Wildfire smoke impacts Traverse City Horse Shows
Traverse City Horse Shows is the latest equestrian event to be hit by the adverse effects of nature this summer. While England’s high goal polo season was hindered by a heatwave of record-breaking temperatures earlier this month, the horse show in Northern Michigan, USA has had competition halted this week by hazardous air conditions generated by Canada’s wildfires.
While the Air Quality Index hit the highest tier on Friday of ‘301 and above’ classed as ‘hazardous’ on Airnow.gov, rain arrived to improve conditions on Saturday morning. The unpredictability of the situation saw organizers make bold but necessary decisions. “USEF [the United States Equestrian Federation] laid out some guidelines for this in the past, and we’ve kind of followed those guidelines,” said Event Director, Matt Morrissey. “Wednesday was a beautiful day here in the afternoon. This smoke came in. We delayed the show in the morning to not start early so it gave us a chance to come in to assess the air quality. When we realized it wasn’t going to improve, we canceled the show on Thursday and we did the same thing on Friday.”
Competition resumed this Saturday morning for national classes but Friday evening the show announced ‘Following this week’s air quality disruptions and resulting schedule adjustments, all FEI competition scheduled for Saturday and Sunday has been canceled, including Saturday’s $116,000 World Wide Technology CSI3* Grand Prix.’
“After the second day of smoke, we decided to cancel the FEI competition because those classes place greater physical demands on the horses,” Matt said. The decision was unprecedented for the Michigan venue. “It’s unfortunate that it’s happening in Canada,” said Matt. “It’s so widespread there. We’ve never had to cancel a show because of smoke.”
Dinette Neuteboom, Founder of HorseGrooms, is working at the event, and explained the challenges from a groom’s perspective as smoky conditions over the last two days created a difficult conundrum.
“The horses need to move,” she said. “You’re going to choose between two bad things – leaving them in a stall all day or moving them and maybe inhaling a little bit more smoke. You cannot do strenuous work. You just have to keep it really light – hand walking or tack walking only.”
The subject of nebulizers came under discussion. “There is a debate over whether or not nebulizers should be used,” said Dinette. “There is advice out there that it is best not to use them, as the horse may inhale more deeply and push the air particles further into the lungs. But a colleague of mine at the show here, whose horse has respiratory issues, was told by her vet that the nebulizer would be beneficial.”
Horses’ welfare is at the forefront for grooms and staying indoors, when they need to care for their charges, is not an option. “It was really crazy and hazy yesterday,” said Dinette. “I heard from some grooms that they got headaches…you get a dirty, smoky taste in your mouth, and could definitely feel it in your throat.”
With conditions improving and nature willing, the show will go on. “We have 13 weeks of FEI competition – and ten weeks in a row,” said Matt. “We had some discussions with the FEI and USEF on changing the schedule.They were flexible and we’ll start up again next week with FEI.”
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