Monday Product Review

To change it up a little, I thought that instead of continuing the Traveller story, I would do a product review! I'm thinking I may do this as a Monday thing..but we'll see.

The Product: Charles Owen AYR8 Helmet

Used Since: End of July

Price: $280 CND (this is 25% off on National Helmet Awareness Day)

I didn’t need a helmet urgently, but the band in my plastic schooling helmet of starting to feel a little loose (detaching from the shell) and I had decided that my velvet show helmet just hurt too much!

I have a very oval head that is narrow from temple to temple but very long lengthwise. It is also quite tall from my chin to the top of my head.

So, in the spirit of National Helmet Awareness Day (okay…in the spirit of discounts) I decided that I might as well head of to the tack shop to see what deals I could find. As a student, I definitely do not have a lot of extra money lying around, so I will take discounts when I can get them!

So..

IRH= to round for my head, could order in the long oval, but to be honest…I can be a bit of a brand snob, so I couldn’t wait to try on a…

GPA= Okay, I have a $$$$ helmet on my head (no I would NEVER spend this, but trying it on couldn’t hurt), and actually, it did hurt!!! Waaaaaaay to round, ouch, ouch, ouch! To make it fit lengthwise I needed a 7 ¾ which gapped horribly at the sides. No good.








There was actually a Charles Owen rep on site, but she was not pushy at all—but very helpful.

GR8= I have always loved the look of this helmet. They seem to be the most popular ‘look’ at the moment, and I think the charcoal/black is fantastic. I measure as a 7 3/8 but decide to try the 7 ½ due to the shape of my head. I can get it on……no good. It felt (and looked) very perched up on my head, I need something that comes down farther in the back (has a deeper fit).

Hmmm.

The AYR8 is one of their newer models and due to that had a very steep price tag of $350 CND….but, I would get 25% off, okay for my comfort, it’s worth a try.

7 ½ *fingers crossed*, yep I can get it on, and yes it goes down much farther on my head, it doesn’t squish my ears….fit=good!

Appearance…hmm. It kinda looks like a GR8, the same basic idea but with 12 vents and a mesh covering with the inside ‘stripe’ coming in black, silver, gold, or pink. After some thought while walking through the store I decide to bite the bullet and put an order in for a 7 ½ in the black with silver-- the silver will look nice with my pretty grey horse and I figure that the vents will help keep my head cool during hot summer schooling sessions.

End result?

I LOVE it. The style really has grown on me and the fit is phenomenal—it gaps the slightest bit at the sides, but not even enough to warrant me padding it. It comes down nice and deep to cuddle my head, it is light, the harness is comfy. It is a winner!

Worth the price? For me, yes. It is one of the only helmets I have worn that really fits my head and due to this I will be more inclined to wear it all the time. Also, it is cool enough to school in and steps right over to the show ring in style.

I give it a 5/5 horseshoe rating!

I do know that stock pictures never give you much to go on, so here is the real thing:

Poor poor Traveller

So after spending seven days at the vets it was time for Traveller to come home.


He seemed to be handling the loss of sight quite well. So far so good.

We now had a decision to make. There was no hope of him ever regaining sight in his right eye, there was far too much damage. This left us with two options:

1) Leave the eye in, mostly for cosmetic reasons, and hopefully control infection and such while it healed

2) Have the eye enucleated (taken out)

For the time being, we decided to leave the eye in as we wanted him to have the most ‘normal’ appearance possible—not that he cared, it was definitely for our sake. It was then important to administer oral antibiotics, eye-drops, and bute to manage the pain.

Looking back, I wish I had taken pictures of all of this, but it just didn’t seem appropriate at the time..

Anyways, he loaded okay into the trailer, and back home we went. Thankfully, there is a separate fenced corral with a shelter where he could be close to the other horses but not have to deal with them while he adjusted to his new life. Surprisingly, for the most part he seemed okay. He was definitely head shy and did not want anything or anyone around his head and especially that eye. He was also quite spooky to noises and movement to the right- something that I found quite reasonable. Of course, this was something that I would have to work on, but for the time being he just needed to be left alone and re-figure out life for himself.

