Blog :: Horses and Riding
August 2008
Your website does not say what you think it says
The Crossed Sabers/Second Wind Adoption Program (SWAP) website is awesome. By “awesome,” I mean “I could write a book on how not to build a website or establish a business presence based on this one website.” I won’t go into the details here, because, frankly, my opinion of the program being what it is, I am unwilling to say anything that the person behind it could possibly use to improve the site. I hate the thought that she might make the website look legitimate, making it even easier for her to convince people to donate to a program I absolutely would not ever support.
If you think I’m the only one, you should read this thread on the Chronicle Forums. There are over 1,000 posts debating the program’s charitable status, the owner’s ethics and business practices, and negative experiences people have had with the program. I haven’t posted on that thread or verified anything said in that thread, but the sheer volume of discussion should be raising red flags in anyone’s eyes.
But back to the website, because of all the awesome awfulness of the site, the most awesome is this disclaimer (in bold, with my comments in regular text interspersed):
NOTE: Crossed Sabers can not fully guarantee the accuracy of every page on this website which is huge (38,000 files and over 300 pages).
A website as basic as the SWAP site that reaches 38,000 files/300 pages in size is suffering from MAJOR design flaws. What this should be saying to visitors is “I lack any organizational skills and am in over my head with this website.” This is when any reasonable organization would outsource the website and have a professional deal with it. Or, in my experience, most legitimate rescues manage to drum up a volunteer with enough website development experience to tackle the problem. A statement like this tells me there is something wrong in the organization’s infrastructure, and it’s been going on for a long, long time to reach this point.
We do not have the personnel or time to keep it up to date and accurate for every situation as this Stable has always been a dynamic entity, ever changing and improving itself.
Good lord: it’s not even accurate! No professional business I have been in touch with would ever allow inaccurate information about their business to persist on their own website. There are a million and one solutions to this problem, but SWAP hasn’t figured one of them out. You can gloss over the second half of the sentence, because it’s all marketing speak. The important information is in the first half of the sentence, where the program acknowledges they are misrepresenting themselves on the web by failing to maintain accurate information on their own site. That’s… how do people read this sort of thing and still think “I want to donate”?
We do try to make sure each page is up to date and accurate but the best thing to do If you have a question, is email or call us.
What’s that saying about the road to hell and good intentions? Professionals do not “try” to make sure their company-owned and -operated websites are accurate; they make it happen. Sometimes at great expense, but they make it happen.
Additionally Crossed Sabers can not guarantee anything that anyone says about us on line or any where else, we have no control over other people and their websites, forums or ads. I’m certain it is mostly people trying to help us help horses but some things have been grossly inaccurate and did not come from CSS or SWAP.
On the surface, this is a true statement: no one has much control over what anyone else says on the web about them. But the question visitors should be asking is: why, exactly, is this being posted? What has been happening elsewhere to make the site owner this defensive? What are these “gross inaccuracies”? Because I’m me (cynical and suspicious), that sort of statement makes me leap over to Google and start researching. Go ahead: go Google Crossed Sabers or SWAP. See what you learn.
Again, if you have questions about us, our services, our company structure, how we are licensed, how we pay taxes, how we do things or anything at all, please feel free to contact us, call xxx-xxxx-xxxx or email us at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
It’s not hard to extrapolate from the previous sentence to this one and realize that people are questioning the business, their services, their company structure, their licensing, something about their taxes, and how they do things in general. Could a legitimate business be questioned on such a comprehensive front? Probably. Would such questioning stand up for such a length of time that they would feel the need to make a statement like this on their website? Not in my experience.
Also, if you read the COTH thread, you’ll find out some of the responses people have gotten from SWAP when they did contact her with questions about things as basic as the tax deduction she says people can claim when donating their horses. SWAP’s own responses wouldn’t reassure me about the legitimacy of the operation, that’s for sure.
To clear up some serious confusion, all horses that have been placed into homes through SWAP have done so by an adoption contract and application and if they were sent to another rescue for placement were done so with a signed contract that governs care, adoption, release of ownership and governs resale thus protecting the horse forever from slaughter, abuse and neglect. If any past owners would like to see any of those documents, we have all the originals in our files.
More practices that must have been questioned by the general public if such a big deal is being made about it here. If I were considering donating to or working with this organization in any way, this would be making me very nervous: is there anything people aren’t questioning? And why would horses donated to SWAP be moved to other rescues? Is that common? What happens to the fee the person donating paid to SWAP—does it go to the new rescue? Does it stay at SWAP? If it stays at SWAP, then SWAP basically pockets the money and hoists the responsibility of dealing with the horse on another rescue. That would be… well, you can draw your own conclusion. More questions are being raised than this “disclaimer” answers, though.
