I have finally completed a project that I dreamed up way back in 2010, when the internet was still in it’s childhood. Or maybe its early 20’s, honestly I’m not exactly sure how long Al Gore’s internet has been around. At this point, I think Internet may be middle aged.
But regardless of all that, I’ve had this dream for a really long time, but I never quite had the technical skills to pull it off. But, I’ve worked really really hard, and so I’m pleased to finally announce:
Equine TimeLine
Which you already were aware of, because you likely saw the title of this post.
(I’ve heard the appropriate amount of times to repeat something is three.)
I build a website to track horses. You could think of it like a horse CarFax. It’s about time there was a way to track the actual history of horses, instead of just little blurbs written by horse sellers. It’s currently in its beta mode, as I make changes, so please go check it out, make a profile, create a horse, start tracking. If you could do just one thing for me, the horse blogger you’ve maybe been following for years, or maybe this is the first thing you’ve ever seen from me, but just this one thing, please do this. I need feedback in order to continue to improve it. I might think it’s the bee’s knees, but there could be some obvious flaw that my pea brain isn’t seeing, and feedback would be greatly appreciated. Plus, it’s going to be super useful, and now I’m going to detail all the ways it’s super useful, and it should be a standard in the horse industry.
Now let’s get started.
A Complete Timeline of Every Horse
My main goal – a complete history of every horse. Users enter in horse information to build up the history. Recording shows is an obvious one, but I’m talking about deeper than that. What about meaningful training sessions? Or the clinics you took him to? All of the trail rides he’s been on? Or times your horse babysat your little niece, and you just know he’d be perfect for a family with kids. These are all meaningful events.
Users can list horses for sale, and that history is the sale ad. How easy is that? People can literally just check out the history of the horse and decide if its right for them.
When the horse sells, that record transfers to the new owner. The new owner will now have the history of the horse and be able to keep adding on to it. There will never be any confusion of what the horse knows or doesn’t know, or where the horse has been. It’s proof that your horse is what you’re saying it is. There’s no need to wonder what kind of treatment or training that horse had prior, because it’s all written down.
Keep Track of Former Horses
One of the big reasons I made this is because it’s very sad when you sell a horse, and then it just disappears into the metaphorical abyss, and you never know what happened to it. There’s a whole group on facebook devoted to just finding horses people used to own. It’s really sad! Horses have the disadvantage of being both a pet, and livestock. So you’re supposed to be able to sell them and move on, but they are pets. You can’t help but wonder what happened to a pet you loved. Often times people don’t even want to sell but they are forced to. It’s not fair you won’t be able to see the life of that horse.
Equine TimeLine fixes that. Horse is attached to your profile for life. You’ll never have to wonder what happened.
Pedigree Research
Wouldn’t it be cool if we could click on a stallion, and see every one of their offspring, with lots of details of what they are accomplishing, including the shows they are going to, what they are doing, how training is going, what they looked like, etc. I think so. It’d be super cool.
So that should be a thing. And that’s why I created it. As people create horses on the site, they can all be linked to each other, creating clickable pedigrees, with tons of valuable information. It can help breeding programs to see all what all the horses they bred are doing, it can help those thinking about breeding, it can help those who want to check out pedigrees before they purchase a horse.
Equine TimeLine – for checking out entire bloodlines.
Find Horses you Used to Own
What about the horse you owned years ago that seems to have vanished off the face of the earth? Now there’s a centralized place to ask for information about your former partner. My goal is to connect horses and people, even if it’s been years.
Checking Out Potential Trainers
I don’t want to sound like a negative nancy or anything, but I’ve been burned before. It’s very easy to become a horse trainer in the US, all you have to do is literally call yourself a horse trainer. But the truth is, many of these people are not qualified. We only have their own words to go on.
So what if we could look at their timeline and see what they’ve accomplished? We could figure out if what they’ve done aligns with the type of trainer we are looking for. It’s not just a timeline for horses, it’s a timeline for horse professionals. It’s a resume to help clients decide if they want to work with certain people.
Equine TimeLine – for checking out potential trainers.
This is just an overview of how this website could help out the horse community. I’m going to keep talking about it though! I’m going to keep making updates and perfecting this site because I really think it would be valuable to all of us. It’s eventually going to turn into an app, either when I figure out the coding, or I hire someone to do it.
So please check it out, give me your thoughts, and let’s make it happen.
Please send any feedback to courtneymarshallick@gmail.com
Thank you!