Awareness of the outside world. You feel strongly. The issue is a dealbreaker. What do you do about people who are not on the side of the angels? If you continue the association, are you empathizing with a fellow human or betraying everything you hold dear? If you cut them off, are you living your values or being a judgmental jerk? What if it’s a business rather than a person? What if they are family? I ask for all the blue dots in red states, and for all the red dots in blue states. ~~~
Now that you are getting more calories from your hay, you need to get fewer calories from your feed. Time to cut back.
After a week of better access to hay, you had trouble keeping it together last weekend. I don’t mind extra spring in your step. That’s nice. I’m concerned about the extra spring in your sproing.
Remember the month-long meltdown you had all those years ago? Part of it was being fed too much hi-test. Last weekend’s rides had an echo of that. I suspect you are sensitive to being overfed. I’m definitely sensitive to you being overfed.
Look on the bright side. You’re will be getting lots and lots of lovely hay.
Rodney’s attitude was so good at the clinic that we have promoted him to normal horse behavior. You know, where you can show because you want to, not because you require endless successive approximation to get your horse alongside the idea. [Clinic Report]
If he’s comfortable in his body, he’s comfortable in his head. Mostly. For a Thoroughbred definition of comfortable in the head. That’s the theory of the moment.
Or maybe I just can’t bear the idea of another round of kindergarten dressage and crossrails. [Show Report]
I dislike bailing on shows. We don’t have a huge choice around here. If I keep talking myself out of shows because they aren’t ideal, suddenly – poof – six months has gone by and inertia has won.
To compensate, I’ve promised myself that we will concentrate on lessons & schooling this summer.
Time passes.
Wrote text. Promised self to be diligent. Rained all week. Not a gentle eventers-ride-in-rain misting. Five days of thunderstorms-at-any-moment rain. Accomplished nothing.
On one hand, minimal interest in doing more mediocre intro dressage tests. Stay home!
OTOH, between weather, footing, lamenesses – including the ever-popular surprise abscess, and a thin schedule, do I have any room to be picky? All the shows!
More time passes.
Show last weekend. Or not.
Show has been postponed one week due to weather.
This is what I get for writing posts ahead of time. The world moves faster than my posting schedule. [The Meaning Behind Monday]
Links I can’t see that a toy would make a difference. I would be wrong.
If I had been given this set by somebody at that point in my life, it would have been such a relief to know that somebody had my back. To know that I had somebody there to say “I love you, I believe in you. I’ll always be here for you.”
“The inclusion of black and brown on one end represents support of people of color within the LGBTQ+ community (similar to the recent Philadelphia Pride flag), while the light blue, white, and dark pink on the other end symbolize support for trans rights. The six colors of the traditional Pride flag are represented in between.
Person at desk: Welcome to Dance For Diplomats, where we teach you to talk with your feet. Where will you be stationed?
Client: The ______ orbital station above ________.
Desk: That would be the _________. Very good. We consider them a mid-level mobility species. You should be able to manage without surgical enhancement. ~~~ Desk: How much dance experience have you had?
Client: None. Will that be a problem?
Desk: Previous experience isn’t always a benefit. When we out found out that dance was the prevalent inter-species language, we naturally sent professional dancers. Some were able to adapt; some caused … incidents. Success appears to have more to do with personality type than with dance training. Think of it this way, you don’t need years of classical ballet to do the Hokey-Pokey. ~~~ Desk: Do you have any concerns?
Client: (starts talking)
Desk: (Opens drawer. Pulls out paperback. Starts reading.)
Client: (Add a few more sentences. Sputters to stop.)
Desk: (Puts book down.) How did you feel when I started reading?
Client: Well, confused, I guess. Everyone tells me you guys are the best, but it seemed rude.
Desk: Exactly. Rationally, you knew this was a formal situation. You and I were engaged in an information exchange. You figured there was probably a reason. Emotionally, you found it distasteful and upsetting.
Client: (nods)
Desk: That’s how other species feel when we insist on standing still and making mouth sounds rather than moving. Even though they know we are doing our best, they can’t help but see it as ignorant and discourteous.
Client: You’d think they would cut us some slack.
Desk: Oh believe, me they do. Our most poetic efforts are seen as a trade language, at best. ~~~ Client: This is a fairly niche market. How do you stay in business?
Desk: Most of our clients get training as part of their job, which means either government funding or business expenses. How do you put a price on first contact? ~~~ Client: Did you say surgery? This happens?
Desk: It’s hard to make a six-sided shape with only four limbs. Or make Morokian hand chains without prosthetic claws.
Client: (Gulps.)
