Me, behind a Coke Zero truck.
(Please note that I waited for an intersection to take the photo.)
Hmm, that R looks odd.
It’s too thin.
The O is even thinner.
(looking left) Ohh, the E and Z are progressively fatter.
The letters are “losing weight” from left to right.
Cute.
Hmm.
The R has rounded ends.
The O is round.
Then why do the Z and the E have square ends?
It would have been easy enough to round them.
That way, the letters would have an organic, “human-body” feel.
This way, half the letters are square and half are round.
For no reason.
This is just stupid.
You know you are a letter nerd when you have violent opinions about a label.
I would prefer to leave it here, but since I said something earlier [Umbrellas], I should follow-up.
The installers-who-shall-not-be-named did an inadequate job.
They they tried to pass it off as adequate.
It took an hour of yelling to convince them to fix it.
It took a week to fix it.
We were treated like filth.
What ever happened to customer service and the pursuit of excellence?
Still, it’s better than the hitch installation in our previous truck. Those folks punched a hole in the fuel tank.
Posh channels her inner Road Horse before settling down to go like a lady.
The plan was to use Greg’s SSF driving lesson as a photo shoot to practice my long-neglected camera skills.
Not so much.
Turns out I can either take pictures or observe. Not both. Am I looking at light and photo angles or am I looking at the horse’s attitude and the driver’s thumb position? So, I put down the camera and paid attention.
Watching reinforced the idea that tiny changes on the part of horse or human can have a big impact on overall impression. Posh would go from fancy to flat and back to fancy in a few strides. No obvious flinging of head or gnashing of teeth, just yup, yup, nope, yup.
My riding is in a similar place. I’ve taken care of most of the gross errors (most of the time), such as position, control, and so on. Now, I’m trying to pull it all together and sell it to the judge. In dressage, this would be interpretation and artistic expression. Hunters ditto. In jumpers, it would be shaving that extra second off the inside turn. In eventing, keeping the ideal, bouncy canter through the combination to the skinny. In any discipline, it’s the different between blue and not-blue.
Railbirding is some of the best learning available.
The gold version of the silver medal I earned last year [Loving the Loot: My Academy Award].
“A bronze medallion will be awarded for earning 15 points in the first year of competition, a silver medallion for 15 points in the second consecutive year, and a gold for 15 points in the third consecutive year.” ASHA Youth Awards: Academy Awards Program
As with Rodney yesterday [Feb 2017], an update on Milton, who is also on the calorie-boosting train.
We have been wrestling with thrush all winter. I can’t believe I posted about it in November [Drought]. ?!? This is embarrassing. Thrush is a management disease.
Their soles were fine. Their frogs were fine. The channels on the side of their frogs were fine. No horrid smell. No crumbly black nastiness coming off their feet. Just the smallest amount of gunk buried deep down in the cleft of the frog(s). Rodney had it in all four. Milton had in only one back foot most of the time (see below). You can imagine how thrilled they were to have us rooting around in their frogs.
We used green goo. We used purple goo. We used brown goo. We used long cotton swabs. We packed their feet with gauze. We would treat their feet & put them up. Nothing worked. In our defense, Blacksmith said that this sort of thrush can be really hard to get on top of.
Box O’ Footcare
What finally worked was a short amount of tubing and a syringe to drive the green goo down into the frog. We are currently prophylaxing by alternating green goo via tubing with clear goo that comes with a long snout on the bottle.
Therefore, Milton rested much of last month, as he tried to decide which foot was about to fall off. My left hind hurts. No, wait, it’s my right hind. Oh, did I hear dinner? Here I come on a run. Drama queen? Him?
Milton did take another tiny step toward a career as a driving horse. We do not have enough availble bodies to take the next step with the practice cart [MPC]. We would need, at minimum, a driver/handler and a person on either side to hold the shafts. Instead, I held up a single pole to his side as a pretend shaft. Ersatz, but at least something. He thought it was weird, but he did not say Oh. Hell. No. We creep forward.
Due to truck (yay! [Milton’s Chariot]), driving derby (yay!! [Show Report]), and several guest posts (yay!!! [Sights][Friendships][Why I Ride]), the home team was absent from the blog for most of February. The last Rodney post was on February 6 [Rodney Objects]. The last Milton post was at the end of January [Counterbalance], plus a mention in association with the truck. So, up to what have they been?
Same old, same old. Nothing bad, nothing brilliant.
I have been riding sitting on Rodney whenever we are home on the weekends. We are up to about 20 minutes of walking. We mosey along. We do big figure eights. We go big. We go slow. All on a long rein. He still curls up like a shrimp if I touch the reins. OTOH, he has (seems to have) mastered statue. He will stand in the middle of the ring and relax instead of stand and fidget. This is good. We have been needing a reset button. An iota of progress.
Rodney displays his command of chill
Groundwork during the week has not been as progress filled. I get frustrated, give in to despair, lose my motivation, and settle on taking them for walks [What Is Work?] instead of taking them into the ring for work. I know that if I were to be more motivated, I would have less to be frustrated about. It’s a circle with me in the center being vicious.
Anyway.
Both horses came through our local winter hay shortage thinner than I would like. (In January, they seemed ok [Rodney’s Hillwork: Horsekeeping note]. They haven’t changed weight as much as I’ve decided I don’t like where they are. The eye of the master & and all that.) The hay we could find was not wonderful, and we supplemented with hay cubes, which they did not love. Now that we can go further afield for hay, …
… it’s time to chub them up. Hay snacks for everyone!
Project explanation [AlphaBooks 2017]. Open to recommendations for the remaining letters. Which books would you choose?
Speaking of recommendations, Dick Francis is the obvious choice for F, but which book? I’ve narrowed it down to my favorites & made a poll. Tell me what you think. Please pass it along if you know someone who might have an opinion on the subject.
Virtual Brush Box 