Virtual Brush Box

Milton for the Moment

We are having the vet out to check one of Milton’s feet. There may or may not be anything wrong. If there is, it may or may not have anything to with my mind-numbing absence of progress. We shall see.

Meanwhile: holding pattern. Field walks. Ground-driving at a walk. No trotting on the lunge line. No jumping on the lunge line because it’s Sunday and d*mm*t somebody is going to jump something.
~~~
Gratuitous Postcard

Bird Market
by Eduard Uspensky
(abbreviated)

Bird Market,
Bird Market…
On golden July day
Between cages and baskets
We walk with papa.

We see – fish is sold,
Fins burning fire!
We looked at the fish
And decided that we take!

Giving away free kittens
A nice seller.
On the kittens we have looked,
looked,
looked –
And finally took.

Here we were offered a squirrel.
– How much is?
– Five rubles. –
At it we have looked,
looked,
looked –
It is necessary to take it quickly!

The sender says this is from a poem about a father and son buying animals, including a horse, at the market. Mom is not pleased when the menagerie returns home. We had a Russian friend translate. The Google translation was … amusing. He also identified the author. Full lyrics in English here. Technically this is a card that came in an envelope, but it came through Postcrossing.

RS Postcrossing post
Official Postcrossing site

Thank you to I for the postcard.
Thank you to V for the translation.
Thank you for reading.
Katherine Walcott

More Poles for Rodney

trot poles

Rodney likes poles. He likes them upright as weave poles. He likes them horizontal as cavaletti. (Three of four pictured. Parallax makes it hard to get a decent picture of the whole series.) While he doesn’t like the cavelletti quite as much as the weave poles [Speciesism], he has been known to give a lap & chew after trotting over them on the lunge line.

Last weekend, I sat on Rodney (!) and walked over them. As we came down the side of the ring, he put his ears up and looked around the corner toward the cavalletti. ‘I know what comes next!’ We are a long way from galloping around a course, but there was a whisper of promise.

Later in the weekend, we added a pole on the ground between standards to the circuit. Our first step into a larger world?

Rodney pole jumplet

Yes, I need to speak at my ground crew for leaving the cups up and empty (& me for not noticing). We were planning to lunge Rodney after. He worked so well that we went home instead. It was walk-only, but we managed sufficient contact for decent circles and a steady pace over the cavalletti. He did not curl his neck up like a salted shrimp [Positives].

Subdued Kermit dance.

References
Headgear [View]
Mane hack [Zap]
For the non-geek speakers among us, quote.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Letter Art: M is for My Missing Motivation

2016 letter M

~~~
2016 Alphabet

L is for Leadline
K is for Knabstrupper
J is for Jenny’s Jodhpurs
I is for I Love You
H is for Halter
G is for Ghost Gallery
F is for Fence
E is for Eventing
D is for Do
C is for Carrot
B is for Brush
A is for Apple

2015 Alphabet

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

10 Reasons To Wear A Helmet

1) “Dear Daddy: I fell off my horse at the camp show. Don’t worry, I can move my arm now.”

2) Getting assigned the schoolie who only goes bareback.

3) If a horse jumps but does not clear a large, unsecured hay roll, then the hay, the horse, and the rider will roll.

4) Jumping a fallen tree. Failing to clear a low-hanging branch of a non-fallen tree on the other side.

5) Jumping a fallen tree. Getting a toe caught on part of the tree halfway over.

6) “Sorry, I’m late for my class. My horse fell over in warm-up.”

7) When your horse says, ‘Oooh, I don’t like that jump. Very dangerous. You go first.’

8) “Having trouble with your horse? Here let me try.”

9) There appears to be a horse lying on my leg. That can’t be good.

10) Hanging on during a bucking fit. Then a stirrup leather breaks.
~~~

Written for a contest by One K Helmet. Winner announced on their Facebook page on May 20, 2016. Didn’t win. At least I got a blog post out of it.

All of these happened to me, from my first fall off of Wind Chimes in the late ’70s to my dumping by Milton in the mid ’10s [Universe]. There have been many more, including two more horse falls. I picked the ones with the best WTF factor.

Of the 10 falls, four were jumping, six on the flat. Three involved the horse falling as well: one jumping, two on the flat.

Of the flat falls, two were horse stumbles (one horse stayed up, the other flopped over [Helmet Evangelism]), one was rider error, one was a horse wiping out on a corner, two were bucking fits.

The flat falls happened at the walk, trot, canter, and buck.

The jumping falls happened before the jump, over the jump, and after the jump.

Every ride. Every time.

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Foto Friday: Panning Practice

Lyrric 5 29 16

Lyrric 5 29 16 two

~~~
Taken at Greg’s recent driving lesson [Cones]. My photo studio/classroom for the day.

panning setup

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott

Combined Driving Lesson, Cones

Greg spent his lesson time practicing ~~jumper courses~~ cones.

Similarities between Jumper Courses & Cones Courses
The course is a pattern of numbered obstacles, which can include combinations, grouped together as A/B/C/D.

Each obstacle is marked with a number and red/white flags. (Oddly, I’ve never found this to help while riding. Actually checking the number/markers never occurs to me while aboard. Helps with the course walk.)

You walk the course beforehand. (If one is having a lesson, one drives the course in a golf cart. No such luck at a competition.) You want to walk the same line you will drive/ride, and then sometimes you decide that a different approach will be better. So you walk it again.

Courses have turns, roll-backs, off-set lines, and so on. Courses can be easy or hard. A well-designed course can be both challenging and fun.

Smooth and efficient looks slower but ends up being faster than racing and jerking.

Optimum time is determined by course length. Exceeding the time adds penalties.

Going off course equals elimination. Excessive use of the whip can be grounds for elimination.

Course designers take advantage of horse psychology: being distracted by things outside the ring, knowing where the in-gate is, etc.

Horses look for the next obstacle.

Differences
Twenty cones pairs versus 10 to 12 jumps.

Grooms are permitted for single horse, and required for pairs & fours. While on course, grooms may not move around the carriage, or provide any verbal assistance to the driver (i.e., no shouting “WTF? You forgot to go through #14!”). (And thus why they are designated as “grooms” for cones, and not “navigators”, which they are for marathon.)

3 penalties for dislodging a marker ball (sitting on tip of cone).

Fewer refusals. More mashing of the obstacles.

No jump-off. But overall course time is considered a tie-breaker when penalty points are equal.

The cones must be a specific distance wider than the cart. If the carts are different widths, the cones must be reset. At the schooling driving show we watched last summer*, the cones changed after every. single. competitor. Since one has to bend down to adjust cones, this wears out the help. Much more work than the occasional knockdown of a jump pole.