He ‘took’ the oral antibiotics and bute very well, but the eye-drops were always a fight. As anyone who has ever even had a slight eye injury knows, they hurt! So we devised a new method, bute first, eye-drops half an hour later. He still wasn’t happy, but allowed us to get most of the dose in.

The eye itself had shrunk down to about 2/3 its original size and had taken on a cloudy blue colour with the ‘plug’ (scab of what was left of his cornea) still in place.

My poor pony was not a happy boy.

More to come:)

Don't worry I haven't given up yet! The days just keep getting away from me....I promise I will continue the Traveller story asap!

Up to Him

Wrong.


The vet immediately took a serious look at the situation and quickly administered both a sedative and painkiller as he said that eye injuries are excruciating (ever poked yourself in the eye? Not a nice feeling).

At this point I don’t fully understand the situation. I hear words like ‘traumatic’, ‘blindness’, ‘infection’, ‘euthanasia’….I clearly remember catching that last one, and promptly breaking down.

This is my young, healthy, athletic three year old with all the potential in the world…beautiful, graceful, spirited…euthanasia does not fit into this picture. At all. This is my Traveller, my horse….this happens to other peoples horses, this is something you read about….this doesn’t happen to my horse.

Thankfully there was one clear head in the room, the vets. He said that yes, Traveller was now permanently blind in his right eye. That ‘goo’ we thought was coming out of the eye was actually his cornea that was now hanging off, covered in dirt from where he tried to rub his face to relieve the intense pain. The actual injury was a small three-corner tear in the middle of the eye…a puncture from something small and sharp. To this day we do not know what it was, we have ideas, but it will never be known for sure.

The vets advice was to give him a chance. Our number our concern was of course safety; if he was going to be a danger to himself or others we would have to make the decision to have him put down. Even in the excruciating pain, Traveller remained fairly calm, letting us catch him, load him, and walk into a strange place….he had trusted us to help him. The vet said that this is a good indication of his temperament and how he will handle life without one eye.

With this said, we decided to leave him at the vets for a few days where he could be monitored and receive the proper medications….and be in a controlled environment if his demeanour were to drastically change. It was up to him.

We drove home with an empty trailer and not a dry eye in sight.

911

So things seemed to be going smoothly. It was winter so he did not get a whole lot of work, but he definitely was more manageable than prior to the training time.


Things were looking up.

I remember that it was a cold/wet/windy day, we got home from school and my mom said that we had an emergency appointment at the vets as there seemed to be something wrong with Travellers left eye.

Uh oh.

He loaded easily into the trailer and the ride over was very uneventful, he was almost better behaved than normal. He unloaded well, walked into the clinic and stood in the stocks calmly. There can’t be too much wrong then, right?

Time for Education

So, remember that verdict that he was not a suitable horse for me? Guess what, it was bang on.

He freaked out when you tied him up, he fought the bit, he could barely trot, cantering was out of the question, wouldn’t lung…..yep, it was a mess.

At the time our farrier was a western trainer. After a horrible attempt at trimming his feet it was decided that, the next day, Traveller would go for a month (at least) of training.

The next week we went out to visit him/see how it was going.

Without knowing all that much myself, I thought it was looking good. He could tie for the most part, walk and trot with some canter thrown in….his head was down in a nice frame (remember how I said I didn’t know much?) and it looked like it was going well.

I slightly questioned that bit  he had him going in, but he said that the raspberries in the corners of his mouth were a good thing…made him think. Hmmm, okay.

Two months later he was ready to come home a seemingly more solid equine citizen with better basics…..good?

And Enter.....

So two years after we got Bob it was becoming apparent that jumping just wasn’t his thing….he would just to please you, but did not fully enjoy it. At this point the jumps were also getting higher and the courses more complicated, so it was only fair to him to start looking at other options. Luckily, my brother had just started to take an interest in horses so Bob would still have lots to keep him going, but be able to go back down to a slower pace.

Therefore…….Horse Shopping Time!!!

I knew I wanted something younger, no older than 12, taller than 15.3hh, a good mind, sound, a gelding, good movement…….oh it gets so complicated!!

