Virtual Brush Box

In my first class, the verdict was that I was too “busy”. It’s anybody’s guess what I was busy doing. As soon as I passed through in-gate, I forgot all the saddleseat show rules. For example, saddlebreds are trained to zoom down the straightaway. This is where they show their stuff. So, if the judge calls for a downward transition, you should “finish your pass” and downshift in the corner. Nope. As soon as the judge called for a trot, I hit the brakes with a screech. If I came to a walk in the corner, it was an accident of geography.

In the second class, I sat up and stayed quiet just like my trainer told me to. Funny how that works.

Yes, in an ideal world I would be in a competition that involved cantering & jumping. As far as resetting the horse show clock, this counts.

List of saddleseat posts.
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Gratuitous Horse Show Cat

Horse Rehab

Last month, I was sick for a few days. Nothing special, a local bug. However, it took me upwards of a week to shake off the effects. I wasn’t sick, just a little tired, a little off my game. Which made me wonder about our horses. Do we give them enough time to recover?

Let’s say a horse has a mild bout of colic, as Rodney did [Story]. If I had been riding, he would have had a day or so off and then gradually ramped up back to work depending on his mood. The next time I rode, I would have been cognizant of his recent illness. Would I have remember the following week? Would I have taken poor performance as resistance and insisted he do his work?

When I’m feeling mildly punk, I have trouble telling if I’m sick or slothful. What I WANT to do it sit on my butt and watch reruns. However, I know that if I HAD to, I could get moving. If I can’t tell within my own body, how can I tell what is motivating a horse?

Or is it a non-question? Do horses lack the mind/body split that humans insist on? With Previous Horse I could tell the difference between a cranky mind in a healthy body or willing horse with muscle stiffness. OTOH, Mathilda has no division between mind & body. When she is nervous or hurting, her body is stiff. Back when I was riding her, she would be spooky after a hard lesson. I imagined her reasoning went Oh I am stiff, therefore I must be nervous. Or perhaps she is simply a more unified being than I am.

“(My neck is) a little stiff. What a remarkably fragile structure to support such a valuable payload. Not unlike balancing a Faberge egg on a Pixie Stick.” Dr. Sheldon Cooper, Big Bang Theory. [Transcript]

I believe that the mind/body connection is the next big medical paradigm shift. (You read it here first.) However, I am enough of a product of the West that I admit to acting as if my body were a transport system for the brain.

I appear to have wandered. Under the weather or resistance. How can we tell?
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Gratuitous Kitten Pic
Waiting in the hall. Not quite brave enough to play with the kittens who are in my office with me.

Horse Sale Advertising: A Buyer’s Guide

Ad Copy
translation

… a stunning, nearly black …
Because fulfilling your Black Beauty/Black Stallion fantasy is such a smart way to buy a horse.

… _ year old Throughbred…
Youthful wingnut.

… stands about 16 hands.
Maybe 15.3 hands, most of which is wither.

… best suited for an experienced rider.
Hang on.

… beautiful movements!
Hears voices and runs around the field like a lunatic.

… a great extended trot …
Trot has two speeds, go and go faster.

… and strong canter …
Pulls like a freight-train.

… and even knows how to side pass, …
Crow-hopping sideways is a favorite trick under saddle.

… prospect…
We haven’t been able to do a d*** thing with the horse.

…has good ground manners, …
Never pulls hard enough to actually break the cross-ties.

… but needs a little work standing for the mounting block …
Runs off as soon as your foot hits the stirrup.

…sensitive feet…
You will be sending your blacksmith’s youngest to college.

… really sweet …and is easily becoming a barn favorite.
Spoiled rotten carrot mooch.

… a great brain and would most likely be a quick learner.
As soon as you’ve fixed one evasion, here come three more.

Caveat
Okay, because I’m too paranoid to commit to full-out snark, allow me to say that any advertised horse may be everything the sellers claim and more. It may be the hottest prospect since Gem Twist. The above is simply how my mind translates such phrases when I see them in a horse ad.

