Equestrian Publications Help Beat February Doldrums Horse Ta es
by Candice C. Dunnigan

This is the time of year that many of us look forward to . . . anything, especially mail. The kind that comes through cyberspace is great, but there is nothing like taking a walk on a grim and chilling winter day to go to the post office or the mailbox and get something besides tax notices and bills, which always seem to be due.

For those of us who keep horses, be it upstate or down, it is especially challenging in February to be positive, motivated, and upbeat while busting out frozen water buckets with a rubber mallet, hauling wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of semi-frozen and sodden manure, and trying to get a grip on the strings of hay bales while wearing gloves that resemble something from a polar expedition. None of the above can be done in a hurry, and always, it seems, winter rushes and crushes the time when it comes to barn chores. Hurry, hurry, hurry, before the sun goes, the thermometer dips, the winds begin to blow again.

So, one of my highlights awaiting me in my snow-dusted mailbox, by the side of a lone windswept road, was the February issue of Horse and Rider. The magazine has been around for several decades. While mainly aiming at a Western market, they have interesting articles, even for a cross-country, trail, and field rider like me. As I stood there in the last warming rays from a dusky sun, what did I flip to but a photograph taken from the front of a three-horse hitch, that could only be Mackinac. Wow! A few pages later, I was viewing the Windermere Hotel and a waiting Carriage Tours team, and beyond that, Dr. Bill Chambers on Market Street was looking back at me.

The article is an interesting one, written by a former summer worker who is now a contributing columnist for the magazine. Her perspective on horses, those mainly of Carriage Tours, was favorable. The sidebar of Carriage Tours facts and figures is good. It’s worth reading, so pick it up if you can, but Island history is a proud one, and the city ban on automobiles was passed in 1898, not 1896.

That same day, my daughter’s United States Pony Club magazine also arrived. The magazine has been around for 50 years. They are highly organized and, although it promotes English riding, the emphasis is on safety, horsemanship, leadership, sponsorship, and stewardship. Here, while downstate in Grass Lake, I’ve become involved in our local chapter as a joint district leader, but I’ve learned many useful, relative “things equestrian” I wish I had known as a kid.

In this season’s issue were “Questions to Ponder.” I’ve adapted a few of them for the readers of Horse Tales and lovers of horses to figure out. The double meanings answers will appear below, so have fun and enjoy. After all, it’s February, even on Mackinac Island, but spring won’t be too far away.

1. Which bone in a horse is like a big gun?

2. How is a row of saddles like a forest?

3. What color of horse is like a big window?

4. Which part of a horse is like a questionnaire to find public opinion?

5. Which part of the horse is like trying to stop a yawn?

6. What kind of jump is like a city in England?

7. What kind of bedding is like a man’s everyday grooming chore?

8. What part of a horse is like a dried-up plant?

9. What part of the horse is like the bottom of your shoe?

10. Which fruit is the stall mucker’s enemy?

11. What part of a fence is an equitation skill?

12. What kind of jump might one keep chickens in?

13. What horse injury is akin to what a girl might wear in her hair?

14. H-S-P means what in examining a horse leg when it’s limping?

15. What color horse is like a January day in Oregon?

16. Can you name the part of a snaffle bit that is like a piece of jewelry?

17. What part of the horse is like an amphibian?

18. Which feed is like an expression of trying to get someone’s attention?

19. What part of you can tell the height of a horse?

20. What bad behavior is like a male deer?

Candice C. Dunnigan is an active member of the American Equestrian Association, the Waterloo Hunt, and the Mackinac Island Horsemen’s Association. Seasonally she resides at Donnybrook and Easterly Cottage.

(Answers: 1. Cannon Bone; 2. They have trees; 3. Bay; 4. Poll; 5. Stifle; 6. Liverpool; 7. Shavings; 8. The wither; 9. Sole; 10. Apple; 11. Standard; 12. Coop; 13. Bow; 14. Heat, Sensitivity, and Pain; 15. Grey; 16. Ring; 17. Frog; 18. Hay; 19. Your hand; 20. A buck.)