From: Gloria
Dear Jessica, I need your help for my daughter, who will be spending the next month or so at home in bed, because of a broken leg and bruising and a concussion she got in an accident. It was a car accident, not a horse one! Olivia loves horses. She is eighteen years old and very intelligent, and she has been reading at an adult level since her early teens. When she isn't spending time with real horses, she's always reading about them, and her usual summer activity is to be at the library every day pestering the librarians for more books about horses. Last year we bought her a computer for her birhday, and of course she spends a lot of time looking for horse information online! She is a big fan of yours too, and her father and I have promised her that if you ever give a clinic in our area, we'll pay for her to ride in it.
Here is the problem, and I hope it doesn't sound selfish. With Olivia at home, we are looking after her. She is very uncomfortable with her leg and so on, and we are trying to make things easier on her (and all of us). Her father has rigged up a table that she can pull over her bed so that she can use the computer. But, the problem is that we just can't let her spend a lot of time online. We only have two telephone lines, I work at home and I'm on the phone a lot, and my husband is in construction and he uses the other line for his calls and his computer. Olivia is very upset that her online time is so restricted. She is a girl who loves to learn things, and she doesn't want all this "time out" as she calls it to be wasted. But we can't let her be online all the time! Do you have any suggestions? Is there any kind of computer information about horses that wouldn't mean using the telephone? I wondered because one of our friends got Olivia a horse game for her PC (it was on a CD) and even though she said it was silly and obviously meant for little kids, I wondered if there was anything for adults. I thought you would probably know. Thank you very much! Your fan, Gloria. P.s. In case you were wondering, we can't have a third phone line because we're out in the country and I guess there just isn't enough wiring? Anyway that's what the phone company told us. Thank you again.
I'm sure that in all her reading about horses, Olivia has read at least one or two articles or books by Cherry Hill. Cherry writes excellent, clear, easy-to-read books on a wide variety of horsey topics, and now she's made a whole collection of her work available on CDs. This is called the "Cherry Hill Horsekeeping & Training CD-ROM Collection", and there are three different versions available. I don't know which would best suit your daughter, but I know she'd enjoy these. So will you! They'll keep Olivia busy, happy, and offline. ;-)
The three versions are the Rider Library, the Horse Care Library, and the Master Library.
What you'll get is much more than just text - there are illustrations, colour photos, and video clips, as well as a dictionary. Your daughter will be able to search the text and cross-search the text of all the books on the CD - all the things that, at the library, would involve a lot of getting up, sitting down, and moving books around the table. Those are difficult things to do when you're in bed with a broken leg.
The "Horse Care Library" includes the complete text and all the photos and drawings from three of Cherry's books, including "Horsekeeping on a Small Acreage".
The Master Library includes the complete text, etc. from TWELVE of Cherry Hill's books. Whatever you get will have the dictionary, videos, colour photos, etc.
It's all good material, easy to search, and these CDs are just plain fun. The videos are a great innovation, and the colour photos really do make a difference. There's also an extra, "free" book included on the CD-ROM - "Horse Anatomy - A Coloring Atlas" by Kainer and McCracken. That's a lot of fun, too.
Take a look at Cherry Hill's website for more information about the CDs and their contents and prices and ordering information - you'll find her site at www.horsekeeping.com
I think that something like this would be ideal for someone in your daughter's situation. It's frustrating to be confined to bed, wanting to use the computer, and unable to use the phone - but I completely understand your problem with limited phone lines, and I'm sure that Olivia does too. These books on CD-ROM may be the ideal way to keep everyone happy - and she'll still enjoy them even after she's up and about and able to go back to the library.
Jessica
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