First of all, before someone turns on the fire and starts a screaming diatribe, let’s clear a few things up. I am not a vet, I am not an upper level eventer, the best I have done is a few trainings, I am not a trainer, and I was not there this weekend when a horse was put down. “So then why the hell are you even talking?” Good question.
- A.) I have a blog, it’s for talking about stuff I wanna talk about, You Don’t Know Me!
- B.) This may actually have something to do with engineering,
- C.) Safety is a huge part of my life in offshore as well as riding,
- D.) All of the Above?
“God I hate multiple choice!” Good news, you aren’t being graded. “Whew, I was having flashbacks to the SATs. But really, why are we here again?” Engineering. “Well aren’t we just enlightening today.” Fo reals tho. So it has been proposed that “breakdowns” among horses could be caused by running/working a horse that may have previous damage that we can’t see. “This sounds like vet and Doctor stuff, not engineering.” You are correct however as a person who installs pipe (you know, metal, hard, doesn’t bend) offshorein a moving environment, think waves, current, hurricanes etcetera, you have to wonder, how do those pipes survive for 20+ years with all that wind, waves, current, and sharks without breaking? Well we design for it of course! Fatigue is a big part of design when you have a pipe hanging off of a moving platform. “Fatigue, a word I know, if I am fatigued, I need a nap, so does that mean your pipes need naps?” I need a nap but pipes don’t get them, they work 24/7/365 for 20 years. To better explain fatigue, think of the top of a Dr. Pepper can (this is my favorite but feel free to insert any soda/pop/coke type you like).
You know that tab on the top that you use to open your can that we would always remove as a kid? “Why was there always someone collecting those?” I don’t know but when you flip that thing back and forth a bunch until it breaks off you are “fatiguing it to failure”. Yes, feel free to go out into the world and use your new found engineering vocabulary to wow your friends.
So with pipe, possibly carrying thousands of gallons of oil, we do not want “Failure” but those waves, moving platform, and hurricanes are trying to fatigue the pipe by moving it back and forth sort of like your soda tab. I won’t bore you with all the deep engineering details but the pipe itself has to pass certain tests, and checks to ensure it has no tiny cracks or holes. When you weld pipe together, each weld has to pass inspections including x-rays to make sure there are no cracks or gaps. There is a big focus on cracks and holes, even microscopic ones, as you wiggle, over time the cracks will become bigger and bigger, this is called “crack propagation” until one becomes big enough that the whole thing breaks. And when in doubt, add more steel, so instead of the pipe being half inch thick we may use 1″ thick walls. If you take a paperclip and bend it back and forth a bunch of times, you will see cracks in the paper clip, get your magnifying glass out though, they are very small.
“Well this is neat and all but what the heck does it have to do with horses?” Well, horses have bones, bones are hard, but they get fatigued as well. The neat thing about bones is, given time and proper nutrition, they can repair themselves, pipes you have to heat up to help the pipe sort of “melt” and fill the cracks or if the cracks are very big, you have to add more material to fill them. “Last time I checked, bending a bone back and forth really isn’t a thing.” Correct.
I’m not going to lie, it was difficult to come up with an analogy for this. Oddly enough, what I came up with is this. You know, when you are in college out drinking with friends. “I never drank in college, I am the picture of perfect college student.” Sure you are, along with all the other college students out there, anyhow there was jerk move we used to pull where you would slam your beer bottle on top of someone else’s and all the sudden tons of foam would come pouring out of the top and the person had to try and drink it really fast. It turns out, if you do this 2-3 times (yeah you find out the foam is lacking after the first one but blame the alcohol for further attempts), a bottle will break, usually the bottom one. It will also happen if you do it too hard the first time but that’s shock loading and we covered that already.
Another issue to consider is eccentric loading. “Electric loading? Are we doing shock therapy on our horses now?” Eccentric, essentially it means off center, think about your old crooked legged horse. Usually Old Crooked Leg has trouble staying sound, because the joints and bones are not getting used how they were designed. We have all been there when we hit a nail and it bends. “I’m lucky if I even actually hit the nail.” Well if you do actually hit the nail, and it bends, that means either it is a super crappy nail, or you didn’t hit it in the middle of the nail head. You hit it off to one side “eccentrically”, and it bent instead of driving deeper into the fence board you are nailing up on the coldest day of the year just before you go catch the 10 horses running around like idiots. Sometimes you can bend it back but if its a cheap nail aka lower grade materials that will break sooner, it will never hammer straight. God forbid you hit it twice and it bends both times, you are probably screwed and should go get bailing twine or duct tape.
So, did Crackerjack have an unfortunate misstep or was it brought on by fatigue, I don’t know if that is something they can figure out or not, and we may never find out.
