Virtual Brush Box

Riding Journal

Awareness of the outside world. Much like during Rolex or the Derby, my main concern with last night’s speech was that everyone get back to the barn in one piece. I wonder how long it will be before we stop worrying about events at the Capitol. If ever.
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New-to-us saddle pad & hind boots from the tack sale at the show. Both at prices low enough to be worth taking a flyer on. [Guest Photos, Shopping]

Felt Saddle Pad
I have never gotten alongside gel or nouveau-material saddle pads. Seem to me that the gel would squish away from where it is most needed. Nor do I see how thin can be better than thick, no matter how many eggs you drop on it. Give me a big old hunk of sheep product any day.

[Padding]

Milton already has a square felt pad. Now he has a shaped one for show wear.

Back Boots
Having said all of that about technical materials, I opt for Neoprene leg boots.

[Rodney’s Boots]

I don’t like fuzzy. They pick up grit from the footing and get matted. Rodney’s new boots were bought to replace the fuzzy ones. Since the new boots are thicker, they will become his hind boots. The back boots pictured here will be his front boots. Score one for interchangeability. [Boot Barrage, Rodney]

[Times Change]

No one seems to do the old white and blue-stripped Hampa boots any more.

[Miracle Boots]

I would love a pair of fancy leather boots. But anything that close to the ground gets dirty by definition. The leather straps would require constant care.

Synthetic rubber it is. File this between convenience and I contain multitudes.

Overheating can be an issue with anything rubberized. Heat isn’t a problem for Rodney. He’s part lizard. The warmer the better. Milton seems be so happy to have his legs padded that he hasn’t complained. We’ll see what they think come summer.

Update. Hampa photo added, once someone reminded me of it.

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine

Riding Journal

Awareness of the outside world. Alaska Airlines Safety Dance.
~~~
With two full-time, fully-booted horses, I sense this is the beginning of a long line of horse boots in my life. Woof Wear All-Purpose Boots

Trying on for size.

Modeling the new boots.

Rodney appears to be all about his hind boots. Milton is all about his fronts. Can you say fragile flowers? Ah, I shouldn’t laugh. It is real to them. [Miracle Boots]

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine

Riding Journal

Awareness of the outside world. Two weeks out from my second shot. I’m as vaccinated as I’m going to get. Bring on the outside world … slowly.

“We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can’t cope with is therefore your own problem.” Adams
~~~
Photo guru Meg McKinney brought her critters class to the show as a photo field trip. Photo student Averil Loague was kind enough to send me the photos of Rodney. Welcome Averil! [Show Report]

Dressage

Warm up.

Next to go.

Hunter hunch. Pretty horsie.

Preparing to circle at B.

Canter circle.

Canter circle.

We are supposed to be trotting. Why do we both look like we are taking the inside turn in a jump-off?

Second canter circle.

Medium walk. Me sitting up and pretending to be a dressage rider. Seriously, that’s what I was telling myself.

Turn down centerline …

… and finish.

Shopping
No saddle for Rodney. Found a felt pad and back boots for Milton.

Modeling Session

Pause for applesauce.

We offer to be portrait practice.

My hooman is odd, but she’s my hooman.

Finally, ears!

Peppermints?

What dis?

Jumping
[Conversations With My Horse], on-course narration.

Jump 1

Jump 2. Check out those hindquarters. That’s a lot of effort for a crossrail that one might consider simply trotting over. Just sayin’.

From 2 to 3

Jump 3. I failed to follow with my hands on many occasions. Hard to go from ‘Trotting. Trotting. Trotting.’ to ‘Here ya go.’ Plus, when I fling the reins at him, he doesn’t always take it the right way.

Jump 6. Paw-holding was the order of the day.

Links
Previous photo class project.
[A Wordless Story, Show Photos, Winter Tournament 2018-19 #3]
[A Wordless Short, More Show Photos, Winter Tournament 2018-19 #3]

Meg McKinney posts [Archives]

Thank you Averil! Added later, along with logo. Should have said 10q in the first place.

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine

Horsekeeping

Awareness of the outside world. Bright notes. Dancing in the streets, Balloon Juice: Wednesday Morning Respite Open Thread , by Laurie, April 21, 2021. BBC: Malaria vaccine hailed as potential breakthrough, by Roxby, April 23, 2021.
~~~

Ultimate HoofPicks. Yellow is standard, I prefer the smaller blue/pink ones. This is our second set, in case the others are still packed in the trailer. [Hoof Care]

Yeah, I like them that much.

There’s no revolution in form here. They have the standard hoof pick shape. They shouldn’t be that special.

And yet, I find myself searching for one of these while bypassing the hordes of non-Ultimate hoof picks that have accumulated over the years.

It’s a cumulative effect. The angle is a bit better. The digging surface is a bit sturdier. It takes fewer passes to clean the foot.

They just work.

I want to buy armfuls and hand one to everyone I know who has a horse.

No special deals here. No relationship to the manufacturer, other than giving them my money. I just really like these hoof picks.

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine

Images

Awareness of the outside world. From Roaming Reader, Spring in the Northeast. Taken April 21, 2021. [Archives]
~~~

In the spirit of end-of-the-month blog self-reflection, I turned a counting graphic into a logo exercise. While I’m not sure that I’d want to see it every day as a logo, it didn’t turn out badly as lettering.

[Counting Posts]

Previous Logo Exercises
[State Of The Blog Logo & Color Reference] SOTB
[Blogiversary, Quilty Logo] VBB
[Logo Study, Descending Capitals] VBB
[Letter Art: Logo] RS

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine

Words
Blogging About Blogging

Awareness of the outside world. Land Rover Kentucky Three Day Event XC today. Watch live on USEF Network with free fan membership. KTDE: Live Streaming
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The blog has a new theme. That is the WordPress term for the overall appearance of a blog.

