Polestar Farms

I want to give my deepest condolences to Greg, Jemi, Alison, Dee and every other person who was important to Amy. The list of people she touched is very long, as she was an important part of our lives. I know we are all in shock about her passing. I have so many strong memories of Amy that I wanted to share some of them with you.

I probably would not have Polestar Farm if it was not for Amy being in my life. Well, I might, but I definitely would not be the person I am today without her. Amy was one of the first people I sought out when I quit grad school at Davis and raced north to have a career in horses.  At the time, I didn’t really know that I would have a career – I just wanted to have a good time with the two horses I owned at the time! Amy immediately welcomed me into her barn and we rekindled a friendship that we started back in grade school on the soccer field.

I have really great memories of the old farm, Mapleleaf on Novelty Hill. It was a small facility that had friends in every stall – Dee Strand, Lexi Lind, Janet VonPressentin, Leigh Mesher and myself managed to not fight too much and developed a little pack of people all wanting the best for each other. Amy was the ringleader, as her strong personality dictated. Anybody who knew her as a youngster could have predicted that this young lady was going to be one tough cookie when she got wings! She helped all of us learn and ride as well as we could and she kept us on the conservative and smart path with every single horse. Because Amy was a full time firefighter during that time, we all helped chip in to make sure the chores and riding were done perfectly, it was a cooperative in some ways. Greg, bless his heart (one of her favorite sayings) was always rolling his eyes at our soap opera life out there in the barn, yet never turned anyone away when we needed a neutral friend most.

I lived with Amy and Greg for a spell or two, and it was one of the formative, life changing times in my life. Without Amy, I don’t think that I would be the professional rider that I am today. She helped me believe in my skills from the very start. She steered me to buy Blueprint, and then he became the next most formative thing in my riding life. Amy and I traveled together for most of two years – gathering up as many qualifications as we could. We camped out in her un-insulated, unheated trailer for shows in the snow and blistering heat. Our goals being quite common: Get Blueprint and Poggio qualified for their first CCI** and then move up to Advanced. We were both so driven that nothing seemed impossible. And looking back, it does seem like a fairy tale. Poggio ending up being one of the best eventing horses America has ever seen and Blueprint being my solid Advanced horse for 7 years. Both horses and us running over countless full format courses, and driving home with smiles on our faces. We always told each other that the longer we drove to an event, the more important it was to go clear XC. Otherwise, the return trip was more and more torturous given every mile we had to relive a silly run out. Funny enough, those never happened. I was always so well prepared for what I aimed to do under her guidance and ambition.

Amy’s drive and resolve flowed over everyone around her, like a fog. Suddenly, you were enveloped in it, for better or worse. She was a complicated person, and I always believe that she spoke better “horse” than “people”.  She often gave off an impression of being gruff and impersonal. Until you knew her better, she could be maddeningly undiplomatic. I often felt like she stepped on my toes as a friend, but I always knew that I could depend on her for anything and vice versa. If there was friction between us for something, it was erased quite quickly because of the depth of the friendship. She meant what she said and didn’t waste anybody’s time. Foremost, I appreciated the professional way that she conducted herself. She refused to get caught up in social melodrama and stayed true to her course. You have to admire anybody who knows themselves and their destiny that well, her path never budged. If she stepped on your toes on the way, she would sincerely apologize but you probably could have seen that it was coming had you thought about it. Amy never was un-Amy.

Today, Ive run the whole gamut of emotions about her death. Ive cried, laughed, been confused and mad. Im stuck on crying, but the girls in the barn helped me laugh when they pointed out that we can remember her by planting tulips in the trench she left on my driveway a few weeks ago. She nearly sunk her giant trailer in the wetlands when she missed a critical turn.  I think that would be fitting, since she was always calling someone “Tulip” if they were not quite as tough as they should be and its also fitting that she will leave a deep, clear path that I will look at every single day for the next year.  I think we will call it Amy’s Memorial Trench.

Rest in peace Amy, you touched so many people.

I just walked out of the house to do late night checks, and I nearly was blown over. Strong winds tonight! And 50ish degrees. Bizarre, and just another odd twist to our strange Washington weather this winter. Coming from my warm living room, with dogs and cats curled around the woodstove, I was fully prepared for a frosty night. I walked out bundled up in down and ski tuch, only to be wishing I was in a t-shirt. A tree falls somewhere near the house, dogs go rushing to defend their kingdom, and a horse snorts at the interruption.

