I have written many times about the dangers of eventing but even I was shocked by a statistic of an accident investigator at a recent inquest of an UK eventing rider death last year. In their opinion, there is of 30% chance of serious injury or death from a somersault fall. The coroner said he intended to write to British Eventing about making the sport safer.

I guess the other statistic we need to determine is the probability of a somersault fall! I always knew I was lucky to survive mine as a teenager but seeing such a number really brought it home to me.

The credit crunch continues and the knock-on impact on the horse world is increasingly evident.

The Horse Trust in Britain is reporting a five-fold increase in enquiries in the last 6 months from horse owners  who are in financial difficulty and asking the charity to help with re-homing. However the charity is receiving reduced donations and have a full allocation of 100+ ponies, horses and donkeys. The daily cost per animal is approx 17 pounds. I’m sure this trend is being seen world-wide.

At the same time, animal welfare groups are urging horse-owners to  think about the costs for your horse during retirement. The campaign organisers are requesting that horse owners in England and Wales complete an anonymous Equine Retirement Questionnaire in an attempt to find out the scale of the problem. This is a very good idea and I can understand why it is being discussed at this time. However with many people worrying about their families and current investments, it’s hard to see many being able to start  a horse pension.

In the US for thoroughbred racing, both betting and purses were all significantly down in February and this follows a year on year trend.

A comment was posted recently on the site asking if we could help stop the mass murder and imprisonment of 33,000 wild horses and burros! The Wild Horse Foundation has a plan that offers a solution. If you do want to help, you should contact Ken Salazar at the Bureau of Land Management at the link below:

http://capwiz.com/madeleinepickens/issues/alert/?alertid=12943361&type=AN

As a massive Cesar Millan fan, I regularly watch the Dog Whisperer episodes on TV. Last week he joined up Horse Whisperer Pat Parelli to work on separate dog and horse problems on an LA ranch. It was great to see the similarities in their approaches to communicating with animals in their own language and modelling their natural behaviour.

I thought the most telling bit of the programme was at the end when they were talking about their work and saying they were really in the people business - as in most cases they are teaching people how to better communicate with their animals. If you haven’t seen the shows, you would expect them to describe themselves as being in the animal business, but you only have to watch a few Dog Whisperer episodes to see this is not the case.

I think for a future episode, they should find a situation involving dogs, horses and children problems. They could then get The Nanny involved as well. I’m sure there would be additional similarities here too.

The winner of the Grand National steeplechase event at the weekend was a 100-1 outsider. Mon Mome was the first 100-1 winner since the famous victory of Foinavon in 1967, when loose horses interfered with the main runners and Foinavon managed to escape trouble from the back of the field and went on to win the race. There have only been five winners of 100-1 odds or more in the 170 year history of the race.

The winning horse was trained by only the second female trainer to win the event. Venetia Williams was also one of the few female riders to have taken part in the race but injured her neck in a fall at the famous Beechers Brook fence.

The horse had only won once in three and a bit seasons and wasn’t in great form either before the race, although he was 10th in the race last year. Well done to the people who managed to pick him out as  a potential winner. I’d be interested to know how many people actually bet on him to win but the bookmakers were very happy with the result.