Now for my safety soapbox. “Here. We. Go.” So I have worked offshore, it’s dangerous, things happen, the seas are unpredictable, the weather can be as well. On top of that, people can be unpredictable, maybe someone didn’t sleep well last night, they have drama at home, or they are inexperienced. These can all cause bad decisions to be made which can put people’s lives at risk. “If it’s so unsafe, then why do you do it?” I like the job, I like the money, and maybe I like the risk a bit? I mean, I do ride, it’s not like I took up knitting for a hobby. “Dude, those needles are huge.” Do you know, in my almost 400days of working on boats or in yards with heavy equipment, I have witnessed no major injuries and no deaths at all. Why is that? Well first of all, I think I am a bit lucky, I know people who have died but it was from a heart attack. Do you know, even after those deaths, there were 2, the company decided that yearly physicals were mandatory to work offshore. They could have said, “Not our problem those people didn’t take care of themselves.” Instead, they said, you know, this has caused a major upset on the vessels, you live with these people every day, when they die right in front of you, it will mess you up, BAD. They realize it cost them time and money, and NO ONE wants to make the call to the family. To them, it’s worth the time and energy to make a change.
One trip offshore, we had some cargo break loose and start moving while lots of people were on deck, had someone gotten hit by it, it would have badly injured and maybe killed someone. Why didn’t it though? Well, we had all had lots of training (I had a week of safety training the week after I started), everyone immediately went to a safe area until the movement stopped and then the cargo was secured. “Well that wasn’t so bad. Slowed you down a few minutes.” Well, one would think that but because it was an incident, the second the deck was secured, tons of pictures were taken and we sailed the half day back to the dock for an incident investigation which took 2 days with a team of 4 guys. 3 days of work time blown and those 4 guys got nothing done in those 2 days as well. That gets expensive for a company, I estimate $250k-$500k in lost revenue alone. “No bonus for you this year.” No joke.
Lets just not even go into the Horizon/Macondo oil spill. No, I have not seen the movie, and truthfully, I really don’t want to.
A guy I know that has been working in the oilfield for about 40 years told me when he started, there were no hardhats, you could wear shorts and sneakers, and if you got killed on deck, they just threw you in the freezer and kept going. It’s not like that anymore. Any death at all is highly investigated, and generally shared with the entire industry. Recently an object was dropped from a crane on a boat, no one was hurt, I don’t even think there was major damage, the incident report was about 200 pages. Where are the in-depth reports on what has happened to horses and riders that are injured or die on course? Someone may say this is too expensive to do, I say when you are losing a $100k horse, it’s too expensive not to. Let’s not even try and put a dollar amount on a human life. Maybe we put it back on the companies that insure the horses? Make their reports public. Just food for thought.
My proposal would be for any rotational fall, horse death, or rider death, a team of 4 people consisting of a vet, a course designer (not the one that designed the course that the incident occurred), an upper level rider and maybe someone who works for the governing association, work together, find out what really happened, why there was an incident, and make a report that everyone can read and share. This shouldn’t just be for eventing, any death of horse or rider should be investigated, it may unearth a number of problems that are completely solvable. Cracker’s may not have gotten hurt because of the course or fatigue of some form, maybe he had a genetic defect in the leg that just finally failed. Maybe rotational falls are more caused by bad footing on the front side of the jump than by the jump itself. Maybe that person died because they had an un-diagnosed heart defect and the horse landing on him/her stressed it. It’s not always clear, but 4 people is all it takes.
Disclaimer: I am not a Veterinarian, I am not a trainer, I am not an upper level event rider, I am not a Doctor. I have had some training in incident investigation but I am not a professional.
Related Articles:
It seems that a lot of barn drama is going around right now, it seems like a plague at least locally. Maybe it has to do with the stress left over by Hurricane Harvey, maybe it was because Friday the 13th fell in October, maybe it’s because we recently had a harvest moon, or you know, because it’s Wednesday.
“Why the heck is an engineer writing about drama? Engineers are boring, they don’t understand drama.” You are right Engineers are pretty boring folks, but as an engineer who has spent 40 days straight stuck on a 250′ long boat with 48 other people (only one other person was an engineer), I have learned to handle drama. “Holy Gilligan’s Island, that ain’t no 3 hour tour.” Nope, and let me tell you, when the seas are rough and you can’t work, drama ensues. Add a little sleep deprivation because you got stuck working Midnight to Noon, all kinds of shenanigans happen.
To be honest, I like to hear about it but I HATE being involved. Generally, I tend to avoid drama. It’s pretty easy for me to stay out of barn drama since my horses are at my house, the biggest drama I have to deal with is that a possum got in the chicken coop and roughed up one of my hens or the horses kicked down a gate and are running around like idiots. I still haul in for lessons so when there is drama, I get to hear about it.
I have had my share though, I have been at a number of boarding barns in my years. Boarders having screaming fights over whatever reason. Caretakers not showing up for work after a night of partying. Farm owners having unreasonable expectations of trainers or boarders. Trainers playing favorites among clients, I see this a lot. Trainers charging unfair prices, there is a lawsuit going on right now involving a 
More to the point above BE REALISTIC. If you are paying $200 a month, don’t expect the red carpet to be rolled out when you park your ’98 Honda Civic in the parking area. If you are paying some of the lowest board in the area, you may have to clean up debris in the pasture, or make a few improvements to your horses stall to make it safer. (always get permission first) The more you pay, the nicer the place should be and you can expect the farm to ensure the pastures are clean and inspected.