This unlooked for change came about because WordPress changed to a new editor. Since I am using the free .COM version, all I can say is ‘Thank you, Sir. May I have another.’

It got me thinking about about types of change.

Some are better. Linking to a previous post is now drag-and-drop rather than a multi-stage process. Useful if I’m including a long list of past posts, as I did on Thursday. [Pre-show]

Some changes are lateral. The fancy new Block Editor all but forces me to use WYSIWYG. This has been an option for a while, but one I have been avoiding. Now the HTML version is so annoying that I use their preferred version. Seeing the formatting on the fly is admittedly easier, as long as one is in line with the programming assumptions, see drag-and-drop above. OTOH, there are times when it just won’t do what I want. Then, I have to open the code editor to properly explain myself. A mix of good and bad.

Some changes are worse. If I hurry the save/preview process, the new program gets stuck. Something in my work flow causes it to get stuck often. I have to type a letter, erase it, and save again. So I am learning to wait for it to digest. Minimal, but annoying.

Some changes seem bad because it’s not the way I am used to. The new editor no longer put photos on the landing page of the blog. All I had was a boring list of titles. Hence the new theme. All of the options were a long scroll of posts. No theme that provided a list of summaries. Not good or bad, but not what I had.

And now I shall bitch. Because venting is fun. My nitpicking list of other changes, a mix of bad and lateral. Time will tell if I get used to these, if they continue to bother me, or if I find that they work in my favor.

It jumps to the end of the file. Annoying in a really long file. Yes, I have discovered that I can use the home key to get back to the top. Still annoying. [LEJOG]

The *&*@ block menu gets in the way of reading the text above what I am working on.

Can’t always see where the cursor is.

It wants to insert blank lines all over the place. I have to remember to shift-enter if I don’t want to move into a whole new zip code.

Occasionally the link text shows up in the url box, meaning I have to erase text before I paste the address. Why? What purpose does this serve? It’s not consistent, so I can’t tell which keystroke pattern to avoid to prevent this from happening. I can’t rely on auto-pilot. Some times it’s there; sometimes not. Small but annoying. I use a lot of links.

WYSIWYG links are hard to punctuate around. The period or the bracket gets sucked into the link. I have to type the required glyph and then backspace it to where I want.

WYSIWYG links don’t show the url. Can’t sort a list of links by date.

Speaking of dates, drafts no longer show their dates on the main editing page. The date only shows up when the post is scheduled. For drafts, I have to look at each one individually. Not useful when one is planning a week’s worth of posts.

It no longer accepts 00:01 as a time. I have moved the posting time to 01:01. That’s why it’s been coming out an hour later recently. Probably not a problem in the US, since most of us are asleep. In other places, I may now miss someone’s coffee hour.

The Table of Contents widget is gone. This maybe a function of the theme. Gaa. It took so much clicking to pick this one. Nevermind, found it. Had to customize. New skill.

There is no Quick Edit function. Tweaking a title means opening the post in a new window.

The media library no longer lists where the photos have been used. I find this hugely annoying. When I reuse a photo I include a link to the previous post. Now I have to click over to get the name of the image, use the search box, and hope the name shows up in the search.

Alternatively …

All these things may still exist. I may need to figure out how to do it under the new format. Word count is still there, but has moved from constant display under the text box to a request button up top.

Bottom Line
I am not an early adopter. Of anything. I prefer to think of myself as Old School. I am comfortable with the term Curmudgeon.

State of the Blog [archives]

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine

Horsekeeping

Awareness of the outside world . WBUR: I’m Not Celebrating The Chauvin Verdict, by Pelton, April 22, 2021. Counterpoint. The Root: Black People Don’t Need Reminders That Chauvin’s Guilty Verdict Doesn’t Mean the Fight Is Over. It’s OK to Celebrate Small Victories, by Linly, April 21, 2021.
~~~
Pause for regrouping.
~~~
The Equine Amateur Dramatic Society is now in session.

Setting
For the FCHP show, Rodney went by himself. Milton stayed behind. Neither one has shown the ability to stand quietly at the trailer while the other one works, particularly if that other one goes out of sight. We will wrestle that greased pig in the future. Too many other issues to concentrate on at the moment. For now, solo showing. [Show Report]

Rodney
When we left for the show, Rodney was convinced, utterly convinced, that he was leaving, never to return.

Rodney has lived with three owners and four residential trainers. I don’t know if that is a little or a lot for the average horse. For Rodney, the lifestyle had left him with the conviction that every time he got on a trailer he was moving somewhere new. It took us trips over many months to convince him that we would always bring him home.

Shipping in company undoubtedly helped.

Now he was getting on the trailer all by his lonesomeness.

… this is it … I was right all along … all those other trips were an aberration … this time is for real … I’m outta here … new stall here I come … I wonder if I will like the new place … I doubt it … where am I? … where is this that I now call home? … oh, here … I’ve been here … I go home from here … oh … okay.

Milton
When we left for the show, Milton was convinced, utterly convinced, that the three of us were leaving him, never to return.

Milton’s resume includes the track and two owners. He doesn’t seem to have the departure demons that Rodney has. Milton wants everyone to be together. His favorite time is team meetings, when the four of us stand around grooming, and puttering, and chatting. His least favorite time is when goes Rodney out to the ring or around the field without him. When we leave, he stays in the stall to contain his anguish. In contrast, being the stay-at-home horse bothers Rodney not at all. [Gold Star]

… where are you going? … why are you leaving MEEEEEEEEEEEEE?!?!?! … you’re back … it was so long … I had such a tough day … I’m so tired.

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Katherine