Desk: I wouldn’t worry too much. Most species respect the body integrity of other species. That’s one reason why we try to incorporate moves that are specific to the human shape. We get points for doing what we can with what we have, so to speak. ~~~ Desk: Not every species uses language the same way. Think how many different sounds we have just on earth. The Khoisan click languages. The rolling French R, by the way, that’s called an alveolar trill. Out there, other beings do not even have the same speech organs we do. But everyone moves. Words change. Pitch, roll, and yaw do not.
Client: No one saw this coming?
Desk: That’s what you get for having scientists instead of artists write your futuristic fiction. Mostly. Stardance came the closest. You’ll find out. That’s your homework before your first class. Along with researching other examples. === curtain ===
Awareness of the outside world. “We teach dance at 30 social service agencies, child development centers, preschools, and elementary schools in Greater Birmingham. All sites are subsidized with community support and some are provided classes for no fee. No child pays to participate. TDF: Community. ~~~
How do you drag your carcass off the couch?
Or, more politely, what do you do for exercise & how do you get motivated to do it?
What I Don’t Do Cardio. Although I know I need it.
Weekly 5K walks. Not worried. Fell off the schedule recently. Should pick back up fairly quickly, see below. [Virtual 2021]
What I Do Walking. Can’t give myself too much credit here. I like walking. It comes easily. Therefore, it’s not hard to haul my c off the c. [Heading North, Walk Report, LEJOG]
Biking. A husband activity that I join. Have recently knocked dust off selves and bikes to get back on the road. Easier with more light in the day. [Biking Virtually, Great Ocean Road, The Sequel]
Dance class. Restarted dance yesterday. A summer session of beginner ballet for seniors. So beginner that the clothing requirement is comfy clothes and sox. Despite a history of dance classes as a kid and as an adult, I’m relieved that it’s a beginner class. I might be able to keep up.
I have no explanation for my continued fascination with dance classes. I’m terrible at dance. I have no musical appreciation. I can’t remember steps. I have the rhythm of a spider made from LEGO bricks. I don’t say this in false modesty. We all have skills. These are not mine.
And yet.
Everything else that I am bad at, I avoid if at all possible. Team sports. Hand-eye coordination sports. A high moment of my life was when I got to college and could fill my gym requirement with riding lessons.
And yet.
I keep circling back to dance classes. This will be my third, fourth?, go-round in Birmingham, my second at The Dance Foundation.
If only I could find the same motivation for the Don’ts.
Dance Class, Day One
We be in the fancy space.
Thank you to Melissa, Instructor, and Steve McKinney, Piano.
Awareness of the outside world. Black Lives Matter : All Lives Matter :: Save The Rainforest : Save All Forests. Matt McGorry on Twitter, 2015. Tom Hunt in a comic, 2020. ~~~
Photo: DIY small-hole hay net from 2 regular nets.
Just when I think there is no further possible special treatment for a horse made out of tissue paper and filigree.
At the clinic, Rodney stood tied to the trailer eating hay. My outstanding groom – in both senses – sat with him while I audited other clinic sessions. Groom thought horse was attacking the hay with remarkable enthusiasm.
Item. I used to put Rodney up for several hours in the morning. Breakfast. Hay. Nap.
Item. Recently, this hasn’t been working. Breakfast. Twenty minutes with hay and he’s ready to go out. Leaving him in longer didn’t lead to more hay consumption. Body condition sufficient but not stellar. [Nah, I’m Good]
Proposition. Everyone was tired of eating last year’s hay.
Item. Rodney gets a stiff muscle in this neck, right over C2, the axis vertebra. Comes out with short massage. Mostly on side opposite the chronic divot in his back muscle.
Proposition. Neck used as a diagonal counter-balance to compensate for muscle damage/atrophy on opposite side. Seemed likely, as it tracked with riding in the trailer.
Item. Neck bulge had gotten noticeably larger lately, despite no trailering.
Item. Both horses have been tearing into the new hay. Rodney was preferring it to grass at the clinic.
Item. Rodney has been a bit spooky to work around lately. That’s his go-to move when he is uncomfortable somewhere in his body. It seemed out of proportion. Riding was going well. We thought we had a handle on his issues. Reminder, that’s not our call.
Summary Proposition. He has developed a small over-use injury in his neck related to his lateral asymmetry. Eating from a hay net will address this and add calories to his diet.
Here’s what we think. Grazing in the field means you have clear line of site when your head is down. Grazing in the stall means your line of sight is blocked when your head is down. Take a bite. Lift head to see over front half wall. Bite. Lift. Bite. Lift. And so on.
Not a problem in the normal course of things. That’s how horses are constructed.
Somehow, somewhere, Rodney got out of balance. Neck got sore. Repeated head lifting aggravated the problem.
