At Least I Got A Blog Post Out Of It

End of the month = a post about blogging.
Prior posts here.

Good day at the horse show? Bad day with Rodney? The more important question is how many blog posts can I spin from it? In all areas of endeavor, I have found myself using the title phrase more often than is healthy. Life ought to be for living, not for making blog posts.

Names
Folks have asked why I mention their contribution to my life but do not give them credit. One reason – paranoia. Part of it is newspaper training. Mostly it comes from underlying obsessiveness. If I fail to mention names, the owners of those names might be miffed. If I mention names that do not wish to appear, there is a far greater potential for the owners to go ballistic. Nor is there any way to predict possible storms. It’s never the ones you expect that bite you in the a$$. In my professional life, I have been on the receiving end of a handful of rants, the causes of which baffle me to this day.

If I wish to use a name in a post, I ask first. Plus, I give the option to read the text before it is published. This requires more forward planning than I can usually manage in a daily blog.

Update. Text preview applies to guest posts.  Name usage for lessons, clinics, etc. is discussed in advance or omitted.

Titles
For regularly-appearing guest stars, I use titles instead of names to maintain the flow. If I where to say that Miss Courtney did X, a reader might have to pause for a moment to recall who Miss Courtney is and where she fits into the scheme of things. If I say that my instructor did X, readers can simply nod and keep going. Rodney & Mathilda are names I expect you to remember, the rest I try to explain.

(Miss First Name is an informal Southern courtesy halfway between First Name and Mrs. Last Name. It sounds odd to my Yankee ears, but it is meant with a combination of respect and affection, so I roll with it.)

In Sum
The effect of these policies is that the blog is all about meeeeee. This is not the intention as much as the result of not wanting the world to come crashing down around my head.

I have no idea if this will make the people I omit feel any better, but at least I got a blog post out of it.

Welcome Summer

When I was young and spry, I took a hard line with air conditioning. I wasn’t about to waste money & energy on a little discomfort. Then one of our dogs got old. As a big, furry German Shepherd, she took the heat badly. So I would cool the house down to perk her up. After that, we had a series of geriatric dogs as the next one in line got older and more delicate. Now we have Dash. At less than a year old, he can impersonate a melting dog puddle even when the house is coolish. So, that’s why the AC is on these days. For the dogs.

I can’t help but prefer the house at a pleasant temperature. However, it makes it ever so much harder to leave my cool, dark cave to tromp up to the barn in bright, hot sunlight to voluntarily cover myself with dirt and sweat and horsehair.

How do you cope with summer? (Those of you living in Canada & New England are invited not to gloat.)

The Envelope, Please …

2013-seminar-logoLast Saturday, the same day that I was flailing around at the horse show [Show Report], the winners were announced for the 2013 AHP Annual Awards Contest. [nomination notice, photo]. Here’s what the judges had to say:

Personal Single Column
Circulation over 20,000 (Print)
Honorable Mention

Katherine Walcott
“Finding Safe Harbor”
May 2012
Published in Horse Illustrated
Reader’s interest is piqued right away by the height disparity between the rider and her mount. It’s a well‐written account of a horse being ridden into a new mindset. [Awards Program].

Given the size of the class, the judges awarded 1st, 2nd & 3rd place, with two Honorable Mentions. I was essentially tied for 4th out of 18. The winning topics were more serious and of broader reach: the importance of a correct diagnosis, the value of getting fit to ride, and convincing people to wear helmets.

Since I did not go to the meeting, I was not able to swan about with a “Finalist” ribbon on my name tag either. Guess it wasn’t my weekend. Yeah, yeah, the previous weekend I won big [Show Report]. We wants them all, my Precious.

Here We Stand

This weekend, Rodney had a stand lesson. Not practicing the halt under saddle. Not waiting while other horses pass by. Just standing for several minutes, wearing a halter, in his own field, 10 feet from the barn.

For groundwork and eventual liberty work, I had bought Rodney a nice leather halter [Theory]. He objected to it vehemently [Slow Lane]. Since then, our lessons have been all about making peace with what most horses accept as a matter of course.

