Sad, but I will let my subscription of 8 or so years quietly go.
After years of being a really cool resource, the PH Magazine became nothing more than an advertisement flyer.
To be fair, I still enjoy the wisdom and deep knowledge of Jim Wofford and the entertainment value of George Morris columns. Some issues have vet advice etc. But Julie Winkle conformation column, seriously? Her antropomorphic evaluations of “kind eye”, or “atractive face”, “cute expression” do nothing for me and randomly selecting body parts to critique does not either.
PH got rid of the readers’ input letters column, replacing it with -in my eyes- waste of space suggested topics page. “How do you celebrate your horse birthday”, seriously?
The most aggravating is the ratio of ads vs. quality articles. I know a magazine has to sell ads to stay alive.
I just do not look forward to find my PH mag in my mailbox anymore.
Sad.
Several of us could have—and actually have— written the same post a decade ago and even a decade before that.
Either I was easily impressed as a clueless kid or the magazine got dumber.
I got off around the time Geoff Teall wrote an article about how the best HOs just write checks and don’t get involved with the trainer-vet-farrier decision-makers. I did live through the sea change when GM’s “fat bigotry” was named and edited out of subsequent equitation critiques.
I had other substantive critiques of the magazine at the time. But it sounds as if it was better than then now. “How to celebrate your horse’s birthday” as opposed to letters to the editor? Seriously?
You grew out if it like I did. How many " how to select a winter blanket", “name that marking” and " demystifying lunging" articles do you read, besides that they treated a regular columnist I knew pretty well badly, including violating their contract terms when the magazine was sold. So, buh bye…still get regular bomb runs of bills for renewing and “exciting free offers”. with multi year renewals…,and it’s been 8+ years or so since I cancelled…I even kept getting it with payment demands six months after canceling.
Far as Julie, she’s got a background in the Hunters and we do look at expression and overall impressions along with the mechanics of conformation. Plus, she is trying to play up positives for the not too sophisticated reader. That’s OK with me.
The market lacks a good advanced owner/rider publication and is saturated with novice pubs with flashy advertising. My favorite PH example is the BAR series that ran about 10 years ago, Beginning Adult Rider. Every month the whole article was devoted to a single subject “How to mount”, “Now let’s learn to walk” and, my favorite “Walking up a hill”.
They show no signs they will change their focus to the level owner/rider they previously provided great articles, interviews and columns for.
[QUOTE=findeight;8005333]
My favorite PH example is the BAR series that ran about 10 years ago, Beginning Adult Rider. Every month the whole article was devoted to a single subject “How to mount”, “Now let’s learn to walk” and, my favorite “Walking up a hill”.[/QUOTE]
Hey… I’ve fallen off the back going up hill before! :lol: Wish I’d read the article first. Of course, I was galloping bareback wearing a swim suit, so maybe it was an unavoidable disaster…
Just kidding. I don’t actually remember doing that, but it’s entirely possible. I’ve done worse
Put me in the camp of those who dumped it back in the late 90’s–when it became nothing but product placement and drug commercials. Too many magazines that used to be fun have regrettably gone this way.
I used to get both Practical Horseman and was an inaugaral subscriber to Performance Horseman (the Western Version) I left both some time ago. I held out on Practical longer though. Performance was bought and became Horse and Rider. That was the end for me. More fluff less meat…
I was thinking of giving my Gdaughter a gift subscription so I bought an issue for her to look at. She was 13 at the time, now 14, and she flipped through and put it down. I asked later what she thought if she would like a subscription. She said it didn’t look like it offered her anything she needed. Granted, she is riding dressage pretty seriously, but I though she needed to know more about conformation, jumping, etc. So I looked at it, and none of that was even really useful, as described above.
Frankly, Pony club is where she belongs. However, she doesn’t have a pony of her own, so that’s hard to do.
I got her a subscription of Dressage Today. I just wanted her to also learn about, or maybe participate in the hunter or jumper world, too, and that wasn’t a good representative of it, really. I think she thought it was dumb.
I did this about 10 years ago. It seems to painful at the time because I had been subscribing for so long, it was like part of my life. Then I thought about it and realized that the once every six months that there was an article that was actually worth reading was not worth having a full subscription.
