herd progeny, and you can tell by reading them how proud we are sharing our lives with these incredible creatures, and how proud, and justly so, Susan and Barbara are to share the stories with us.


Here is  my first go:

Story for Trakehner UK newsletter

 Hello all fellow Trakehner lovers!

I work in a very creative, high octane, office environment in London.  A Design Room at M&S. My colleagues mostly live locally and so they have cats, which is great because I have 5 of my own and cat stories are very funny!

So it was I was at my desk when I received an email from someone I didn’t know in Kidswear, inviting me to an M&S Horse owners Club Lunch!!! Well you can imagine!!? It's great working here but it just got so much better.  We endeavour to meet every month and all we do – whilst we eat – is talk about our horses and share pictures and stories, its brilliant!

Our members have a variety of equines from thoroughbreds to Irish sport horses, I am alone in my Trakehner ownership.  And while many beloved pictures of coiffure’d horses are passed under my nose, of course I am suitably complimentary, but I can’t help feeling sorry for them for not having Trakehners in their lives – they have such great bums and personalities!

Did I mention Tom and Henry have incredibly gorgeous arses, suspect all Trakehners are built this way, pretty heads, great necks and oh so amazing rear ends!?

Tom & Henry of course, take fame in their strides now so any news from me that more people at work are hearing about them goes by without so much as a sniff.  They recently had their photos taken for HORSE magazine for a safety feature I worked on with them and that was an interesting morning. Plus they star in my blog, which is where it all began with my writing about them.

HORSE magazine interviewed me for a safety feature; the Editor Jo Browne had read my blog and thought my work for road safety was inspiring.  And it only started because I will go above and beyond to protect my boys from anything that might ruffle their manes; I wasn't aiming to be a campaigner. Then she asked me if she could send a photographer to my cottage to take shots of me riding my boys around the village to support the story of safety. Well I jumped at the chance for my boys to star in a three page spread!!!

I took the day off work, my boss didn't really understand but she humoured me. I got my farrier Steve out of his sick bed to come a check their shoes (thank you Steve), I brushed the boys to within an inch of their lives and even cleaned their tack, and I surprised even myself when I remembered how to put it all back together again!

The photographer took some great shots.  My husband John on his bike (because it all started with cycle safety), my friends and neighbours and their son on his bike, all drove and cycled past me.  I was a glowing beacon of illumination head to hoof in hi-viz, so the message was clear, safety. They are the funniest horses, they took everything in their beautiful floaty strides, that Trakehner stride we are all familiar with, and anyone who has seen the November issue will agree they looked gorgeous; well they are sons of Solomon and Prokofiev!

A quick Trakehner question though:

Not sure whether it’s a Trakehner thing, but they eat out of the bin instead of the freshly filled haybars, they bob for apples, they chase the cats around the land, they stand still with no headcollar to get groomed and tacked up, they turn their bottoms to me for a scratch and I know what they want, they’ve trained me!. this seems perfectly normal to me....but I’m getting comments that perhaps Trakehners are just a bit too clever...well we'd all agree with that I’m sure?

Tune in boys and girls next time for 'What Tom & Henry did next'.

Shelley Rand