I had been putting the halter on and walking him about the pen making circles of various sizes, roll-backs, turns on the forehand, etc. Our big adventure was to put on the halter and walk out of the barn. I have no idea what he expected but I could see him radiating tension.

So we stood. I talked to him. I scratched his nose. Although he still looked at me as if I was practicing hojojutsu [formalized, decorative binding of a prisoner, Wiki], he was willing to concede that I had not sprouted fangs and attacked. Yet.

A stand lesson. We make progress at the speed of an advancing ice age.

Ringmanship

It’s a bad sign when the judge comes over to tell you the rules.

In the saddleseat ring, they like a rider in the center of the ring to go all the way out to the rail and make a gradual sweeping turn, lets say to set up for a pattern or for a victory pass. Two weekends ago, when the time came to line up, I was planning just such a maneuver in a vastly big ring only to hear the voice-of-god, aka my instructor, yelling “Turn, Turn now.” This got stored in my head as Don’t waste time – get to the line-up as fast as possible.

Last weekend, when the line-up was called, I was at the completely wrong end of the ring. The other rider was already in place. I would need to trot three-quarters of the way around the ring to pull in next to her. This seemed excessive. Remembering that I needed to get to the line-up as fast as possible, I cut across the ring. I was aiming for a diagonal but ended up with more of a serpentine. Saddlebreds perform in a set pattern. They aren’t big on spontaneous maneuvers. I knew I was in trouble when Trump pinned his ears and informed me that he had not signed up for a Handy Hunter Class, thank you very much.

As we stood in the center, the judge came over to explain that I should have stayed in the direction I was headed. There is even a rule to that effect. Apparently, there have been collisions when riders are let loose to freestyle into the line-up.

Show Report: ASHAA Summer Fun Show, Chelsea AL

Same Time, Next Year
One of my first posts from Stepping Stone Farm was their summer show last year [Showing in the Sun]. This weekend, I rode in the same show. How was it from the inside and a year on? Still hot, quick, & friendly. Helmets are still not an accessory of choice. Ironic, since the show took place on International Helmet Awareness Day.

My Life as a Ring Monkey
The girls were in the barn getting horses ready (including mine – thank you!). The trainers where getting riders organized and into the ring. That left no warm bodies to work the ring. Since chronic volunteers abhor a vacuum, I got sucked into the combined job of ringmaster, runner, and gatekeeper for the morning. It was a small fun show, so it was easy enough to line the horses up, pick up the judges card, and open the gate on my way out. I realized the flaw in this plan at the beginning of one class when I had to close the gate and cross back into the center of the ring while six trotting saddlebreds tried to occupy the same space.

My Classes
My first-second tradition continues, although in this case, first and last would be more appropriate. The good news is that I won all the classes in which I rode. The bad news is that I only rode in the second class. In the first class, I simply sat on the horse with devastating lack of effect.

Resident horses often do worse at home shows. ‘Who are all these strangers and what are they doing in my living room?’ For a youthful five-year-old, Trump was a star. He came out of the barn, thought, ‘Hmm. People. Interesting.’, and then stood like a champ waiting for our class.

When we got in the ring, he took a bit more of a look. Well, duh, we were trotting. Things looked different at speed. He wasn’t bad, not even a half a bubble off plumb. Instead of reacting to the horse I had on the day, I flipped frantically through my mental files trying to remember what I had done last weekend that had worked so well. Lacking any guidance from his rider, Trump rolled on down the highway. Lapping the competition is not a good sign in a pleasure class.

Nor was my equitation any better. When I think too much on horseback, I lean forward, round my shoulders, and look down at the horse. This gets blamed on my hunter/jumper background. In truth, riding like Ichabod Crane is no more correct in hunt seat equitation than it is in saddleseat equitation.

I am human. I accept – grudgingly – that I will make mistakes. Do I have to keep making the same one? Isn’t it time to move on to better, different, more interesting mistakes?

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Previous saddleseat posts