Or am I being too cynical?
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Gratuitous Kitten Pic

Foto Friday: Ssuunnsseett

Technical error or accident art?

Guest Post: Milt Toby, author of Noor, on Researching for Books

Today, I am a publicity stop on the virtual book tour for Noor. Book by Milt Toby. Tour arranged by Walker Author Tours. Welcome Milt:

How Much Research is Too Much?

Research is the lifeblood of the non-fiction books and magazine articles I write about horse racing, but it’s also an important tool for fiction authors. Readers are more knowledgeable than ever before, and what they don’t know they can find out in a few seconds on the Internet. And when readers discover a mistake, they’re almost never shy about letting you know.

An astute reader of my latest book, Noor: A Champion Thoroughbred’s Unlikely Journey from California to Kentucky, emailed to let me know that she liked the book. A longtime racing fan, she also pointed out a few factual errors for which there’s no good explanation. I know that Middleground defeated Hill Prince in the 1950 Kentucky Derby, for example, but inexplicably I referred to Hill Prince as a Derby winner.

It was humbling—and incredibly annoying—to realize that mistakes made it unscathed through all the revising, editing, and proofreading that go into writing a book, but I appreciated the email because the mistakes can be corrected in a second printing. An unexpected bonus: I may have found a new expert proofreader for my next book!

Good researching is a skill, but it’s also an art. I’m fortunate to live a few miles from the Keeneland Library located at the historic race track of the same name outside Lexington, Kentucky. Combine a library staff that is both expert and incredibly helpful with one of the best repositories of racing history anywhere, and it’s a writer’s dream. One of the great joys of research is to make connections that no one ever has put together before, and that’s what I try and do in my books. As with most things, however, you reach a point of diminishing returns when you’re doing research. The trick is realizing when enough is enough.

But how do you know when it’s time to quit, when you’ve reached that point where there’s a danger that the forest of Post-It Notes and stacks of paper will take over the project? For me, that point arrives when I begin to include factoids that are interesting and show I did my homework, but don’t really help move the story along. Research is an important part of writing, but it’s only a tool, not an end in itself.

Noor links:
Pedigree from Throughbred Database
Race info & results from Horse Racing Nation

New Clothes & Old Habits

My saddleseat instructor says that 90% of the time, she would rather have someone new to riding than a crossover from another discipline. Ingrained habits are just too hard to break.

I can see her point. As a crossover hunter/jumper/event rider, I am doing okay so far. However, I have always been a theoretical rider, perhaps to a fault. I want to know why my hands need to be doing thus-and-such and what that means for my balance and where my legs need to be. I have been accused of over-thinking my riding. This is just a new set of theories to think about.

In the beginning, I would lean forward and kick with my heels when I wanted the horse to go. I gotten past that, mostly. However, I still revert in moments of confusion. Sam and I were attempting the pattern that the Advanced Adult Class will be doing in Saturday’s show. It involved two-loop serpentines at the trot and canter. Saddleseat riders take their pattern work seriously. This was no lazy set of loops along the ring. The serpentines went across the center of the ring, meaning 10-meter loops at best. Plus, the transitions and the change of direction for the canter serpentine where to be done through the halt. All of this on a horse I that I am still learning to turn. Until now I have been relying on the rail to keep Sam turning left or right.

So, I’ve done my trot serpentine, have halted, and am looking down the barrel of half-circle/halt/half-circle/halt/reverse/trot. I get flustered, bend Sam to the inside, and ask him to canter. Saddleseat horses canter off outside leg/outside rein. Sam does exactly what I ask and picks up the wrong lead, leaving us to do a 10-meter half-circle on a counter-canter. It does not go well.

I can do it when I have time to think about it, but she’s right. When rushed, I fall back on habits of a lifetime.

List of saddleseat posts.

Have you learned a new riding (fencing, knitting) discipline? How did the changeover work for you?
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Gratuitous Kitten Pic

Rhyme likes to ride on my shoulder.