App Review: Horse Side Vet Guide™ - Polished, Comprehensive & Perfectly Pitched.

The Horse Side Vet Guide™ App

I wondered how long it would take for someone to produce a really polished horse owners veterinary manual app. They have now!

The new Horse Side Vet Guide™ App (or HSVG for short) is pretty much what you'd hope it to be, an app crammed full of veterinary advice pitched perfectly for the horse owner, with detailed reference text, things to look for, related items, questions to ask your vet, treatments, etc, etc, etc, on an exhaustive range of conditions, traumas and the such like. On top of all that there's a library of short videos on everything from finding the facial artery to take your horse's pulse to bandaging lower limbs correctly. 

I'm more of 'worrier' than a 'long way from his heart' type of horse owner, and my book shelves are crammed full of veterinary books (over 100 I guess), but this app makes finding information so much easier. It is a very well thought through architecture of information which at first glance is overwhelming because of the sheer volume of data in here (1,000 or so entries), but dig into the app a little and you soon discover the simplicity of the structure.
All of the subjects contain a relatively plain English summary plus a variety of sub headings like "Supplied Needed", "Procedure", "Prognosis" and "Tips for Safety & Success". Add to this a search feature and this app just made dealing with everything from minor abrasions to colic a hell of a lot easier. (there are 17 search results for Colic)

CrossCountry | Now There's Another App For That......

Cross Country App

Like a bus, you wait and wait, and then 2 come along at once! Well now we have two apps for memorising your cross country course. To rival CourseWalk, CrossCountry is the latest iPhone App to launch that helps you memorise your cross country course, and it's a pretty strong contender for the App Store's "New & Noteworthy", and should have metre wheel manufacturers quaking in their boots. [Not that anyone competing below intermediate needs a metre wheel]

This App hails from Australia, developed by the Diacono family from Sydney (Mum Jose, Son James & Daughter Helen), and unsurprisingly they have a fair bit of experience in Eventing, Jose is involved at the Sydney 3 Day Event and has an 'ology' in mapping, Helen is an event rider, whilst James has provided the technical wizardry behind the app.

The principles are very simple; provide some basic information about the course you are about to walk then start recording as you walk round your course. Along the way take snaps of each fence, and other relevant points. You can record video clips too.

Cross Country - There's Now An App For That Too

Course Walk App

The growing band of iPhone Apps for eventing fans everywhere is about to increase by one, thanks to the imminent arrival of the Course Walk app, that will help you record your course walk, automatically work out where your minute markers are and let you take photos of every fence along the way.

I have to confess I got quite excited when "CourseWalk" started following me on twitter, and I discovered this was a new app, with some cool tech use of the iPhone for eventing. The app has been developed by Nicolas & Tracy Hinze from Bedford, Virginia. Tracy has been eventing for 20 years and currently rides at the Preliminary and Intermediate levels in the US, and her software developer husband, Nick, seems to have caught the eventing bug in the last few years, and is running around some of the beginner novice level courses on a percheron cross named Picasso - brave guy!

Burghley In Your Pocket

Burghley App

The Land Rover Burghley Horse Trials has released (or possibly leaked!) it's official iPhone App in preparation for what promises to be one of the greatest Burghley's of all time! Whether you're sitting in the relative comfort of your saddle or armchair, or attending the event to gaze in awe at the sheer size of this year's retro cross country course, provided you have one of those new fangled 'i' thingys in your pocket  you will be able to keep right up to the minute on all the goings on at Burghley, as the press tent spills the beans on who's leading who down winner's avenue or who's being dragged through the leaf pit as the action unfolds.

Sitting neatly beside your official Badminton App, you can now take pride in being joined at the hip with the world's two largest 4 star 3 day events. Burghley's App whilst very similar to the Badminton one, will let you remember where you parked your car, enter an amazing competition to win a 'Nordic Adventure' courtesy of the title sponsor  which presumably involves driving a 4x4 across frozen wastelands, something us Brits are used to in recent winters, and will give you plenty of ideas on where to spend your hard currency. Social media integration is inherent in the app too, and if you're a tweeter, you'll be pleased to see the app even saves you the hassle of constructing a suitable hash tag, it automatically puts #BHT2011 in for you.

Man, What A Week!

Badminton | It looks tranquil, but just to the left.....

I'm starting to sound like I live in the States already. "The world's gone and got itself in a big damn hurry" It's a line from one of my favourite films [movies], The Shawshank Redemption, and sums up the last few days for me. This week has flown by and I haven't done a bunch of things I planned, but what an exciting week. Wednesday brought fabulous weather and car problems on my way down to Badminton for the annual unveiling of the cross country course.

With just 2 weeks to go everything, at Badminton is lush, green and a hive of activity! The area in front of the house is purposefully keep peaceful and tranquil, even during the build up to the event, strict orders from the Duke.

 Lots of people always say the Badminton course doesn't change much year to year, and it's easier than Burghley, but without fail this course walks easier than it rides, and more of the top ten riders win Burghley than they do Badminton. This could be for a variety of reasons, like it's position in the calendar, weather etc, etc.