On the Sixth Day of Christmas: 6 Grassy Acres
On the Fifth Day of Christmas: 5 Dressage Rings
On the Fourth Day Of Christmas: 4 Custom Shoes
A while back I asked my blacksmith what constituted a good client:
Someone with many horses and therefore much business?
Someone whose horses have difficult but expensive shoes? Easy but low-paying shoes?
Someone whose horses behave?
All my horses learn to stand for the blacksmith, load on trailers, ground-tie for grooming, etc. I was hoping this polite behavior was earning me extra points. If you have a good blacksmith, you want to keep him happy.
The answer:
“Their checks clear.”
On the Third Day of Christmas: 3 Feed Sacks
This is what we feed our 17h, 1300lb horse. A minuscule amount. For comparison, Mathilda is six inches shorter, 300 pounds lighter, and gets twelve times the amount of food (1 cup vs 3 quarts). They both eat three times a day.
Rodney is fat. Not just ‘in good flesh’. He sports pokeable pads of podge on parts of his body.
Ingredients:
Yup, 2 horses, 3 bags of feed.
We would have them both on Senior for digestibility, but Mathilda refuses to eat all Senior. She gets half grain as a compromise. Rodney gets a taste of grain so his system is familiar should he ended up getting a mouthful by mistake – say I let him in for pen time & forget to take out the leftovers.
BTW, this is M’s old feed pan. We bought her a new one to see if she prefers the taste of new plastic. She does. Silly cow. (Although, in her defense, she eats inside, so her pan is no longer rainwater fresh. Still.)
On the Second Day Of Christmas: 2 Talking Steeds
“You hold on with your knees,” said the Horse. “That’s the secret of good riding. Grip my body between your knees as hard as you like; sit straight up, straight as a poker; keep your elbows in.”
Horse and His Boy
by C.S. Lewis
[HarperCollins 1954]
p. 15
Heretofore, my instructors had explicitly told me not to dig my knees into the saddle. So, I always assumed that the author got it wrong as a non-rider. Turns out the Bree goes saddleseat [Part III, paragraph 2]. That would make sense for a noblemen wishing to ride long distances in style.
Bree talks about trotting two pages later, so he isn’t gaited.
Collected cover art.
Update for the non-horsemad: the second horse, Hwin, is introduced in Chapter 2. I assume the rest of you grew up wondering what it would be like to talk to Bree and Hwin. Or was that just me?
On the First Day of Christmas – Rodney in a Red Hat
Merry Christmas to all who observe and Merry Return of the Sun to any Jewish, atheist, or otherwise non-Christmas-celebrating readers.
… Answer
Answering the question from yesterday’s post:
As I mentioned in my National coverage [Part III: Photos], ultra-slick turn-out for saddleseat involves taping the ends of one’s gloves to one’s wrists. In addition, the tops of one’s jodhpur boots are taped closed to keep the extra leather from making unsightly lines in the leg of one’s pants. The fit of my boots is such that I hadn’t been required to do this before. However, this was Nationals and all stops were pulled out.
When one is trying to get undressed quickly in preparation for heading off to lunch, it is sometimes difficult to undo several turns of electrical tape. Much easier to pull the gloves/boots out from under. This leaves one with a bracelet or anklet of black plastic. I spent most of Nationals weekend with such objects ornamenting my various limbs. You may recall that I had to dress 5 times x 4 body parts = 20 opportunities to be unable to wrestle my way out of the tape.
One of the anklets followed me home.
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Gratuitous Cat Picture
Demon Cat
Virtual Brush Box 