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| Photo by Rick Hustead When Geeves and I posed for this photo, we weren't planning to move or go anywhere...but I put on my helmet just in case! |
Yesterday (July 12, 2014) was
International Helmet Awareness Day 2014. Local tack shops and equestrian
catalogs offered promotional discounts on riding helmets to encourage riders to
invest in and encourage use of this important safety equipment.
Helmets
are probably the most important equipment that equestrians use when they ride and
work around horses. You don’t absolutely need a saddle to ride a horse. Many
people, including Gaia Horsemanship founder and instructor Ellen Cochrane, can
and do forgo a bridle and reins (http://www.gaiahorsemanship.co.uk/)
when they ride. I would love to do that one day, too. But ride without
protective headgear? No. Way.
When I was about
10 years old, someone I know went temporarily blind after falling off of a
pony. She wasn’t wearing a helmet. That was my wake-up call, as well as that of
everyone else where I rode at that time. From that day on, I (and everyone else
at the stable) wore protective headgear. For me, putting on a hard hat before I
get on a horse is as automatic as fastening my seatbelt when I got into a car. Much
of the professional and amateur equestrian community received their big wake-up
call about helmet awareness when former Olympian Courtney King-Dye sustained a
traumatic brain injury after she came off a young horse during a schooling
session in 2010. As I recall, she wasn’t even working on particularly advanced dressage
movements at the time; the youngster stumbled, she fell off and landed beneath
him. King-Dye wasn’t wearing a helmet at the time and fractured her skull and
suffered a traumatic brain injury as a result of the accident. If an experienced
and talented Olympic rider could get hurt like that, so could any of us.
Like so many
things in life, it is very difficult to change a known behavior that we have
been doing for most of our lives. After all, there is something very romantic
and liberating about the image of galloping a horse with your hair billowing
out behind you. I just can’t imagine doing that anymore. After witnessing a
fall that temporarily blinded someone very close to me, and hearing my dad (a
retired neurologist) constantly telling me how dangerous horses and riding are
(yes, they can be), I err on the side of caution. In fact, caution is an early
and very well-established known in my subconscious mental script.
In
light of Ms. King-Dye’s accident, in 2013 the United States Equestrian
Federation (www.usef.org) decreed that all
dressage competitors from introductory to Grand Prix must wear approved GPA
titanium helmets at local and national competitions. (There went my fantasy
about wearing the coat and top hat.) Even though the international show
organization, Fédération Équestre Internationale (FEI), does not currently
have a similar mandate, riders are seen sporting helmets more and more
frequently at the international competitions. Charlotte Dujardin, the dressage
champion at the 2012 Olympics, won team (United Kingdom) and individual gold medals, and she wore a helmet instead of the
traditional top hat. In fact, she was the only competitor I saw who made this
choice, although she certainly didn’t have to. I think that must have been
another game-changing moment for the Riders4Helmets campaign: If an Olympic
champion chooses to wear a certified helmet in competition, so can you.
I
confess that I was really looking forward to the day when I would be a good
enough a rider to be eligible to compete in the Prix St. George (and above)
dressage classes. Not just because I wanted to ride canter pirouettes, tempi changes,
passage and piaffe, but also because I wanted to be able to wear the top-hat-and-tails
that dressage fashion riders sport in these upper-level competitions. (By the
way, that is the only “fashion” or look that really interests me.) However, I
am not prepared to sacrifice my health and well-being and (hopefully) many more
years of enjoyment working with and riding my horse to wear a garment that
would not protect me if the worst ever happened.
For more
information about Courtney King-Dye, the Riders4Helmets program and the role of
protective headgear in preventing riding-related TBI, read http://www.dressage-news.com/?p=5307,
http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20140709/PC20/140709363
and http://www.dressage-news.com/?p=9828.
Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in
Southern California. She graduated with honors from the
Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about
Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.
© 2014
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