This would be consistent with him not wanting to eat much of the meh hay while in the stall. When the hay got better, he was more willing to use his neck.
Item. Eating on the ground is better for a horse.
Counter item. Not when the horse has a wonky ergonomics.
How it is going? Can you say Instant Tradition?
On Monday after the clinic – i.e. day three of the hay net experiment – I offered Rodney an afternoon snack on the floor of the run-in shed. He went over to stand by the stall door. He gave me a look that said, Everyone knows that I eat in the stall from a hay net.
Also, if he gets sufficient calories at breakfast and dinner, I may be able to cut back on serving lunch.
Despite my lengthy post yesterday, finding out that he needs a hay net might be the biggest thing to come out of the clinic.
Mosely bills herself as a disciple of Mary Wanless. The clinic was an excellent implementation of the Wanless theories that I have encountered in her books and videos.
Oh, BTW, Rodney was an absolute, freaking star.
Day 1 That whooshing sound? That is nine years of saddle seat going poof. As soon as Mosely said that I was sitting too close to the cantle, I thought, ‘Ah, yes. I know where this is going.’ Center of the saddle. Heels back. The way riding used to be.
Want to take a minute to defend Saddlebreds. Lot of folks talk about ASBs running around with their heads up in the air & their butts trailing out behind. The Saddlebreds I ride? Sure. I never got Sam to use his hindquarters any more than I did in any of the kindergarten dressage tests I ever rode. Not true of the big-time horses. You can’t win the five-gaited class at Louisville without serious firepower in the hind end. Willie had a come-from-behind canter that I would have happily taken down to a fence. But I digress. Back to the clinic.
My posting mechanics were okay, just too far back. I can fix that. Boom, done.
Most of the rest of day one was reminding me to maintain the changes.
Rodney trotted around like a school pony giving leg lessons. Who is this horse? [Leg Lessons]
My list: Knees in. Keep kneeling. Close fingers. Shorten reins.
Sit close to the pommel but away from the neck.
It’s a good trot-to-walk transition if you can go right back to trot.
Pull in your tum, as if someone is about to punch you in the stomach.
Strangely, no mention was made of my shoulders. Either they were hidden by my vest, or fixing my seat and legs fixed my shoulders.
Why the vest? We started wearing them last year, when we were all trying to stay out of hospitals. We’ve kept the habit. Sometimes I ride alone. If I ever ride XC, be nice to be used to the vest. Red shirt because we have more Milton shirts then Rodney shirts. Ran out of the latter after day 1.
Final day 1 thought. I have so much baggage with this horse. If he’s bad, I’m frustrated. If he’s good, I wonder what I had been doing wrong before. It’s fun being me.
Day 1, Lecture Push the Table. Put a chair in front of a heavy table, or wall, or fencing of an observation deck. Sit. Put hands in rein position. Push against table, wall, fence. Remember feeling in hands and stomach. Transfer to saddle. Push the table. This keeps your hands in a dynamically neutral position, neither pushing nor pulling. Activates core.
Book rx. Ride With Your Mind Essentials, Mary Wanless. The New Anatomy of Rider Connection: Structural Balance for Rider and Horse, Mary Wanless.
Day 2 When I first got on, sitting that far forward felt as if I was sitting over his neck. I had to keep checking by putting the flat of my hand between me and the cantle. Really? That far forward? Okay.
I need to remember to keep Rodney’s attitude positive. He can be dour about work. When I am concentrating, I leave him to his own devices. He’s not his own best company. Happy! Perky! Pony!
Push The Table is what I call Saddle Seat Hands. Lift. Keep still. I am holding the reins to a double bridle and I do NOT want to mess up. [Different Versions of the Same Thing]
I can already hear purists sniffing they ‘just sit there with their hands in the air.’ I would posit that you can’t physically keep your hands still in relation to the horse without using your core. Otherwise your hands flop as you flop. Whether or not the riders are effective is a different argument. (Update: I would posit that they are. Saddle seat riders come in the same effective/ineffective range as any other discipline. Not the hobby horse I’m riding at the moment.) But ‘just sitting there’ is hard work. Defensive? Moi? Un peu. I get annoyed when people go after saddle seat inaccurately. For example, hearing Three-Gaited/Five-Gaited and conflating ASBs with the true gaited breeds. ASBs trot. Certainly it’s not perfect. I’m on record as being horrified by the ironmongery. If you are going to bust on a discipline, get your facts straight. Then bust away. But I digress. Again. Back to the clinic. [Bits From Hell]
Shortening the reins is a symptom. Simply shortening the reins produces no effect. Once Rodney had his body organized, shortening the reins was simple. I still had to be reminded, but simple.
