Fencing False Alarm, Fortunately

Horsekeeping

 

… time to get the horses … put Milton up … Rodney is right over there … hmm, were’d he go? … must have wandered off … he does that all the time … has no problem leaving Milton in the dust … walk out to his usual spot … not there … keep walking around pasture … no horse … I know the pasture is in summer growth but I can usually spot them … going around again … checking all the corners … WHAT??? …

… crap, crap, crap … NOT what you want to see when you have gone all the way around the pasture and not found a horse … crap, crap, crap … this is how Rodney got out last time [Fencing, A Photo Essay] … crap, crap, crap … okay, the fence isn’t as low … the underbrush on the other side does not look as if 1400 pounds of horse just went through … he *probably* didn’t escape … not something one wants to be wrong about … crap, crap, crap … exit pasture … check side field … no horse … crap, crap, crap … walk gingerly down driveway … listening for squeal of brakes … crap, crap, crap … no squeal, no horse in sight … he’s really not the sort of horse to head over the horizon … he’d stop at the nearest patch of grass … crap, crap, crap … come back up …

… block driveway with truck … crap, crap, crap … go back to barn … cr …

… Rodney standing quietly in the aisle. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Thank you. Time to go fix a fence … and take photos for a blog post.

Seriously, I got agita all over again just typing this.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Switching Gears

Adventures in Saddle Seat

 

I have a card in my brush box that I read before my saddle seat lessons at Stepping Stone Farm. It gives me a headstart so that I don’t spend the first 5 minutes reinventing the wheel [Swapping Back and Forth]. Reverting to hunt seat does not require reminders.


 
Front
BEFORE
Gloves

POSITION
Sit back, all the way to the cantle. It’s not the safety seat that eventers use when coming down to the Head of the Lake. It’s a balanced seat, just farther back to allow for lofty shoulder action. Okay, maybe not on Sam, but in theory.

Legs off. Heels away. Dig your knees in. Just like h/j trainers tell you not to do.
Feet forward, true h/j, worth noting

Hands up, way up, even higher.
Pinkies in. Saddle seat, rein goes around the outside of the pinkie. Hunt seat etc, rein goes between 3rd and 4th fingers. This issue has followed me into the show ring [Getting The Band Back Together].

Whip perpendicular, straight down along shoulder.

Back
RIDING
Energy goes up ^ not fwd >.

All aids are lighter.
Steady contact is ~1/2, still steady

If use lower leg, remove after.

Outside aids, esp canter. This one catches me in both saddles. I’ve sat on Milton getting ready for the canter, thinking, hunters, inside rein, outside leg.
Outside rein, outside leg.

Set hands at canter. Collect, collect, collect, every stride.

For canter transition, tip head to rail. more. Dressage has an obsessive emphasis on straightness; saddle seat, not so much.

Your Turn
I know several folks out there ride or have ridden saddle seat as well as hunter/jumper/dressage/eventing. If you rode/ride saddle seat, do these reminders ring any bells? If you still ride both, or any two differing disciplines, how do you switch?

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Circling Back, Rodney Returns to Full Circle Horse Park

Training Journal

 

 
Back to Full Circle Horse Park last Sunday. First trip, a week earlier [Looking Around, and Around, and Around, Rodney at Full Circle Horse Park].

Would Rodney be better? Worse? The same?

I was banking on better. How much better? A little? It took him over half-a-dozen trips to settle in at Stepping Stone Farm. A lot better? Heavens would part, Rodney would give a sassy hoof snap and be all ‘I got this,’ and we would trot and canter our fool hearts out.

Phase one – Touring the grounds at at walk.
Much better. Still looking about and stopping to stare at this and that, but without the ear hysteria.

Phase two – Warm-up on long lines.
Alas, Rodney took a few funny steps on the lunge line. Lame? Not lame? Right hind? Left front? Working out of it? Imagined it? He’d had a kerfuffle on the long lines the day before and ran around the field that morning. Could have been an artifact of either one, or neither. Meh. Better safe than sorry. Went home without riding. Pffft.

