As I look out at the beautiful weather that we are finally experiencing, it has made this one of the hardest President’s Message for me to sit inside and write. Northern California has just experienced one the wettest years on record. The rainfall in March alone was the second wettest March since 1850. Creeks became rivers, pastures became mud holes and the majority of our trails became unusable. Rivers were flooding, reservoirs were spilling over, some of our levees were crumbling and some of the hillsides in Northern California were so soaked that they were slipping.

In addition to the unstable weather pattern, gas prices have also been unstable by reaching an all-time high; with unleaded at $3.38 a gallon, premium unleaded at $3.55 a gallon, and diesel going for $3.40 a gallon in our area. They say that we may soon see gas prices reach $4.00 or more a gallon. This started me to think about how we, as society, have grown to rely on the use of engines and their horsepower.

Long before we had the invention of automobiles, there was a gentleman named James Watt who was a Scottish instrument maker. During the 1760’s, James began to work on improving the efficiency of the steam engine. With a few design changes he was able to produce a more powerful engine than his competitors. To demonstrate this, he needed a method to measure the power of his engines. He calculated that a horse working in a mill could haul 550 pounds at a rate of 1 foot per second or they could haul 33,000 pounds at the rate of 1 foot per minute. If you were able to haul 33,000 pounds 1 foot in 1 minute you would be working at the rate of one horsepower and thus the term of horsepower was adopted as the way to judge the power of motors and engines.

When I think about our Association and compare it to horses and horsepower, it make me realize that horses, for the most part, would rather spend their day grazing than expending a lot of energy. Horses are truly a magnificent animal with a potential of developing a lot of energy, but it's not until you either harness or saddle the horse that you can truly feel their power.

A good horse, when driven, requires someone to give good direction in order to use its power to its full potential. Sure you can force a horse to work by digging your spurs into them, yelling at them, hitting them with a whip or a crop, but you won’t be utilizing the horse and its horsepower efficiently. You now have become counter productive and it’s now a fight of willpower, not horsepower. Remember the old saying “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink”; well we all know how true that really is.

If you want to increase the power and efficiency of the horse without overworking them, you can do so by adding more horses to the team. When a team works together as a unit, you have one of the most efficient teams possible.

Our Association and its Membership is made up of great people who have great ideas and energy that we need to keep growing. Recently, we as a group came together to take a stand on the Huddart/Wunderlich Master Plan Draft and so far we have been successful; but we need to continue to harness and refine that energy so we can continue to grow in power and efficiency to protect our equestrian heritage and legacy. Otherwise, we as an Association will become the horse that only wants to graze in the pasture and all of our horsepower is then wasted.

Our Association, like the horse, can remain strong as long as we are willing to work together for the common goals of the equestrian community. How do we accomplish that you may ask? Well think of it this way, one horse may be able to haul 33,000 pounds at a rate of 1 foot in 1 minute, but if we continue to add more horses to the team we will be able to use our energy more efficiently, pulling more weight, using less energy and becoming more efficient as an Association.

In 1958, this Association’s membership had 637 Senior and Junior members. That year alone, SMCHA added 97 new Senior and 106 Junior members to the team. Remember that we all need to do our part to protect the heritage of the Equestrian community. Therefor, I would like to put forth a challenge to each of you, to bring in a minimum of one new horse to the SMCHA’s team in the form of at least one new Member. Let’s continue to make the SMCHA team more efficient, effective and powerful so that our unified voice has the horsepower behind it.

Hope all is well,

Al Filice
President SMCHA