Breaking Radio Silence

A helmet! I spotted a helmet at the World’s Championship Horse Show! On an adult no less! This is THE big saddleseat show, held in August in Louisville KY. To ride on the “green shavings” is the dream of every saddleseat rider. And one of them did so wearing a helmet! See for yourself: Doug Shiflet Photography -> 2013 Kentucky State Fair WC -> Saturday Night -> 239 – Amateur Five Gaited Championship -> 239-016-KSF13.

No, I’m not back. At least, not yet. I miss parts of the blog already. I do not miss the the daily reminder that Rodney is 1300 pounds of frustration or that I can’t manage the moderately simple task of buying another horse. I could start another blog, but horses is what I know. Even writing about other facets of the horse world carries the subtext that I only do so because I can’t write about my own. Presence by absence, if you will.

I just had to tell someone about the helmet. Facebook folks would not understand the way readers of a horse blog would.

Hiatus

Getting off the blogging treadmill for a while.

I’m tired of writing for free. I’m tired of scavenging posts from scraps of progress. I’m tired of falling back on post ideas about other people’s horses. I’m tired.

Why now? Rodney was a twit, more so than usual. New camera arrived and has to be returned. Nothing serious or important. Death by a thousand hangnails.

I may get bored and come back. I may start riding Rodney and have something to talk about. I may walk away from the Internet completely and see if I can survive in the 3-D world for a while.

Goodbye for now. May you be blessed by the deity – or lack thereof – of your choice. Live long & prosper.

Boot Camp Bucks

[Explanation of saddleseat Boot Camp here.]

This week’s Boot Camp lesson was on lanes. Lane 1 is on the rail. Lane 2 is a few feet in. Lane 3 a few more feet in. And so on to the center of the ring. At the top of the ring, a rider picks a lane and then passes straight down the long side of the ring in that lane. Easy-peasey? HA!

Saddlebreds are not geared to suddenly turn off the rail. At least, I haven’t figured out where those knobs are. So, I would decide to turn for an inner lane. Then I would have to take several moments to figure out how get where I wanted to go. At which point, my window of opportunity had closed and I was left to make a wiggly hash of the corner. I suspect the point is be ready to turn at all times. You know, rider listening to horse, horse listening to rider, rather than both of us larking around the arena and occasionally checking in with each other. Easy to say. Hard to do.

Combining the diamond from last week [see explanation link above] with lane choice gives me the ability to get away from others. Being alone allows me to be seen by the judge and to demonstrate executing a plan that results in same. These maneuvers can also be used to cover up other competitors. I’m not as comfortable with this. It seems mean-spirited. Will have to converse more with Instructor.

So, there we are. Seven horses in a small outdoor ring being encouraged to pass and repass each other. Figuring out how to ride and steer at the same time gets complicated when the horse you are riding decides to get offended with violations of her personal space. Deeply and actively offended. Lola is a nimble little mare. When she starts heaving and plunging, it’s rubber ball rodeo time.

I attempted to mitigate the marestorm by keeping an eye out behind, by staying isolated, and by turning her head in slightly to get her eye on an upcoming horse.

Mainly, I had to convince her of three things:
You are still fabulous.
You are being a beech.
Unfortunately for you, I am a bigger one.

Once we got that sorted out, we had a lovely time. Although, I still couldn’t organize a proper turn.

Blades of Progress

At Exploratorium-style science museums, exhibits are full of buttons to push and levers to slide. Many of the displays work with optical illusions. Stare at the black dots on a white background until gray false dots appear in the interstices. A concave model of a face will appear convex. Lines misbehave. It’s all about the brain trying to adapt what it sees to what it thinks the world ought to be. Hold that thought.

Back when Previous Horse was alive but retired, we wanted to add a new competition horse for me. Given their rate of grass consumption, we would need to expand the pasture to accommodate three horses. Flash forward to Rodney and Mathilda. Even when they were out 24/7, they did not come anywhere near the same rate of grass processing. Apparently PH was a grazing machine.

The entire time we’ve had him, Rodney has preferred hay to grass. He grazes, but in a dilatory, doing-this-for-entertainment fashion. He was as likely be standing by the barn, just hanging out.

Until recently.

In the last few days, we have both noticed a new commitment in Rodney’s grazing. There is more vehemence to his attitude. He grazes farther away. He looks up less often. There are more violent, ripping sounds as grass is yanked up. He spends more time at grass and less by the barn. He is more focused. We think.

Right around the same time, we seem to be – maybe, possibly – making progress loosening the final stubborn fragments of his back scar. There is still more to go, but the area feels softer and the skin is moving better over the muscle. Then again, the progress is so incremental as to be hard to distinguish.

Could these two be related? He preferred hay because he didn’t have to rip off each bite? Try this. Clench your teeth and jerk your head to one side, as if you were ripping open a bag of chips. Can you feel the muscles down into your back? Freeing up his back makes him more comfortable with grazing? Therefore we can use changes in grazing to claim overall progress?

Or we have been staring at the dots for too long?

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Post number: 600.
Page views as of yesterday noon: 18,024. A fair number of these being myself from logged out machines.

Mystified

Equine_Art_is_STILL_Art_by_etiquette_heart

Why is this even an issue? Sure, there are equine images that are overly twee for my taste. Then, there is the horse screaming in the center of Guernica. Art lies in the treatment of the subject, not the subject itself.

I found the badge here while trawling deviantART. The creator invited passersby to share, “Help stop the discrimination of equine artists by putting this in your journal.”

Boot Camp Moment

[Explanation of saddleseat Boot Camp here.]

First lesson, me and four munchkins. I am closer in age to their grandmothers than to their mothers. Still, I am as new to this as they were. Once we got going, I didn’t feel out of place. True, one hopes that I will be better at grasping concepts and keeping my sh!t together emotionally, but I had just as much trouble maneuvering my horse and planning ahead. I got into a traffic jam during the first trot. Bottom line, when you enter the ring, age stops, student starts.

While we grazed our horses afterwards, we spent time designing the shirts we would order to foster unit cohesion. For most of the afternoon, my peer group had been sub-teens.

Later, most folks had left.
A young’un said, “Am I the only kid here?”
I thought,”No. I’m still here.”
Sigh. As I have long suspected, I am in fact 12 years old.

Youthful enthusiasm. Yeah, that’s it. Youthful enthusiasm.