Everyone complimented Rodney. Mosely joked that she wished she could borrow him for others to ride. We wanted to be pleased. Mostly we were confused.
In the Department of TMI, Rodney peed while he was waiting for me to finish up at the day 2 lecture. Yay! This is good news. He’s been bashful. On the first day, he held it until he got back home. That has to be unpleasant. On the third day, he got as far as the trailer on the way home. Thanks, horse. I guess it was time to pull up the mats.
Day 2, Lecture The pull on the reins is never greater than the push from the body.
Book rx. Balancing Act: The Horse in Sport – an Irreconcilable Conflict? by Gerd Heuschmann.
Day 3 Tired, stressed, and little freaked out. Where has this horse been for the last ten years? The last time I rode this often in three days was Nationals.
In the free time while we waited for our turn, wonder groom and I took advantage of the nice ring and good footing to tinker with what we had seen in the clinic. News flash. Following with the seat means shut up and listen to what your horse is doing. Only then can I make changes.
Close your fingers. I ride with my fingers loose. Closing my fingers felt wrong because it meant gripping more. I decided that it mean keep the exact same feel on the reins, but readjust the shape of my hands. That I can do.
Ride every stride. This does not mean taking action every stride. It means being awake and aware and monitoring every stride. Much like riding Dottie. Always be ready with an arm in second position to balance her pirouettes. [A Change in Attitude, Show Report]
If one is farting around, fart around. If one is working, work. Don’t fart around while working.
The lengthen trot does not feel the way I thought it would. Perhaps I have been watching too many fancy Grand Prix trots.
Speaking of trot, save the show trot cadence for the Saddlebreds.
Speaking of Saddlebreds. My canter work went well, thanks to them. The saddle seat ideal is a slow, bouncy canter. I got pretty good at it. Saddle seat is all about the trot, so this never did me much good in the show ring. It did leave me with stellar canter-organizing tools.
We got as far as lengthen canter. Go us! At one point I got greedy and asked for too much. Rodney got on the forehand and tripped. He gets mad when he trips. As soon as it happened I realized what I had done wrong and apologized profusely. Both of us were able to ride through it, so that’s good. [What Next? Who Are You? getting mad]
At other point, Mosely said we were getting rushed. No, I thought, I’m getting rushed. Once I took myself down a notch, Rodney was fine.
Overall Ride my horse. Time to turn up the volume. Absolutely right. That is where were are now, or were on this weekend. Clinicians can only address what is in front of them. She had no idea how much of a victory it was that Rodney was willing to motor around on the buckle with a calm, relaxed attitude.
Rodney was outstanding all three days. Best lessons we’ve every had. Could be due to brilliant instruction. Could be that she got the best version of the horse to work with. Could be both. On one hand, Mosely is good teacher, with a quiet, positive manner. Rodney and I would have responded well to this at any point. On the other hand, we are as far as we’ve ever been in identifying and managing Rodney’s issues to make him comfortable. Other instructors might have gotten farther with this Rodney. On the gripping hand, even if you get an easy serve, you still need to get your racket on the ball. She did.
Covid Thoughts No masks while outside & riding. Not close to anyone.
For the lecture on day one, I brought along a mask when I thought we were meeting in the lounge. Turns out we were on the open-air observation deck next to the ring. I elected to stand in the ring, leaning over the wall. I’ll stay here; y’all can just sit over there.
Went home. Reviewed CDC recommendations. Vaccinated and outside. I should be good to go.
For the lecture on day two, I sat with everyone. I still chose the most remote seat. Talk turned to scheduling and the impact of Covid on same. One person opined that we were post-Covid, after all, ‘Look around, no masks.’ Speak for yourself, I thought. I am very conscious of how far away from me you are. I heard someone else say ‘Outside …’ so perhaps I was not alone in my reservations.
Otherwise, I have forgotten how to people. I need to dial it back.
In Other News Rodney decided to get in the spirit of Pride month. Unusually, he had no interest in either of the mares he shared the semi-private lessons with. The first was a buxom chestnut. Maybe not his type. His ringmate on the third day was a dainty, bay mare. Meh. Meanwhile, his eye was caught by an attractive, gray cob in the clinic, and a lovely bay gelding who shared our warm-up on the third day. ‘That one. Over there. He’s cute.’ Well, he wasn’t wrong. [Getting Our Hunter On, mare obsession][If Rodney Were Human …, mare obsession, adult version]
Horse – like rider – needs to get out more.
Milton gets a gold star for staying home alone all three days. He had to be in the stall, but waited quietly for his buddy to return. No mix master.
Virtual Brush Box 