I am finally writing you a belated Happy Holidays/Happy New Year/Solstice blog. Its been a while since I wrote, and I have no good reason, other than my short-windedness might be due to the doldrums of winter. Im at that midpoint where the proverbial fog is lifting, light in the tunnel has a horn blowing with it, and days should start to have more bloom than gloom.

And then you turn on the radio and hear that it is the first day of Winter.

WTF, is all I have to say to that. Granted, last year it would have been more appropriate for me to complain about this because by this date we had already had close to 14 snow days. Which in the horse industry is equivalent to 7000 normal days. But still, I feel it is quite justified to bring this up in a whiney voice despite the El Tepid winter that we are experiencing. I guess tis the season to be grateful – so despite the fact that we still have 4 months of snowing raining muddy frozen bliss to go – lets look at the bright side of things and lets plan our upcoming year. This will infuse a dose of unrestrained optimism in me.

Many folks are asking about our spring California trip – and I have to admit (don’t read this Jordan and Marissa) that I am leaning towards Plan B, which is a mess of local schooling shows instead. The reason this is sounding so appealing is that we have 4 young horses under the age of 5 who need show experience and Erica and Shauna both need to educate their new horses at low stress venues. Ive figured that for about the same amount of money to go to Cali, I can go to a 3 day schooling show at Thunderbird, 2 clinics in Washington and 2 one-day schooling shows with 3 horses. That’s a lot! So despite needing sunshine and warmth more than a clam needs butter and lemon, I think I am heading towards the local scene.

Next Blog…. 2012 goals for me and Taukalot, Rory, Lear and Dino.

We are riding a wave of change in our sport – and that change has not come easily. I have been doing some thinking about the safety issues that plague us, and will continue to do so for some time. Eventing with a zero chance of risk, is no longer eventing. We will always be able to boil eventing down to a human riding a moving, unpredictable horse with our heads 9 feet above the ground. That’s a given. However, I think that with improved technology and education, we can dramatically reduce the risks we take.

Maybe the hardest thing about a wave of change is to generate a wave in the very first place. Groups of humans have, since the dawn of time, come together for consensus and often action only happens when more than a few people agree upon a subject. An individual person is often unwilling to do something that is against the grain of normalcy. I know this because I have always been one to start raising my hand in class only after I watch someone else give a wrong answer and not get howled at. Once we see that we are safe to present a new and different idea, we may gather support, and then as a group we become much more effective. Group consensus is probably an evolutionary trait that has increased human survivorship at some time in history. However, it has it’s good points and it’s bad points and it definitely has helped with group mortality as well.  It is very bad when a group of people adopt a terrible idea, and it is equally bad when a single person can’t get the wave upwelling for a good idea.

Taking this analogy further, what we have here is the USEA pushing a bad idea and it is being accepted by a lot of people. I am not the proverbial fly on the wall during the committee meetings, and I cannot hear who is proactive and aggressive to install new safety measures and who is unwilling to change. I do know that the powers that be at USEA are proposing to revoke of the One Fall rule at the lower levels, and that fact indicates that there must be more than one person over there who is NOT willing to take aggressive steps to make our sport as safe as possible. I don’t know what their reasoning is, but perhaps some of them think that it would be terrible to deny a rider to get back on their horse if the rider does not have a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Ok, fine then. New Good Rule: those that do not have head injuries can get back on their horse and continue on the course. I certainly hope that means technology has gotten so good that we have hand held MRI machines that can instantly help with that medical evaluation by the jump judge.

What I do know is that we are lacking anybody on the safety committee with real medical training. I mean a doctor or two on the committee. Look at the safety committee for other sports: NFL and NHL are loaded with doctors. I think that when making rules that affect peoples lives, we might want to have someone with a degree or two to help us understand the vast intricacies of the human body and our ability to fix the human body when disaster strikes.

