2014 Equestrian Blog in Review

It's been an exciting and busy year, full of discussion by equestrians from all over the world, and representing a number of disciplines.

As we put 2014 behind us let's review what happened at Writing of Riding over the last 365 days.

Top Five Posts

When I started Writing of Riding in 2006, I never imagined one of my posts would go viral.. which wasn't even a thing back then.

But on October 16th, the post FBI Makes Horse Abuse a Felony gained 27,753 pageviews in a single day!

The post's popularity has continued, having received more than 10,000 shares on Facebook and 157 Tweets (not counting retweets) and to date more than 150k unique pageviews!

Our Top Five list for 2014:

1. FBI Makes Horse Abuse a Felony (October 2014)
2. A Problem with Parelli (March 2010)
3. Dressage is Dead (can we please move on?) (October 2014)
4. Are you abusing your tack? (June 2014)
5. Backyard Breeding is the Blight of the Horse Industry (January 2014)

Writing Streak

My writing habits wax and wane on the blog as I find time in my work and equestrian schedule, so I'm not known for maintaining unbroken writing streaks.

But in February I published a post for every day of the month, 28 in total. There were only 7 days out of the month that I wrote more than one post and scheduled it to post later in the week.

Then I made it a personal goal to write consistently for 14 days in July and over-achieved it!

From July 5 – 19 the following articles were added to the blog:

1. WEG Warmup: Familiar Faces in Team USA Lineup
2. Visual Lesson : Signs There are Holes in Your Horse’s Training
3. Dressage Knockout – As Terrible As It Sounds
4. Barrel Racers Keeping It Classy
5. Finding Balance In Dressage
6. The Longevity of the Dressage Horse
7. Why You Should Buy A Helmet Today
8. WEG Warmup: FEI Calls For Blood
9. Classical Dressage Inspiration: Visuals for the Week #2
10. Bettina Drummond: Classical vs Competitive Dressage is a Moral Issue
11. Bad Horse Ads: Episode 1
12. Visual Lesson: Eitan Beth-Halachmy on Training Your Horse to Dump You
13. Virtual Lesson: Using Fear to Your Advantage
14. Symptoms of Strong Rein Aids
15. WEG Warmup: FEI Announces New WEG 2014 Slogan

The overall number of posts written this year grew drastically, as you can see the trend starting in 2006 to the close of 2014.
[yes_stats type=”post_num” start_year=”2006″ end_year=”2014″ range=”to” post_type=”post” post_status=”publish” height=”300″ width=”650″ ]

Number of posts added by year

Phew! That was a lot of typing…

Equestrian Participation

Of course the amount of equestrian discussion this year rose in proportion to the increase in posts –

[yes_stats type=”comment_num” start_year=”2006″ end_year=”2014″ range=”to” post_type=”post” post_status=”publish” height=”300″ width=”650″ ]

Number of comments added by year

Comments skyrocketed from 234 in 2013 up to 817 this year! That's not including discussions on social networks like our Facebook Page.

The #1 most discussed post on the blog this year was Backyard Breeding is the Blight of the Horse Industry, receiving 67 comments.

Who's Talking About Writing of Riding?

We receive a significant amount of traffic from equestrian forums, blogs and websites and the following is a truncated list of those sites that link to us the most.

1. Chronicle of the Horse
2. Fugly Horse of the Day
3. KlassikReiten.de
4. Horse Nation
5. Bit Magazine
6. Bokt.nl
7. No Worries Club (Clinton Anderson)
8. Horse Grooming Supplies Forum
9. Arabian Breeders Network

Bring in the New Year

With 2015 comes an opportunity to be better than before. Not only in writing, but as equestrians and horse lovers. Let's dedicate this next year to being a better equestrian to our horse.