Virtual Brush Box

Continuing to repost the entries from my previous monthly blogs Back To Eventing and Back To Riding. This was originally posted on the USEA website 2010-12-01, archived with editor’s introduction here.

Back To Eventing: Part 4, New Horse Blues
(The author returns – eventually – to eventing)
[HA! Sorry. Interjection from the future.]
by Katherine Walcott

Roscoe’s Lament
(With apologies to Theodor Seuss Geisel)
I don’t like my shoe, the one on the right.
A nail in the front is a little too tight.
Call up the man and remove it, please do.
I’ll stick my foot in a bucket and leave you to stew.
I know that you hope I will be a star,
For a life with no griefs, go buy a car.

First injury and I am gutted. In his second shoeing, Roscoe got a close nail. At first, I wasn’t overly worried. Nails happen. Pull the shoe, soak the foot, apply the tape, lather, rinse, repeat. Then he went three-legged lame. The abscess had probably sealed back up. However, no amount of reasoning helps when your horse looks at you pitifully and says his foot hurts too much to make it to the water trough. After second impromptu visit from the blacksmith, Roscoe is currently wearing his shoe backwards. This leaves the hole in the toe open yet provides support to his thin, Thoroughbred foot. As the supporting blacksmith explained, it has the added advantage of confusing anyone tracking us.

Part of the problem is that I have no sense of how much weight to give his response. A friend’s horse once soundly whacked both front cannon bones during an unsuccessful surprise attack on massive wooden farm gate. (Overgrown trail + sensitive go button + communication error, but I digress.) Leaving my friend to pick herself up, I charged after the disappearing mare. When I found her, she was holding her right front leg off the ground. Panicking, I threw myself from my horse and ran my hands down her leg. She then put it down and picked up the left. Clearly, they stung and she wanted them checked. That done, she was ready to return to the trail ride. History does not record how long it took the rest of our heart rates to return to baseline.

In contrast, Caesar, my previous horse, lived in a Wagnerian opera. He didn’t have lamenesses; he had Life Shattering Events. On the occasion of his first injury, he came in from the pasture dragging his toe as if every nerve from the shoulder down had been shredded, only to trot sound. Turned out that, when injured, he was actually quite brave. It’s just that what he was being asked to suffer was more than any horse in history had ever been asked to suffer. During two decades of this dramatic approach to life, I learned to dial back his reality to match the one in which the rest of us lived.

With this horse, it’s been two months. I can speak basic Roscoe but have not mastered the underlying grammar. Is he an iron horse with a legitimate grievance or a cupcake with a boo-boo? Is this healing curve normal for him or are complications setting in? Is there still an infection or does the shoe just feel weird? Either way, if you will excuse me, we have another soaking session.
~~~
Rodney’s Saga repost locations
BTE 1 of 9: How I Won the Training Level AEC
BTE 2 of 9: The Cast Assembles
BTE 3 of 9: The AEC, a Realization in Five Phases

I sit on a log. Rodney stands next to me practicing couch. Milton works. Sky and clouds arrange to be scenic.

Update: I’m told this post wandered from artistic out into vague.

Here’s what was happening. My top hand is brilliant at lungeing, long lining, etc. While Milton is doing his circles, I am holding Rodney. Since we do not have a separate arena, one horse gets held while the other works. One assumes this is temporary. Over time, they will adjust to the paradigm.

Plus, it is not a bad thing for Rodney to hang about doing low-key activities, such as playing couch. He’s really enjoys watching another horse work.

I’m sitting on a railroad tie that borders the dressage space. I look up to see a gorgeous blue sky. We do not usually get such striking sky colors in the Southeast. I take a picture. I frame the sky with Rodney’s head for depth.

When I proofed the post, I realized that my position could be misconstrued as a fall. I wanted to correct that. The theory behind Foto Friday is to emphasize the photo, so I kept the text to a minimum. I was hoping to clarify rather than confuse. I appear to have failed.

The main, indeed only, point of the post is Look! Look! Pretty sky!

Update the second: My Foto Friday pictures are about technique and style. Regular post pictures are about content, e.g. new hat, pile of shavings. I’m all about content. I need to work on art.

Don’t worry. I won’t get on without help. However, I have to I WANT to get on. Right now, not so much.

The problem, per usual, is Rodney. I suspect I would handle this latest reversal of fortune with far more aplomb if I was not already deeply marinated in frustration. I’ve done the OTTB thing before. Previous Horse was a bigger twit than Milton will ever conceive of being. I was young & stupid, so I plowed ahead.

Back in May 2012, I said “(Another) pasture ornament might just do me in.” [Never Settle] I misspoke. The problem is not Milton’s ornament status. He is not. He will not have Rodney’s career arc. Four years from now, Milton will be a happy working pony, perhaps for me, perhaps for someone else. The problem is the blow to my judgment. What I should have said was, “Another mistake might just do me in.” It has. Being back at this place – for whatever reason – has gutted me.

Thus progress grinds to a halt.

Yes, there are many things that I could do. First, I have to want to. The past four years do not make that easy. Riding the Saddlebreds for the last two years has helped. My stunning slide from first to last this year has not.

I have wandered from the point haven’t I? Now I have a mounting block. When I figure out what I want to do with it, I’ll be ready.

(This started as a simple shopping photo to fill up a post. Then I worried that you might think I was about to lose my mind and leap on. I had no such intention. Milton is wearing boots for lunging. So I added that I wasn’t about to get on to the post. Then the screamy voices in my head started: Why not? What the hell is taking so long? Just get back on the damn horse already …

This is my answer.

It gets loud in here.)

~~~
On the lighter side, a guest gratuitous cat picture:

For non-horse folks, that’s a box to hold grooming equipment. And kittens.

Frankly, I think it would be easier to use the truck. But I’m not the mechanic who has to get the truck started.

~~~
End of the month State of the Blog covered mid-month, Sine Die … Or Not. Previous S of B posts listed here.

We all know Caveat Emptor. Google says lector = reader.

At the end of last week, I had a long talk with Coach about the rest of the fall show season. I gave her right of refusal, given the current scrambled state of my psyche. I offer you the same deal.

I’ve been in a mood. You may have noticed. Not likely to change soon. On the other hand, it’s not fair that you suffer through problems not of your making. Options:

1) We part company temporarily. Go enjoy other blogs. Saddle Seeks Horse just bought a new horse. Then, come back in a month or three when I am likely to be less Eeyore & more Pinkie Pie.

B) Keep reading but know that you will have to deal with a higher occurrence of neurotic meltdowns. I will attempt to be entertaining, but whining will transpire.

Coach elected to endure the drama. Apparently, the things that give me agita are also the things that make me who I am. Far too generous. Personally, I’d chose door number one if there was any possible way to manage it. (Does anyone else want to get away from themselves. Just for a break? Or is that part of what makes me who I am? But I digress.)

So, I will continue to show and continue to blog. I don’t promise to be a ray of sunshine about either one.

You have been warned.

A common alpha-numeric conversion getting less common every day.

Hint: Where are O & N the same? Answer

The attempt was fall foliage colors. Again in GIMP.