Any and all original owners of horses that have been released to other rescues have been informed of such actions as a courtesy, not because it was a contractual requirement, because once a horse is donated, it is owned by SWAP and Crossed Sabers with no contractual conditions.
Hear that? Once you donate a horse, SWAP owes you nothing. Not a thing. They can do any darn thing they want with the horse, including foisting it off on another organization, and you have absolutely no rights. Now, I realize that some rescues take in abuse cases, and in those cases you could argue that the prior owner shouldn’t have a right to anything to do with their horse once it’s surrendered. But SWAP likes to make a big deal about how people donate these great, upper-level horses (with adoption fees to match their advertised talents, I might add) to benefit SWAP. And SWAP’s response is to maybe, if they feel like doing you a favor, tell you about the situation your horse winds up in. If peoples’ eyes don’t pop a little at this part of the disclaimer, I am going to lose all faith in humanity.
All programs and services listed on this website, including SWAP is a part of Crossed Sabers Stable which has been licensed in WV for the last 12 years.
Not according to the COTH thread. I haven’t researched it personally, but I’ve seen several posts on that thread referencing failed attempts to find this licensing. Hearsay, yes. But there’s enough hearsay—true or not—floating around that if I were considering doing anything with this organization, you bet I’d do the legwork to find out if it’s actually registered or not. There’s no way I’d accept a “we say so” from the organization on this one.
Additional Impressions
This entire disclaimer is defensive. You should always be suspicious when a person or organization says “don’t listen to anyone else, only listen to me.” That’s cultish talk and often means the person is afraid of what other people have to say, usually because other people have the twin forces of reason and evidence on their side. Now, very few organizations have 100% positive feedback about them out there on the web, so that fact that someone, somewhere questions a business doesn’t necessarily mean the business is bad. Legitimate businesses understand this and deal with it professionally. Questionable businesses overreact and attempt to erase all criticism, disparage all nay-sayers, and drown out anything negative with protests of their innocence. I apparently can’t quit with the cliches today, so you know what they say about people who protest the loudest, right?
The whole disclaimer reads to me like a someone typed it while staring bug-eyed at their computer monitor and frothing at the mouth. Maybe “frothing at the fingers” would be more accurate. Anyway: what it says to me is probably the exact opposite of what the person writing it thinks it says. I can only hope that when other people read it, they start asking questions too. Maybe decide to do some research. Research is good.
Me, I don’t have to go that far. The website is screaming “stay away” at me in big, bold, 48-point red-letter font, and who am I to disagree?
I am only going to get myself in trouble
Remember a couple months ago when I posted the link to Chan Chan Man, an OTTB listed on LOPE?
He’s still available. And his pictures look as good as they did before. The same trainer also has the awfully-named Magic Crypto, who I would really love to see standing level and moving. And he has Bradluck, who I don’t like quite so much in that picture, but based on Chan Chan Man and Magic Crypto would want take a look at, because it seems like this trainer tends to have horses of a similar type to what I like. If only it were spring already.
Also on the site: Speedy. Couldn’t pinpoint why I keep checking to see if he’s still available, but I do. I like him.
And check out Littlebigred, a chestnut gelding who is fit, fit, fit. Nice looking guy; imagine him with some let down time and then some work to build muscles more for sport than racing. He would be something special—and it looks like he knows it, too.
This girl looks very kind in these photos, plus you can see someone has started retraining on her. Always a plus.
I’ve had one person already tell me I’m crazy for wanting an OTTB (actually, when she heard I was thinking about it, she said she’d give me one of her horses for free first… which I think comes down to “you’re crazy; let me save you from yourself”). But I’m not looking at OTTBs because they’re cheap. I like TBs, even (maybe especially) when they get a little worried. I’ve gotten along well with the TBs I’ve ridden in the past. Of course, those were all trained to some degree—an OTTB fresh off the track would be something else entirely. But I think that’s a matter of being pragmatic about it: plenty of let-down time, some professional training when he comes back in to work, and close work with a trainer/instructor to ensure things continue to go well. We’ll see. I’m not buying now anyway, so I might as well enjoy the lanky guys and dream big.
Olympic Eventing: Finals
My boss is awesome and let me take the morning off so I could watch finals. I love my job.
Absolutely amazing weekend for the German team, which took home team and individual gold. All around great riders on the team with lovely horses. Hinrich Romeike did a superb job all the way through and made it look easy.
Australia finished second in the team finals, and Great Britain took third.
The US had some nice rounds, but was too far back to move up at all as a team.