An internet add: 3yo grey Saddlebred gelding, should mature 16hh, inquisitive and kind…..

Me: “Ooooo, what a pretty horse!” Uh huh, I hate to admit, that’s how it started.

So we ended up going to see this horse, as we walk down the hill he is standing at the gate….with his foot on it, shaking it….we laugh.

I get on, he is soooooo green, no buck though, smooth trot, can’t yet canter.

Verdict: Not a suitable horse for me at this time.

A week later, “You know, I really liked that horse…..”, “No, really, he was nice looking and had a kind temperament…”

A week later, references checked, trainer spoken to, literally pushed into the trailer….

Meet the, in his mind, crowned prince…Astro Traveller…how innocent looking. (He was named after the grey Saddlebred that General Robert E. Lee rode during the American Civil War)

Okay, we now have a green 3yo paired with a green rider….not the best idea in the world!

Beginnings

This is officially my very first blog post!


I figure that a good starting point will be….well….the beginning. How did I come to have Traveller? When did the horse fever first hit me? Were there others before Trav?

I know these are the questions that must keep everyone up at night, so without any further suspense:

Like the majority of young girls I always dreamed of having my own horse. Living where I do, I have always been surrounded by horsey influences (western and english) and I could just picture myself riding high over the mountain ridge at sunset and then riding under the clock tower into the International ring at Spruce Meadows.

Well, alright, we did live on an acreage and we did have horsey neighbours that were more than willing to have our horses on their property and help us out in every way…..so what was holding us back? My parents decided that, as an eight year old, this was probably a passing phase and soon I would be onto something else. They certainly did not want to pour money and time into a horse just to be stuck with it after I was ‘done’. The deal they proposed was that I had to come up with $500 dollars to help cover the purchase price and prove that I really did want a horse. Looking back, this is obviously quite a trivial amount compared to the actual cost of owning and caring for a horse, but to and eight year old without any job opportunities, it was a fortune. For the next two years, instead of asking for any birthday or Christmas presents, I asked for money for my horse fund—a seemingly impossible feat, but I finally did it!

Now that I had met my parents condition (they will admit now that they never thought I would), it was on to horse shopping! Now, I had taken a year of lessons when I was six, but four years later it was all gone. I hated to admit it, but I loved the thought of riding but the actual getting on an animal the size of a house was a little bit terrifying. So we needed a horse that was very quiet but with enough pep when needed, sound, safe, not too young, not too old, not $10000….and the list went on. I will save you the torture of reading about the search itself and instead introduce the end product….Bob!

A 16 year old (turned out to be 20, but I’ll get to that later) grade gelding who was on the way to slaughter when a rescue organization found him. He was terribly skinny, had awful feet, but had a true heart of gold.

(Very) long story short, with Bob I gained a tremendous amount of confidence and successfully made it up to D2 in pony club, jumping 2’6, going to rallies, having fun with gymkhana, trail riding…..it really was a wonderful introduction to riding.

So, I know this is a blog about Traveller, but I have to give Bob some credit, without him I guarantee I would not have Traveller, and who knows, if I didn’t have such an excellent first horse, I may be out of horses all together.

When I was 11 (I think) I wrote a story about Bob for a local horse publications contest and ended up winning, having my initial story and one other published. One night while sitting at home a man called our house and said that we may have a horse that he had owned years before. After describing the horse and its mannerisms we confirmed that, yes indeed, Bob was this horse! We found out the Bob is actually a registed QH with the name of Border Hopper. This is because, as a foal, he was brought from Florida to Canada……to race. It turns out he was a racing QH who only started 3 times, coming third once, but was then retired from the track because he just didn’t have the heart for it. Oh, and he was born in 1980, making him 20 when we got him. After the track he was passed around a bit and then ended up with this guy where he did some cutting and general ranch work for a few years.

I still have my Bob, now at the ripe old age of 30 he enjoys doing nothing but relaxing in the pasture, going for the occasional walk with my younger cousin, and his most favourite thing of all, eating senior food!

To be continued…