26/ MAY 2020 THE RIDER COVID-19 Focuses Attention on Biosecurity


By Karen Dallimore COVID-19 hasn’t really changed


life for Steve McConnell. It’s almost business as usual, barely missing a stride. He’s still even forging ahead with his own late April wedding plans. As a 34-year veteran farrier based in


Waterdown, he’s trimming fewer horses under tighter biosecurity measures, but he still wakes up with a smile every day, knowing that he’s doing a job he loves. Steve doesn’t wear a mask; it’s just


not practical and basically useless while doing his job. Instead, he’ll be careful not to touch his face and he’ll sanitize his hands and tools after each barn so that they’ll be dry and ready for the next call. During his training in England last fall he took a course in equine biosecurity and had already implemented good habits, but the pandemic has heightened aware- ness of their importance. Sure, it’s a bit different at the barns


now but, “things are fairly normal, day- to-day,” admits Steve. “There just aren’t as many people coming and going.” He arranges his schedule to accommodate staying out of the way of the barn staff, looking to reduce contact with people. That may mean working in the afternoon at a self-care stable, allowing the people to finish their work in the morning. He doesn’t work alone either, pre- ferring to keep a conscientious handler at


the length of a lead rope, an interpretation of social distancing for equestrians. And he won’t be catching horses any time soon; they need to be in and ready. “It’s been a great way to educate


clients about proper etiquette,” said Steve. Now, when he asks that no one walk through an area where he’s working or not hang out too close while he’s un- derneath a horse, they listen. These days, Steve is doing two


barns a day at most. In terms of business, it means doing less horses in a day. “It’s costing more to earn less,” Steve told The Rider.


One of the greatest challenges has


been keeping the owners involved. “They can’t always be there,” said Steve, who will send a quick text to directly contact owners. “This all takes time.” The majority of his clients, encom-


passing all breeds of performance horses, are still working their horses and are still getting shoes. In some cases, it may mean stretching out trims or resets, maybe extending a four to five-week trim schedule out to six or seven weeks, for example. He has offered his services to fellow


farriers in the event that they are affected by COVID-19 and can’t attend their clients. Two farriers have taken him up on the offer so far, thankfully not due to illness but due to quarantine restrictions, and in both cases, he pulled the shoes to help maintain the horses until those farriers can come back. It is common for farriers to look after each other in times of need.


It’s that community


spirit that Steve believes will help the equestrian community come through this pandemic. “We just want to do what’s best for the horses,” said Steve. “Horse people want to help horse people. That’s what is going to get us through this.”


©Words For Hire 2020


COVID-19 a Catalyst for Future Plans


By Karen Dallimore When a horse person says


they’re retiring, you can assume that they will still be working, just doing something different. For Margaret Godson, COVID- 19 was a catalyst, pushing ahead retirement plans that were al- ready in the works. Her stable, Myrddin Eques-


trian, came into being in 1978. At first, Margaret catered to pony club and A-circuit hunters while continuing to event her own horses. Through the 80’s, Mar- garet focused more on eventing, introducing a working student program, alternative therapy treatments and centered riding to her students, expanding to over 70 horses. In the 90’s her number of


adult clients and recreational rid- ers increased; in 1999 she moved to Erin and began to focus more on improving connections with the horse, staying on the leading edge of equine therapies such as Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), commonly known as ‘tap- ping’, while continuing to show- case eventing. As a tenant at her current lo-


cation, Margaret has been work- ing through, “a rough couple of months.” The property changed hands at the beginning of the year, leaving her with all of the maintenance duties that the pre- vious owners had addressed. When she added all the extra physical work on top of teaching 25 to 30 hours a week as well as the administration of the farm and trying to ride a few horses, even with the help of staff it was becoming a huge burden. Then, along comes COVID-


19. More than 67 percent of her income evaporated overnight. The business is cyclical, she ex-


plained. April and May, October and November are the biggest lesson income months that carry the rest of the year. She still had to pay staff to look after the horses. Yes, she said you can bor- row $40K from the government, which would keep things running for 3 ½ months, but the losses would be greater than that and you still had to pay that back. That left her eyeing up her


retirement income to keep Myrd- din afloat but Margaret was reaching the point of exhaustion. The horses in her care are show horses: clipped, blanketed, work- ing hard; throwing them out with a round bale wasn’t an option. “This is crazy,” she thought.


“At 64, I can’t go into debt.” Drawing on her experience,


Margaret knows that she’ll get through this. When she started out, Northern Telecom ‘crashed’. She lost half of her business overnight when her clients lost their jobs. It took two years to re- cover. She knows that it will take at least that long to recover from COVID-19. She was also instru- mental in fighting the MPAC de-


Your horse has given you a lifetime of love and it is hard to walk away when the time has come to say goodbye


Honouring the life of your horse.


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cision that deemed riding establishments to be considered as commercial instead of residential, a move that would have caused huge hardship to the equine industry in Ontario. This experience has helped her to look rationally, to not make a “panic decision” in the face of the current pan- demic. For her, the plan has meant joining forces


with another barn so that they could both keep going. She is currently relocating 12 show horses to another stable whose clientele was halved by the COVID-19 restrictions, filling their empty stalls. Margaret has re-homed her schooling horses to people who love them and for her two oldest ‘schoolies’ have found well-deserved re- tirement homes as “lawn mowers”. Despite a history of protectionism in the


equestrian world, Margaret predicts that a unified industry will be the key to survival, advising other equestrians to, “form relationships that could help both parties.” She is looking ahead to when a vaccine for


COVID-19 is developed as a reasonable timeline for some sort of ‘normal’ to return. “That’s the only timeline we have. In between, anything can happen. No one knows what they’re income is going to look like.” Meanwhile, Margaret, a certified Level 3


eventing coach, will ‘retire’ to freelance coaching and developing a small EFT practice. “Tapping requires a lot of energy to do,” said Margaret. Now that she doesn’t have to run a barn, that extra time and energy will be available.


©Words For Hire 2020


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