It may surprise you to learn that neither Melissa or I do a very good job of keeping track of what other businesses in our category are doing. We never asked anyone for advice before we started, instead we did a lot of planning, number crunching, and tweaking of plans. We have pretty much hoed our own row ever since. Mostly this is pragmatic. We are too wrapped up in what we are doing here to worry very much about what others may or may not be doing. That said, every now and again it is a good idea to have a gander at what others are doing. In that spirit I spent a couple of hours on the internet earlier today checking out what the virtual world had to offer.
Mostly I found exactly what I expected to see. However I was quite surprised to see how often I ran across our pictures, blog entries and portions of our website that had been lifted whole from our modest online presence. I’m not going to name names….this isn’t a witch hunt…. but I found the whole experience quite disappointing. Managing our online presence, writing a blog several times a week, and taking and uploading the pictures are among the most difficult and most time consuming tasks we do outside of hands on horse care. I said to Melissa that she should take it as a tongue in cheek testament to the quality of her work. She laughed and said that would be doubly true if those that felt the need replicate what she does online also felt compelled to provide the high level of horse care, client communication and horse infrastructure that we do. But even if they did offer every amenity and service we do they are missing the most important one and that is integrity. Unfortunately I can prove it with a single mouse click and a vigorous shake of my head.
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Calimba
Tony with Leo and Chance in the background
Grand and Homer
Africa, Murphy, Dutch, Wiz
Chili and Renny
Silver, Lotus, Gus
Bergie
Rocky
Faune
Griselle
Oskar and Kennedy
