Thursday, May 16, 2019

After obsessing about rain for months, I can't believe I didn't mention it when we finally got some. We a good rain last week and then both Saturday and Sunday we had thunderstorms. Not bad, but with a couple of hours of good steady rain. I thought, "Ah! Finally, the rainy season is started." Nope. Since Sunday it's been dry, hot and humid with very little breeze, all under a Sahara dust haze. (I've written about Sahara dust before.)

I tried to snorkel at Playa Pastillo yesterday. 

I've always loved Pastillo but we didn't go there a lot. It was half-an-hour drive away and Shacks Beach was a five-minute walk. Since we moved from Shacks last summer, Pastillo is now the closest beach to us. Coda and I walk there a lot. 

Several years ago my dive buddy Darryl and I dove there just to see what is there. Honestly, we didn't find much. But we never got to the far east end of the beach. We suspected it was better than where we'd been but somehow we just never got back to it. 

Walking there with Coda so frequently, I've learned a lot more about the beach and the water. I know there is reef out there and not too far off shore. On good days I can see the darker areas in the water that indicate reef or rocks, something other than sand, which shows as lighter green or blue. 

This beach faces almost due north. It gets the brunt of whatever the Atlantic is throwing our way. It too rough to snorkel most days. I watched the waves for the past few days getting flatter and flatter, more and more inviting. 

A bigger problem than waves out in the water is getting in and out. There is nice sandy bottom along most of the shoreline, which is a much better entrance than climbing over rocks especially if there are any waves at at all. But because of the shape and slope of the beach, there is a wicked undertow. The undertow undermines your footing in the sand, making it hard to stand and walk in and out. 

As I thought about it later, I realized this is a perfect example of "he who hesitates is lost." If I had just plunged in, moved out beyond the surf zone to where I could float, put on my fins, and swam out, I would have been fine. Instead, I stood there analyzing the whole scene, in the exact wrong spot - and got knocked down by the one big(ger) wave of the day. Since I was there alone, no buddy, not another soul on the beach, it kinda freaked me out. I abandoned the idea of snorkeling there, at least for that day. 

This morning Pastillo was back to its beautiful more-wave-than-I-want-to-deal-with self. Snorkeling will wait for another day. 

This week Elaine (and Chocolate) did an extended radio/video interview about Horses of Hope. It included a demonstration therapy session with Sebastian, one of her clients and first-time-ever rides for Madeline Rivera, the reporter, and Iraida Hernández, a psychologist. Both got their first close up view of equine therapy and it's benefits. To say they were impressed is an understatement. I said to Paola, one of our volunteers, "I hope you're ready to be busy!"

Iraida, the psychologist, had never ridden a horse, had never been around horses, was afraid of horses. Now she's hooked1

We can't wait to see the finished edit. It will be posted on Facebook. We'll let you know when.

April 15, 2019

Tax day. Ours are done and filed.

So, horses. First of all, our horses are just fine. They are enjoying their "new" digs. They like have so much room to graze in.

Horses of Hope, our therapeutic riding center, is up and running, albeit more slowly than we thought it would.

Last fall. the government of Puerto Rico disbanded the two mounted police divisions on the island as a cost saving measure, pretty much with no guidelines for what would  happen with the horses. First we heard they were going to be sold for $25 each. Then we heard they were to be donated to non=profit organizations that did work in the community. Early in October, Elaine and Marie went to Bayamon (a city in the San Juan Metro area) to look at the horses, evaluate them, and put in a request.

It wasn't much of an evaluation. The horses were in stalls. The only way Elaine could see the horses move was a handler brought them out of the stalls and walked them up and down the aisle. Okay, based on the best information they had, Elaine and Marie chose four. When they got home, Elaine wrote a request for those four animals. The response was zero None. Zip. Nada. Between October and December Elaine emailed and called numerous times with the same result: no response.

Then on late in the afternoon of Thursday, January 3, 2019, she got an email from ASG, the government surplus agency. She could apply for the horses. The application deadline was Thursday, January 10 - one week. January 3 was the Thursday before Three Kings Day, arguably the biggest holiday of the year in Puerto Rico, an island that loves its holidays. Because January 6, Three Kings Day, was on Sunday, the official holiday was Monday. But many people, including pretty much everybody from ASG also took Friday off. That meant there was no one to talk to or ask questions of until Tuesday. It also meant two working days to assemble more than 17 pages of documentation supporting our application. Since one of the biggest sticking points was financial stability, since we are a new organization, Elaine also had to secure pledges of financial support.

ASG gave her a little leeway and she got the application in. Two people came out and inspected our "facility." They were okay with just about everything except the fact that we had no shade/shelter. The polices horses are used to being in stalls, not turned out, and they need shade. So we build two shade areas, one here on our property, one on the church property where we actually do therapy. They seemed okay with that. Beyond that, every week, sometimes every day, brought a new round of paperwork to be submitted, all with ridiculously tight deadlines. Elaine always complies. At the same time there was no information coming back about what or when we might hear about any horses we might get.

I will say this for the people from ASG: I really think they're doing the best they could with what they had. With no guidelines in place and minimal resources, they had to make up the process as they went along. It became one of the biggest bureaucratic CYA of all time. And to be honest, not without reason. Everybody, from the police officers who used to ride these horses (who were fired when the units were disbanded) to PETA to the "horse people" on the island (many of whom want the horses) to those of us legitimately trying to acquire the horses to other government agencies, is looking over their shoulder. Pretty much no matter what they do, they are pretty sure something is going to bite them in the ass.

To complicate all of this further, some of the horses were obtained with federal grant money. That means the Feds have to sign off on any plan to re-home those horses. They figure those horses won't be available until summer. 

In what has become the SOP Elaine got a message about the 1st of April that said "tomorrow" is your one chance to come see the horses. So off she went again to Bayamon. When she got there she was told "they" believe we can only support two horses so we're only getting two. Fortunately, the two that we want are not Federal horses and should be available "immediately," or at least before summer.

On April 11 a radio station published an online story about the treatment - or mistreatment - of the horses. Again, in fairness, the horses were getting minimal level care - grain, hay, stalls cleaned out. but these are well-trained horses that are used to being out and worked everyday. They have now been standing in stalls (granted, big stalls, but stalls none-the-less) for more than six months. They have no turn out, no exercise. It is criminal. Again, the people on the ground are not the ones ultimately responsible. Whoever in the government/legislature who decided to do this with no provision for how is ultimately responsible.

Elaine got a call just before the news article was published asking if she would come to Bayamon on the 23rd of April to sign the contract. Then last week, after the article hit, they asked if she could come "tomorrow." Uh, no. "How about Tuesday?" Well, send me a copy of the contract so I can read it.

Mostly, the contract was okay. She did insist they add a paragraph that said ASG guarantees the horses are in good health and another insisting they turn over all records of their care, medical, hooves,feed, etc. It took some doing, but in large part because they were feeling the media pressure, they agreed and agreed to hurry the changes to the contract.

Whew! The upshot of all this is, today Elaine went to San Juan and signed the contract for two horses. She also got to see the care records in Bayamon (we'll get them when we get the horses) and talk to one of the police officers remaining to care for the horses. (His horse is one of the ones we're getting.) And, while she was there the vet - who is also one of our vets - came to vaccinate the horses, something Elaine has been insisting on.

Now we have to make arrangements to get them moved from Bayamon to here net week. ASG wants this to be a done deal! After the bad press, they need a good news story.

We are excited about it. We've got some prep to do but we'll be ready for the new arrivals.