I haven’t read PH in years, but was a long-time subscriber at one point. To me, they seem to run in cycles - there’s a run of good, intermidiate-level (sometimes even more advanced) articles for several months or a year, and then they fall back into the BAR-level stuff. Over time, the cycle repeat, or at least used to. Sounds like they’ve hit information nadir again…
The only horse-related publication I get now (other than whatever the USEF sends) is the Chronicle.
The only reason I get Practical Horseman is for the Jumping Clinic. I’m debating whether it’s really worth it or not.
We all know how the internet has damaged newspapers and print news magazines, but this thread makes me wonder the extent to which message boards have damaged instructive magazines like PH. I mean you can hop on whatever forum here and ask a question about any riding or horse care or stable management problem that’s on your mind and BOOM – you get any number of targeted responses that address the very issue you want more information about. Free. That would seem to go a long way toward making magazines like Practical Horseman less useful than they were.
Granted, GM and Jim Wofford do not post here regularly that I know of, but there are quite a few very, very knowledgeable “unknowns.”
I’ve just let my subscription lapse as well. It’s a hard decision because I have pretty much every copy since the 70s. I love looking back at some of the old magazines. Such detail and horsemanship in them.
However, after seeing the pile that I’ve received recently that I haven’t even bothered to read, aside from the jumping clinic, there doesn’t seem to be much point in killing any more trees.
Yeah I renewed recently and I can’t really say why. I like Jimmy and George. There are some really good medical/care articles, but they are haphazard. Frankly I’ve never really gotten far with the jumping exercise articles; rare that I will actually set up an exercise from the mag.
The two things that stick out that I have semi-recently enjoyed were the article on non-pros at Rolex (though one is a Morgan trainer/breeder so she hardly seemed worth including in this group…) and the story on the lives of 4 top level horses. Really cool to see how an eventer, dressage horse, hunter and something I forget received different care.
[QUOTE=Windsor1;8005409]
Granted, GM and Jim Wofford do not post here regularly that I know of, but there are quite a few very, very knowledgeable “unknowns.”[/QUOTE]
Maybe one of the angry curmudgeonly posters on these boards is GM!? :lol:
I was thinking along the same lines, guess my decision is made. Love GM even though I don’t jump, I enjoy predicting what he’s going to say…saddle pad too big etc…but you’re right, horses’ birthday parties?
I let mine go for the same reasons probably more than 10 years ago. I still got Equus because I brought my horses home and thought it would come in handy for learning more care-type oriented stuff. Mr. PoPo calls it the magazine that will tell you 10 ways your horse will die. :lol: “What disease/death trap is on the cover this month?” he’ll ask.
The thing that made me so annoyed with Equus was the stories of “here’s something really dumb that I did and my horse got hurt in so many ways but it was okay because I learned a lesson” articles. I just couldn’t believe all the stupid things people did that showed how much of a lack of common sense they have. I just couldn’t take it anymore. And while I like Dr. Deb’s conformation articles, they kind of make my eyes glaze over after a while so after those two components, pretty much the only thing left was advertising.
I did have some old ones laying around on a coffee table and it was interesting to see how the thickness has reduced over the years.
[QUOTE=pologirl27;8005432]
Maybe one of the angry curmudgeonly posters on these boards is GM!? :lol:[/QUOTE]
You just never know, do you? :uhoh:
PH WAY back in the day:
[QUOTE=pologirl27;8005432]
Maybe one of the angry curmudgeonly posters on these boards is GM!? :lol:[/QUOTE]
That would explain a lot! And I think I know who it is! And I’m pretty sure she called me fat recently :lol:
What a timely thread. I almost recently picked up the PH subscription again. Like many here, I used to subscribe but I let it lapse after the BAR series about 10 years ago. I couldn’t justify keeping it. Glad to hear that it hasn’t gotten substantially better before I decided to resubscribe.
FWIW, Dressage Today has gone through the same thing. I let it lapse this past December after about 15 or more years of subscribing. What killed me was that they were reposting “Classic” articles from 10-15 years ago. I thought a) how lazy is THAT and b) the current reporting is so substance-less that they have to go back to their archives to find good articles? They seem to draw from the same group of people and do the same kinds of articles over and over. There is so much ELSE they could do! I also dislike the extensive “lifestyle” articles. When they produced the “flip” magazine with the fashion spread in the back…I knew it was over. (Un)fortunately, when my subscription ran out, they sent me an offer I couldn’t refuse so I resubscribed. sigh
Silly, if you’d stuck it out, you’d have gotten the article on how to walk and chew the bit at the same time.
