OCTOBER 1997 BACK ISSUE
Part of Horse Previews Magazine website. Posted on 10/1/97; 10:00:00 AM.
Flies, Damn Lice, and Statistics
The Horse "Industry"Government accountants and staticians paint a rosy picture of the 1996 Horse Industry as a $25 billion dollar business. That's a Bil before the Lion. If the equine fountain of money is overflowing, I'd like to fill our trough, but I'm wondering what color ink that $25 billion is. Out here at Red Ink Ranch our trough's at low ripple. I'm more of a weed cultivator than a business innovator, so I might need a tutorial workshop to align that preposterous number with our small-time horse operation.
Our Red Ink herd includes a couple of mares and a dispassionate stud named Bullet Proof (true son of Cannon Fodder). His bottom line is a horse of ill repute. He can't seem to get along with our tax return, no matter how hard we try to sell him. I listen to our neighbor, the Tax Attorney, who tends to align all events with tax mandates. He can't figure out why I frequent pawn shops like he visits jewelry stores. I have horses, he doesn't. He owns a vintage 1964 Ford Mustang with a grill emblem on its front end that's worth way more than my stud. Misfortune breeds expenditure, like last winter when a stupid motorist slid off the road through 200 foot of our horse fence, demolishing three posts and two panels of the stud pen. No apology note, no nothing, just skid marks and rusty paint chips left behind in the dead of night. Our herd roams loose before dawn onto the neighbor's property, and old Bullet Proof trys to breed the Mustang grill emblem before he eats most of the pinstripping off the cherry red, showroom condition Ford. Red is the color he recognizes. An incident like that can trip you into unlimited budget mode. Our horses own us.
According to our federal government, the median yearly income of all American households is $36,000. (Around Spokane it's $34,567.) The median of all horse owning (or is that owned?) families is $60,000. Around Spokane, where 40% of the jobs are $14,000 or less and the horse highway is fraught with potholes, I'd like to find a median I could stay right of. 14% of horse owning families earn less than $25,000. 38% earn less than $50,000 and 64% earn less than $75,000. Where is the percent category for horse owned families "losing their shirts?" They say 21% of all horse owning families earn more than $100,000. Where are these big time operators? I'm looking to hone in on these folks to purchase old Bullet Proof. He's my "business" problem. I can't get an offer decent enough to reclaim the saddle I pawned to feed him last winter. Innovation isn't my option.
Ever so often, hidden points of contention crop up on the government's idea of a Statistical Equine ShangriLa, where the horses roam and there is no manure. Like last summer when the oldest daughter fails the entrance exams for Vet School but gets a scholarship to UW Med School instead...before she runs off with the Master Card and a Montana bronc rider from the Spokane Interstate Fair. I'll tell you, there's a little daub of manure on your ShangriLa. A company called TRW informs us of their whereabouts along the rodeo circuit via debits for gas, food, and lodging. Where do I enter this on our business ledger? No failure to innovate dramatically increased that cost of operation.
After the stupid motorist incident, with following litigation and damage settlement for the attorney's Mustang, my insurance agent insisted I "upgrade" my fencing. Which I did. Disgruntled & paranoid, I electrofied so much fence that the WWP exponential utility bill tripped the Ag Alert Alarm at Treasury's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms indicating a potential marijuana grow operation. When the squad car pulled up the driveway to surveil and investigate, I had to disconnect the Parmak Precision Fence Charger for the police. So the stud gets loose and eats the pinstripping off the rear end of their vehicle around the place where the "Sheriff" decal used to be. Fortunately, no mountable emblems or hood ornaments teased him. Otherwise the fines might have gone infinite. That whole insurance deal grounded out my budget.
Once you're in this glorious horse "industry" how do you sustain it? According to the American Horse Council there are about 2 million of us Americans blissfully owning nearly 7 million horses generating the $25 billion dollar figure. Profits optimize through innovation. Complete financial terms were not disclosed, but Red Ink Ranch is out here on the short end of the stick juggling a rubber check book way shy of those figures. I'm buffering my budget from a herd reared to sub-optimize. Where is the money? I use a lot of guesswork just to fantasize the color of black ink.
Further statistical breakdown by the bureaucrats reveals about 3 million horses are used for recreation while another 4 million are for show, farm, ranch, service, sport, or wheresoever. 725,000 horses comprise the racing and race horse breeding section of the industry. This statistic compares with over 100,000 Thoroughbred horses in Japan, where they go goofy for gambling at the race tracks. This might be why every fellow you meet on the trail over here thinks he has a speed horse fast enough to compete overseas. It's my innovative dream to race Bullet Proof in the Orient for glory and profit. One thing for sure, he's old, but he's slow.
Economic statistics support conclusions like: your average horse owner has 3.5 horses, each representing $3,500 in the market place, totalling assets of $12,500. No damned lice. Maybe the officials crunching these numbers need more time on the business end of a manure fork. The fly in their ointment is the cost of $1,000 a year to maintain just one of our hayburners. Bullet Proof exists at economic nadir. I could barely afford to drive him to the last Hermiston Sale, where a guy in the parking lot offered to trade me a 2-Wheel ATV (a 3-Wheeler, one flat) with a scorched valve and a konked driveline. I tersely declined out of masochism. Returning from the no-sale, my truck vapor locks on the Freeway exit. Before the tow rig shows up Police strap $86 worth of tickets on me for an expired horse trailer license. I could go to court and mitigate by pleading not guilty of a failure to sub-optimize, but my bartender says otherwise. I've seen the manure, show me the money.
Bob Howdy, PhD
Foreman, Red Ink Ranch
