Virtual Brush Box

I love me some ribbon [RibbonFest Invitation]. Doesn’t matter what the venue. This was sent in by a reader attending the Southern Adirondack Fiber Festival, Greenwich NY, last month.

The same photographer contributed the road-side balloon photo in Mail-Order Horse.

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Gratuitous Cat Picture

Previously seen as a sign of weakness, the neck strap is the latest hot new thing in eventing. Big Name Rider William Fox-Pitt wears one. Now everybody must. The goal is to have a piece of leather around the horse’s neck to grab when plans go astray.

Back in the dim, dark past, I fashioned one out of a stirrup leather for my first Training Level stadium jumping course. My horse was braided. The rest of the time, I am all about grabbing mane. It’s right there. My horses have never objected. No extra equipment required. When I had to roach Mathilda’s mane one summer due to sweet itch, I left a soul patch right where I might need a handhold.

At the risk of the Internet falling down on my head, I must confess that I don’t like neckstraps. They seem unsafe to me. If the horse has a simple strap around the neck on a regular basis, what is to keep said strap from sliding down the neck when the horse lowers her head during, say, a stretchy circle? A moment of inattention from horse or rider and the front foot is caught. What if the horse reaches down to itch a leg? Takes a bite of grass during a hack? Seems to me that remembering to grab onto a strap to keep it from sliding is just one more thing to go wrong.

While we are on the subject, I also do not understand western tie-downs that go from girth to nose without benefit of breastplate. This is a foot-tangler waiting to happen. OTOH, I don’t know much about Western tack. Anyone care to enlighten me on this one?

Yet, I am not one to sneer at safe concerns. So I bought a yoke. It has a piece that goes through the legs to the girth to keep the neck section in place. Yokes are used at racetracks to attach martingales and as general panic straps. I figure if they can work with hysterical two-year olds, I should be covered. Most of the time. No, it would not have helped me on Milton. There was no time to grab anything.

There have been a lot of purchases lately. Husband says he starts to worry about me when I stop buying tack.

Post update: Breastplate – I could spin a theory but most I forgot about them. Big in Eventing but not as big in Jumpers, so they fell off my radar. I suspect the whole exercise is moot. Come the heat of the moment, I’m gonna grab mane the way I always have.

Fire ants – Burn on contact. Bites take forever to heal. They are the work of the devil.
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Horse Update

Poor Milton learned about fire ants the hard way. His whole back is covered with devastingly itchy bumps. I suspect he lay down on an anthill. Not a mistake one makes a second time.

Blurry, but shows how much he cranks his head around when I scratch him.

We are having trouble coming up with Milton’s “color” [Barn Colors].

Blue – A appropriate color for a competition horse. Milton has already inherited some of Mathilda’s blue gear, e.g. grooming slip. OTOH, shouldn’t he have his own color?

White – His serving bucket is white. OTOH white in anything other than plastic is impractical at a barn.

Grey – Snooze. Not always available.

Silver – Pretty. Hard to come by. Indistinguishable from gray in some applications.

Red – Blue for Canadians.

Any thoughts?

Source:

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.
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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.)

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On the lighter side, a guest gratuitous cat picture:

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