Never got to see if his calmer attitude in hand would translate to under saddle work. I’m betting it would have. Progress. Maybe even Galápagos tortoise steps, i.e. large turtle (tortoise) steps.

Thank you fore reading,
Katherine Walcott

Milton Is Getting A Break

Training Journal

 

Milton is getting a break … from me.

We did five cross rail shows [1,2, 3, 4, 5]. While he acquitted himself moderately well, he did not fling himself about the ring yodeling, ‘Yes! This is my calling. Show me the next one!’ His attitude was more along the lines of ‘What?! Oh, okay. I think I can cope. What?! Oh, Okay …’ Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

As for me, I’ve had enough of this nonsense. I want to jump real jumps. Wide-eyed hesitation is understandable in one’s first class at the beginning of April. It becomes less acceptable to display an unchanged, unimproved attitude by one’s 14th class at the end of July.

Milton and I are taking a temporary break from riding while we sort out how to bridge this gap. In the meanwhile, he is long-lining regularly, even starting lateral work. He and I are doing in-hand walks and hills in the afternoon for conditioning. We’d like to hitch again if we can coordinate schedules with our driving supervisor.

So, Milton is still in work. Milton is in work without the high-maintenance, high-pressure, howling, horse show monkey on his back.

That would be me.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Fiction Faith Graphic

Graphic Design

 

 

Process notes
On the down side, still relying on computer fonts, Arial in this case, rather than drawing my own letters. I had envisioned a completely different image based on swirly, swoopy initial letters. F & R seem to lend themselves to swoops, don’t they? However, I couldn’t get the Inkscape spirals to behave and knew I couldn’t freehand with either pen or computer. Insert Ira Glass’s Advice For Beginners quote once again, [Definitions] Zen Pencils.

On the upside, had fun discovering two-tone letters.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Step One, Think Of Myself As A Writer

Writing About Writing

Crossposted on Will Write For Feed Blog: Step One, my new blog.

Fiction is different.

When I wrote for the newspaper or as a freelancer, every word was promised before it was written. Twenty inches of school board meeting? Sure. Two thousand words on the History of Dressage? No problem. I had a buyer before I started typing.

In a fiction career, so I gather, one writes the short story or novel or ground-breaking synthesis of text and etext and then looks around to see who might be interested in giving a home to one’s precious creation. Stephen King could sell a book based on a proposal, probably based on a text message. Us unproven writers need to prove that we can reach the finish line.

Fiction requires faith.

As a journalist, I never questioned what I was doing with a particular article. I might have questioned what I was doing up at 2 am transcribing an interview. That was tactics, not strategy.

Fiction is going to require believing in myself. Belief that I can get to the aforementioned finish line. Belief that I will have something usable once I get there. Belief that my plot makes sense. Belief that my characters will sparkle with life rather than lie on the page as lifeless lumps of text.

The fiction label.

I’m a writer. I know that. At what point can I call myself a fiction writer? When I start? When I finish? When I get published? How about now? I am a fiction writer.

I am a blogger. What better way to announce this than with a blog post? So this is me. Thinking of myself as a writer. A fiction writer.

Your turn. Who is a writer? Who is not? Who gets to decide?
~~~
Crosspost Explanation
Yes, I started a new blog. Again. This one should be easy to maintain. It will be the repository of writing posts from here. A blog for people who want to read about about writing but don’t want to plow through clouds of horsehair.

So I started a writer’s blog. We’ll see how it goes.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Low Key Photo Challenge, Back To School

Photography

 


 
The barn aisles are quiet.
The painted ponies have been cleaned.
The ice pop wrappers have been picked up.

Summer camp ends.
School starts.
~~~
Process Notes
Phone. Haven’t had the big camera out in ages. Couldn’t face trying to recall what all the buttons do.

Procedure for the Low Key Photo Challenge
1) I post a photo on a given theme.
2) You comment below with a link to your photo(s) on that theme.
3) We all click over to see what you have.
That’s it. No prizes. No rules. No submissions. Just pretty pictures to enjoy. For more explanation, [Inaugural Edition]. Photo Challenge [Archives]

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott