When on a horse, I wear a riding helmet. My students wear riding helmets. I ride and show western and dressage. The helmet/hat quandary, style vs. safety, the tradition or common sense conversation is therefore a subject near and dear to my heart. On March 22, 2012, I went into the hay barn to get a bale of hay to feed lunch in the barn. To make a long story short, despite my usual care in tipping bales, as I turned to leave the barn, a 90 pound bale fell from twelve feet up and struck the back of my head. I have spent the last 4 months recovering from my fifth, yes, fifth NON-HORSE RELATED head injury. This time the recovery is the most difficult and I still lose motor control following activities where my body is in motion. My therapists say months, maybe up to 2 years will be needed to completely re-pattern all my normal activities, including riding.
As a western rider, I have to admit, I love my Stetson. As a safety conscious Western Dressage trainer and instructor, I love my International riding helmet. It fits well, it is ventilated, light weight, low profile, fits over my ponytail in summer and over my ear warmers in winter. Alright, it gives me a TERRIBLE case of “hat head” too. I respect western tradition but repeated NON-HORSE RELATED head injuries have made it necessary for both myself and the family I dearly love for me to put aside pride, tradition, vanity, and all the “reasons” people give for not wearing a helmet. When I have my helmet on, every child that comes to our barn just puts one on because it’s what we do. I feel good about that.
North American Western Dressage advocates the use of protective headgear for all riders in the proposed official 2012 NAWD Rulebook.
So I embarked on a quest to find out if it was possible to have the best of both worlds: a western hat/safety helmet. I knew that at one time there was such a thing on the market so I contacted manufacturers and distributors to see what I could find out. Troxel’s “Western Helmet Hat System” has been discontinued by the company who states the following:
“The hat helmets look far too large and have not been accepted in the market due to the resulting large profile… we are pleased to see many different brands, styles, and fit of very good looking helmets and encourage riders who are used to wearing hats to consider helmets.”
To get the manufacturing perspective I went to Frank Plastino, CEO and owner of International Riding Helmets located in Keyport, NJ. Frank comes from a “hatting background” and helped write the original ASTM standard. International introduced a western helmet hat in 1997 with correct crown height and brim size and tried manufacturing a western straw hat cover too. Neither option fared well. As a manufacturer, Frank says “In both disciplines, English and Western, the real issue is tradition… The problem is not the expense of production, the western style riding helmet is flat not acceptable to the western riding public.” Why is the hat so large? It’s the materials. According to Frank, only an evolution of the materials used inside that allows a reduction in the thickness of the protective lining will reduce shell size and lead to a more aesthetically appealing product. International has designed and developed an alternative with the ATR models which are not English and not Western but geared toward the western rider. I left my interview with Frank truly inspired, with my commitment to wearing protective headgear strengthened as he called on Western Dressage trainers and instructors to be strong role models for the young people in our industry when we choose a helmet over tradition.
To understand the situation more fully, I went to Troxel and spoke with marketing director Karisa Dern. Her first concern was that I remind the readership that “Horseback riders have the same number of head injuries as motorcycle riders. The risk is tied to how much you ride, not to how good a rider you are.” She reports that riding helmets can be up to 80% effective at preventing head injury and death in the event of a fall. Although Troxel has discontinued the Western Helmet Hat System and has no current plans to reintroduce a traditional looking option, they have worked closely with western riders to develop a western style helmet. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the western helmet division is the 2nd largest marketing division within Troxel. Their current designs have taken into consideration weight, ventilation, profile size, sun protection and looks. The new “Cheyenne Rowdy” was designed with accents that mimic the look of the cowboy boot complete with Rowdy Boot Leather trim, engraving, stitching and decorative studs to make it appealing to the western world.I wondered “Would Stetson or Resistol make us a western style helmet cover?” Alex Rodriguez, a representative from HatCo said that neither company would be able to make a hat big enough to go over a standard helmet given the current equipment used to make felt hats. Darn! Equipment and materials? We can put people in space but we can’t have a western safety helmet? This does seem like a question that might be taken to custom western hat makers around the country, but that is a project for another day. Cowboy hats don’t make us better western riders, trainers or horsemen. They are a stylistic part of western heritage that may have run its course over time. Still, I hope that eventually we are able to meet safety standards while at the same time honoring that heritage.
To find out more about head injury protection and risk, please visit the International and Troxel websites at www.irhhelmets .com and www.troxelhelmets.com.
For more information about North American Western Dressage, to read articles, participate in forum discussions, see the tests through Level 6, or start your free basic membership visit: http://www.northamericanwesterndressage.com, and join them on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/groups/NorthAmericanWesternDressage.
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Michelle Binder is the founder of the Relational Riding Academy. Relational Riding is a program that utilizes dressage as fundamental training for all horses performing in all disciplines. She has been an ARIA certified Instructor since 1989. She is currently working on her second book “Relational Riding: A Horsemanship Tutorial,” and has completed work on two professional video productions, “Any Horse, Any Rider: Relational Riding: A Universal Foundation” and "Understand Riding From the Ground Up."