Do You Want a Baseball Bat With That?

My father claims that he was pouring out his heart the other day when my cell phone cut out and he realized he was talking to himself. I find this hard to believe for two reasons.

The first is that my father’s version of ‘pouring out his heart’ includes either reminding me why female drivers should not be allowed on the highways or describing why our government is full of phonies. The second is that, being a horse trainer himself, my father knows that we equine professionals are nearly always in areas with spotty cell phone coverage. Therefore, one should never pour out one’s heart to a trainer on a cell phone.

The cell phone issue has amused me for several years now, mainly because these little technological devices present an anomaly for we horse folks. You see, the average horse trainer is eccentric, introverted, and socially isolated. That’s part of the reason we train horses; we don’t really fit into any other type of employment. Days full of non-verbal connection with four-legged animals suit us perfectly.

Then along came cell phones. Suddenly, our days of talking only to ourselves, our dogs, or our horses now included a ringing telephone with real live people on the other end! Our social isolation went out the door. Our introverted ways were being challenged. We now conducted conversations with prospective clients while sitting on a hay bale or bathing horses. We called in feed deliveries while mucking stalls.

In essence, we were no different than corporate executives who never seemed to take the time to do nothing but swat flies and contemplate what sized saddle to put on the new Arabian in the barn. Next thing we knew, we’d be resembling corporate Americans in other ways, like running to Starbucks at 4pm every day and talking too fast and putting more thought into how we dressed.

For most of us, the transition has been a little awkward. It has presented the opportunity for us to become bona fide businesspeople, a venture we trainers have been reticent to embrace for centuries. Moreover, technological concepts like “cell coverage,” “bandwidth,” or “phone web browsing” all seem terribly advanced and tedious in the face of issues like whether Timothy of alfalfa hay is better. Personally, I’d rather determine if the brand of fly spray I’m currently using on my steeds is actually working than try to figure out what key on my cell phone will create a question mark symbol in a text message.

Until recently, I’ve regarded the cell phone a bit skeptically. Was it a business tool? A means of being more connected to family and friends? An emergency device? Last week, my good buddy Mark provided me the answer we trainers have been seeking for years. We were at a horse show when he excitedly pulled out his new cell phone to show me. It looked like a hockey puck.

“Watch this!,” he said and promptly hurled it against the side of a metal barn. It bounced off and flew into a pile of sawdust. Mark then ran over and jumped up and down on top of it. The new phone, he explained, was guaranteed to be more or less indestructible. It was allegedly waterproof, weather-proof, and vehicle-proof, meaning that Mark could drive over it with his big diesel truck, which he had of course already tried repeatedly. He had also verified its claims by submerging it in water troughs and leaving it in his horse trailer to endure extreme heat. So far, it had been indestructible. The following day, he intended to test its survival under a set of tractor tires, he told me like a giddy child with a new toy.

And in that moment, I came to terms with these little technological devices called cell phones that never seem to work in the areas I desperately need them to. I now understood why they had become such an integral part of we trainers’ lives. We all needed a little amusement, a little something to see if we could crush under our tractors