Move-in condition is what you should expect- in other words, if you move into a place that has wire fencing, don’t expect the owner’s to replace all of it with wood because you said it was safer. Even if they say they are going to replace it, don’t trust it, things happen, money runs out, they get too busy. You may be able to negotiate a lower rate and tell them that you will pay more once the fence is replaced or whatever is fixed up, but this is no guarantee that it will happen. Be ready to pay if they hold up their end of the bargain…
If you are having issues with a farm owner, remember they own the place, they are going to run it how they want to, because they own it. If you have concerns you should talk to them but most of the time, it’s not going to change. If they want your opinion, they will usually ask for it…
Be courteous, clean up after your horse and yourself. If you pull your horse’s mane in the middle of the barn aisle, sweep up the hair. If your horse poops in the cross ties/wash rack, clean that up. The only way you get out of this is if you are at a super swanky barn where they have someone to do that for you but 90% of us are not at that barn so clean up.
Do not judge anyone else’s riding/training. If you want to know more about what someone is doing, ask questions, NICELY, in a friendly tone. If there is something that you think is dangerous, if appropriate, ask them about it, if you aren’t sure, ask the trainer or the farm owner and let them deal with it. Try phrasing things like: “Hey, are you ok?” “Can I help?” “I’m worried this may not be safe for (Insert horse’s name).” “I am worried about your safety, I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”
Gossip happens, (it happens big time offshore) be ready for it. Don’t do things that are worth gossiping about. If someone sees a male and a female walk out of a closed tack room, it’s getting talked about, or speculated about. It could have just been a conversation between friends, but it’s going to go through the barn like wild fire. By tomorrow morning, the couple will have been having an affair for the last 3 months and the guy is going to leave his wife tomorrow. I would say don’t gossip or spread rumors, but let’s be honest, it happens, it’s part of being in a barn. However, don’t spread untrue stories, leave the fake news to Facebook.
You can’t always prevent or avoid barn drama, but you can minimize your exposure by being nice, communicating concerns, and sometimes you just have to let things go. Don’t allow the barn politics ruin your ride, you are there to relax and have fun, so get out there and have some fun. If the politics are constantly causing problems, maybe it’s time to find a new barn.
Interval training, it’s so hot right now. Some of you may have heard of it, especially if you are a jogger or a crusty old eventer like me. Back when I was a kid it went something like; you and your friend head out to the back pasture on ponies, race each other for a bit, get yelled at by the trainer, continue to race ponies but going the other direction, and then come back to a scolding but still happy because ponies and galloping happened. In reality it should follow something like this:
You can get very scientific about it and use heart rate monitors and go to a target heart rate, maintain it for so many minutes, then rest until it recovers to a certain point and then do it again. Essentially the more fit you are, the less time it takes to get your heart rate to drop. There is a lot of this done in endurance riding. They have vet checks along the way to make sure your horse is not being over stressed, if it takes your horse too long to recover at the vet checks, you are eliminated. Long format eventing involves some of this too.
I have one called “Running for Weight Loss” it’s free. “Are you saying my pony is fat? Poor Fluffy Pony, you aren’t fat, you are fluffy.” Sure, “fluffy”. There are many interval running apps available so try them to find one you like. This one lets you set levels like beginner, intermediate, and advanced. It will let you put personal information in too. Then it gives you options for days of the week assuming you “run” 3 times a week. If you look at the options, you can select a different type of training plan I chose 5k which gives you 30 min work outs. Then you hit start and it actually tells you when to walk and when to run. That will set you up on a walk/run interval, and it will buzz or talk to you when you need to change your speed.
Modify your speed to fit the work out. One that I did said “Jog or Light Run” I don’t exactly remember but when I heard that, I trotted. If your horse isn’t in super great shape, you can trot when it says “run” and canter when it says “sprint”. If you are out on a trail, it will track you on a map and show you where you walked, trotted, and cantered, and how far you went and at what speed. You know how they sometimes post a speed at shows, like you may see 325m/min on the course map, well you can actually find out what that speed feels like. If you are in the ring it shows a bunch of circles on top of each other, so not super helpful.
If you plan on doing some interval training, prior to starting, you should assess your horse’s fitness, it’s not fair to go galloping your horse in an intense work out if he has been hanging out in the pasture the last few months. 
If you haven’t ever been into a 
Anyone have a magnetic stud holder/bowl? Smartpak has them for $17, Harbor Freight has them for $3-$4 Check it out 
How about zip ties to strap down those electric cords? 
This hose nozzle is $22 on Smartpak’s site. I prefer the 
flashlights, head-lights(the kind that strap to your head), shop lights, battery powered lights, garden lights, shed lights, the little circle battery powered lights that work great in tack lockers.
your horses can break all day long, instead of your cute Smucci(you know, knock of Gucci) glasses. 