What I cannot understand is how we can revoke the One Fall rule given the increased media attention and medical knowledge about football head injuries. This summer there were two headliner articles about ex-pro footballers who had, in a very public way, donated their brains to science in order to help understand head trauma better. Those men were tortured by the aftereffects of their TBIs and they are, posthumously, helping make the world a better place. We now know that repeated head injuries in a short time period often are catastrophic or fatal, not just a nuisance.  Any single concussion can cause personality disorders, neurologic damage and cause decision making deficits. I, myself, have seen professional riders make riding/training decisions that they would never have done 10 years ago prior to the injury. But when you put two concussions together you get a whole different animal. Known as second impact syndrome, it means that successive separate incidences have an additive effect upon the brain that is often fatal.  One could argue that if you have a single TBI you are not in a position to make informed, solid decisions about much of anything until your brain heals. And to drive home that point, data from medical records of athletes with a concussion show that they are four times as likely to suffer a second concussion. I don’t know if that means you are X likely to suffer second impact syndrome, but I know that X is not zero.

I have had my own scary involvement with a concussion, and Im not wanting to go there again any day soon. So, I am making a promise to my small little group of Polestar riders and students that if I fall off a horse at a competition and have any small chance of jarring my noggin, I will not be getting back on and continue on course.  Nor will I be riding my second or third horses later in the day. I am making my own little One Fall rule that I am going to stick to because I have never been a ribbon chaser and I still have no need to be one now. A rider’s chance of a second fall is incredibly elevated after a first fall – and its not just novice riders. Just this summer alone you can see riders falling off two horses in a single event: Kim Severson fell off two horses this spring at The Fork, Boyd Martin fell off two at Plantation, and so did Nina Lignon at Southern Pines. All were on the same day and I don’t think its dumb luck.

If you think that USEA is looking out for your best interest with the revoking of the One Fall rule, then you might think again. They might want to avoid hearing about how you wasted some gas money, time and effort and are so disappointed to only make it to fence 4.  For the life of me, I cannot see how a medical condition depends upon the level that you ride. My life with Mark, my family and my animals are more important than completing an event. Myself, I am going to have my best interest at heart here.

Happy riding.

Wear a helmet

Links: http://useventing.com/competitions.php?section=rulebook&id=2950

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00046702.htm

http://www.fi.edu/learn/brain/head.html

http://www.headinjury.com/sports.htm

Thanks to Teresa Loughlin for her information and knowledge.

I did hear recently that Murphy was a real person who described the moniker about his own luck. There was, apparently, an Air Force captain named Murphy who was involved with painful G-force testing on one of his pilots. Apparently, the sensor wires had been hooked up wrong and none of the test results were recorded, much to the horror of the pilot, Im sure. What can go wrong, will go wrong.

My case of “Murphy’s law” this week is not nearly so important as air force testing, but still, frustrating. I leave on vacation…. And the barn falls apart. Mark and I have a history of attempting to go on vacation and mere moments before we are to get in the car, some disaster strikes a dog or a horse. This time, it is humans! As of this very moment, dogs and horses appear to be fine, but the wind is changing directions… (more…)

The last event of the season has finished, and the inevitable winterizing of my life begins this week. Every fall I go through a two week period where I obsess about the onslaught of winter, the dark, grey cloud full of rain and snow is just parked east of us waiting for the green light to descent upon me and leave me moping around for another 4 months. Last year Granite Falls was in the news WAY too much for climate tragedies, and I pride myself that I don’t live there. It was very wearisome to have a continual email/phone/conversation with people about how bad the weather is up there, a vast 8 miles away. I would try to defend my homeland but end up looking stupid because I was leaning on a snow shovel, dressed in fishing waders, explaining how it was blue skies all around, flood?? What flood?  However, I am soothed by the fact that even if I am fabricating some minor details about our mild winters in Lake Stevens, apparently all the murders, car jacking, house arsons, and drug deals happen in Silverdale Wa. I don’t know where that is, but I will take the weather bad-luck any day over living in that wicked town. Just read KOMO news for details.

While I love the thought of warm winter stews, cats sleeping in the flickering glow of a log fire, and holidays with friends and family – in reality my mind immediately goes to the frozen pipes, hauling buckets, too few stalls for far too many horses, horses slipping on the ice, my damn dogs rolling in rotting salmon carcasses and snow sliding off roofs which appears to instantly erode ulcers in horse stomachs. Inevitably, there is a steady stream of people wanting to be winter boarders here at Polestar, because they too are having their own anxious hallucinations of horse in winter at small farm. I love to make people happy….. but somehow I also need to say NO to some people because I just don’t have any more room. Which does not make them happy.

