(This blog was originally posted on July 13, 2014)
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Photo by Rick Hustead
When I posed
for this photo on my first horse, Geeves, we weren’t planning
to move or go
anywhere, but I insisted on putting on the helmet just in case.
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Tomorrow,
August 1, 2015 will be International
Helmet Awareness Day 2015. For the past couple of weeks, my local tack
shops and favorite equestrian catalogs offered promotional discounts on riding
helmets to encourage riders to invest in and use 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 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 seat-belt 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 (USEF) 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.) As far as I know, 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 and I.
I
confess that I was really looking forward to the day when I would be 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.
Following are
links for more information about Courtney King-Dye, the Riders4Helmets program and
the role of protective headgear in preventing riding-related TBI:
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/.
© 2015
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