Gina Miles was a superstar—the only US rider with a clean round in the team show jumping, and then she came back for a double clean in the individual. At that point, she was sitting in fourth with the top three individual riders to go.
I wasn’t very optimistic on her medal chances, because the individual course looked pretty straightforward. Lots of room and a very generous time allowed meant that riders could set themselves and their horses up for success. There was no need to cut tight corners or try to catch up time in the longer runs between fences, which meant a pretty even pace all the way through. Early on, it looked like most of the riders were going to go clean.
The closer the order got to the medal contenders, however, the more rails started coming down. Pressure from trying to hold on to whatever spot the had? Mental and physical exhaustion from the weekend catching up with them?
Megan Jones rode after Gina and dropped a rail; Gina was guaranteed bronze. That left German riders Ingrid Klimke and Hinrich Romeike to go, and they each had a rail in the team show jumping round. Ingrid dropped an unfortunate rail in her rounds, putting her in fourth overall and giving Gina the silver and the US its only eventing medal. Hinrich, despite a few rubs, rode a clear round and brought home his double gold.
Great event all around, with courses set up to let the riders show off what they could do without overfacing the competitors.
Now, someone tell the riders that these bug-face looking helmets are absolutely hideous, please. It’s been driving me crazy.
Olympic Eventing: Cross Country
Once again: phenomenal job by NBC and Mircosoft’s Silverlight technology to deliver the live online coverage. I am not a Microsoft fan, but even I can’t quibble with this. The coverage has been absolutely amazing: great quality video, good quality sound, and only a few blips here and there in the video feed.
I know people have had problems with Silverlight, but it’s worked almost flawlessly on my machine. Also, people were complaining about commercials, but I don’t think I had a single commercial interrupt the events all weekend. I expected to see them, especially when others started griping about them, but for some reason I seem to be commercial-free. Sweet.
As far as the eventing itself: some absolutely amazing rides and a few scary rides. There were a couple falls, but everyone (horses and riders) walked away. The course was beautifully designed with some very technical questions in it that really made the difference in ride times. No one made the time allowed, so it sounds like the cross country ride is going to be a huge factor in the final standings. Certainly the rankings changed significantly from what they were after the dressage phase.
The US team is probably disappointed right now. Amy Tryon had a fall and was eliminated, and a couple riders had refusals. They were tenth of eleven teams when Phillip Dutton anchored the team. He did a fantastic job, moving the US up to 7th going into show jumping. However, unless total disaster strikes all the other teams, the US is well out of team medal contention. Gina Miles may be in contention for an individual medal; I don’t know how much standings usually change in the show jumping phase, but she is only six points off the first place rider (Hinrich Romeike for Germany); that’s just two rails and some change, and there will be a second round of show jumping to determine final individual placings. Doesn’t seem like it’s out of the question for her to medal.
Mary King turned in a great anchor ride for Great Britain; it was a lovely, accurately-ridden course. Shane Rose for Australia also performed well in the anchor position, bringing home the fastest time of the day, which must have felt fantastic after his rough dressage test. Germany should be celebrating their four clean rounds, with riders all under eighteen time faults (their fifth rider had 40+ points, but his score is dropped).
Current top three standings are Germany in first (158.10), Australia (162.00), and Great Britain (173.70). Italy is in fourth with 198.40. Like I said, I don’t know how many show jumping faults are typical for an eventer, but I would be very surprised indeed to see the top three change. They might change the order amongst themselves, but I would be surprised to one of them drop off the podium. Unless, of course, something happens tomorrow in the jog and horse(s) are pulled for soundness reasons.
From what I can tell with the time differences, the jog will be Monday evening our time. The actual showjumping phase will be Tuesday morning our time (Monday evening Hong Kong). I would love to be able to watch it (and the first phases of the regular show jumping and dressage) live, but I’m not sure how thrilled my boss will be when I ask him if I can come in at 1 for the rest of the week. I think I’ll be lucky if I can talk him into just one day.
There will still be the archived video on NBC, though, so I’m sure I’ll survive. By the way: I noticed with the eventing dressage video that it takes a day or two for the permanent archive video to show up, so if you check for the cross country video and it’s not there yet, give it some time.
June 2008
Blog Carnival Coming Soon
You still have a few days to get submission in for the Blog Carnival! Monday’s coming quick, though, so don’t wait too long!
If you’re not sure what a Blog Carnival is, check out the last one at Rising Rainbow. The next one will be posted here, on July 1.
Everyone is welcome to submit, whether you’re a regular contributor or new to the carnival. These are a great way to find favorite posts on familiar blogs and be introduced to new blogs. Bloggers, they’re a great way to find new readers!