Sometime around January, my fears about finding a frozen fish butt in Ruben’s tail as he wags his happy self in our kitchen will be replaced with dreams of going to California to an event. That is a milestone concept, because that means that I have either successfully made it through the worst of the weather struggles and can see spring ahead, or I have reached an apathetic state where I just don’t care about anybody but myself as I thrown the tank tops and shorts into my bag and run out the driveway screaming. Either way, there is always an end in sight to winter. In the meantime, I am enjoying the mushroom season and eating our way through our forest. The garden is finally slowing down it’s fall bonanza growth, honey is on the shelf, and the half cow is in the freezer. Im going to go visit my friend in Virginia and Mark is planning a road trip to family soon. Winter is not so scary today.

Im sitting on the couch on a Sunday morning…. most of my peeps either had a fun time at the EI schooling show at Washington State Horse Park (hereafter known as WSHP) or they know better than to ask for a lesson today. Im tired! But it was all worth it. Huge thankyou to the entire EI eventing group that helped put this on: Heidi Hansen, Penny Leggott, Chriss Cardwell, Joan Meyers, Polly Kranick, Todd Trewin, Leslie Thurston and Cathie Farr. Thanks!!! Another big thanks to Joann Keller-Green for donating her time as SJ judge! And also thanks to Anne Ryan for her excellent dressage judging.

Thanks to all competitors for coming to the show, and I hope you are excited about another schooling show next spring. You can expect a similar format with dressage and SJ but also we might include a Hunter Pace too. Great way to get ready for next year’s competitions!

Who would have thought that September would be the month that looks like late July. Finally, my plants outside look a little wilted, the leaves a little dusty and my arenas daily needing water. Its about time. But where are my red tomatoes? Does anybody have ripe tomatoes this year?

Ive been a little late with writing about Polestar news, due to the constant traffic in my life. But, the big thing for last week was the Scott Keach clinic hosted by Area VII Adult Riders.  This is my third time riding with Scott and yet again, I am really, really happy with what I learned. Ive got another little trick up my sleeve for a few horses, especially Lear. His show jumping “prowess” is scary (read that both ways) and I have been really worried about his lack of confidence when he jumped at Aspen a few weeks ago. Lear in a nutshell is careful about touching poles, and yet doesn’t yet have the skills to get himself out of trouble. His jumping form changes dramatically when he is nervous, and that is not good. I am going to work all winter on his understanding of the bit and creating a better mouth on him. At the moment, I cant even help him when he gets worried because his mouth is just not there. I go to help him add a stride and he falls apart in his jumping form. So, there is a long road ahead for me. But Im up for it. He is a lovely horse who is fun to ride, and has a wonderful mind. Besides, what else am I going to do all winter?

My students all had a great time too at the clinic. Susan Greenwald was given an additional two thumbs up for moving up to training level! She now has collected enough support to actually go do it at NWEC in a few weeks. She came out on Sunday and jumped a full course at max height, and a few with the 2 inch fudge factor higher. She rocked it. Im thrilled for her and Mr. Dalesman. He looks like the athlete he is, all proud and ears up!

Annika and Lucinda both got strong lessons on how to KICK! And Scott meant, really kick. They were both so excited about what they learned that they decided that they wanted to enter NWEC afterall. Before last week, they had decided they were both done for the season.  I think they will both end the season very well…. But don’t forget to kick!

One final word, we will miss our excellent summer working student, Marissa Williams and her horse Allstar. She has gone back to finish her degree in San Louis Obispo, but we had a wonderful time with her for the long summer. I always said that Allstar was the best named horse in the barn. They arrived here with very little jumping experience, if any at all. And due to his fabulous mind and athletic ability, Marissa was able to work on her own skills and by September they were comfortably schooling all our training level jumps at home. They finished the summer in amazing form with a win at Aspen at BN! I am so proud of her accomplishment and cant wait to see them again. Jordan swears that she will take good care of them down south until they come up for summer camp again.