Political Poll

I am not asking who you voted for. I’m not even asking if you voted. When I was old enough to start noticing the outside world, I asked my mother who she voted for. She wouldn’t tell me. One of the virtues of our system is that you never have to tell anyone for whom you voted. As an early political message, it stayed with me.

However, my everpresent quest for content made me think about horses and politics. It seems to me that, barring Mrs. Romney’s Olympic horse, the riding world as a group is not heavily invested in the political world, at least on the national level. We can get invested in local issues, such as the developments, or lack thereof, in Wellington, FL.

The obliviousness of the horse world can be frustrating. During one of the big-time hunter/jumper winter shows in Tampa, area residents were under drought restrictions: no car washing, limited lawn watering, etc. Not only were people at the show hosing their horses but they were leaving the hose running with no horse in the washstall. In their defense, no signage anywhere alerted folks to the water shortage nor asked folks to conserve water.

Of course, the horse world is all about internal politics: local association snipefests, warring breed associations, national association power games, and so on up the ladder.

Is your section of the horse world involved with/interested in/cognizant of general politics? How does that compare to other sectors of your life: church, law firm, bowling league, reading club, et al.?
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Gratuitous Kitten Pic

Ghost Kitty snuggles up to a pile of warm dog.

On Your Mark. Get Set. Go.

Jump crew springs into action.
Over the weekend, Stepping Stone Farm held a games night. Hubby and I went over to corral stray kids & horses.

My last mounted games competition was at college during the riding team’s end-of-term party. Our coach made a point of saving the eggs for the egg-and-spoon race for weeks, making sure you really did not want to drop those eggs. In one race, we had to run down, dismount, eat a cracker and whistle. A good trick, since I can’t whistle in the first place. For another race, my team need a fourth member at the last minute, so I was thrown on one of the ponies. I remember not bothering with the stirrups, just leaning over the poor pony’s neck and growling in his ear. We flew.

Musical chairs was done with grain bags. Riders had to dismount and stand on a bag. Of course, with all the running and screaming and being up so far past their bedtimes, the school horses were completely wired. They were having nothing to do with those crinkly sacks. Picture horses backing all over the ring, towing dismounted riders by the reins. This made the audience laugh harder, creating more noise to bounce off the roof and walls of the indoors. The culmination of musical chairs came one of the guys launched from his horse headfirst onto the remaining sack.

Yes, we had guys on our team. I’m all for Title 9. Just not for riding teams. Making riding a ‘girls’ sport shoves it further in the pink ghetto and makes it that much harder for young men to stay with it. Helping one group should not come at the expense of another.

This weekend much less exciting. That’s what happens when you have younger kids and a coach who is concerned for safety rather than entertainment. The most amusing aspect was the oh-so-proper Saddlebreds being asked to run across the ring or to pole bend. Excuse moi? One old campaigner announced that this was so not in her contract.

USPC Celebrity Games at the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event.
Previous SSF posts.

Your games memories?
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Gratuitous Kitten Pic

Lap Cat

Down vest in corner of photo may explain the sudden excess of kitten friendliness.

Driving Miss M

Although yesterday was my first driving lesson, it was not my first driving experience.

Way back when, we had the idea of making Mathilda into a Combined Driving horse for Hubby. Since she was gravitationally challenged, jumping and eventing were out. Although, Hubby is quick to remind me that Mathilda did complete one Elementary horse trial, which put her ahead of Previous Horse as an event horse. Being better than PH as an event horse is like being better than a polar bear at the Limbo. Given the mud, the solid jumps, the changing terrain, the lack of perimeter fence, there was no part of eventing that appealed to PH, but I digress.

Fortunately, we were living in driving-friendly area. Without looking terribly hard, we found a wooden training cart and set of used harness. Out came the driving books. Every tried hitching a horse based on diagrams? Not recommended. That part Mathilda did well. She stood while we fiddled with this and tightened that. She didn’t freak out the first time she felt the cart pull on the traces. After that, it went downhill without brakes.

We never found the right bit. If it was too strong, she’d curl up her neck. If it was too soft, she’d run off. On really fun days, she’d do both. My memory says that she was okay as long as Hubby was walking behind the cart. She never made the transition to trotting with a passenger. We tried maybe a handful of times. I know we never left our own fields. But, in truth, it’s all a bit blurry.

The memory of the last day blots out the rest. There was trotting. There may have been cantering. The two images that stay with me are Mathilda flying back into view with cart but sans driver. They had taken off into the second field and gone out of my sight. As they rounded the barn turn, Hubby thought she was going to cut into the barn and leaned that way only to have her turn the other way. Out he popped. Once we established that he was okay, we went back into the first field to see Mathilda standing in the middle of the field, straps dangling from every body part. The cart was wedged into the fence. To this day, we cannot explain how she drove both shafts into the wire mesh without being between them.

Is it any wonder I was nervous about driving?

Your driving experiences?
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Gratuitous Kitten Pic
Percy demonstrates an alternate use of the scratching pad.

Control Issues

Horse: Alvin Ailey
Photo: Courtney Huguley


For my fourth lesson at Stepping Stone Farm, I had my first driving lesson.

Control issues. I don’t have them. I don’t want anyone in charge of me. I don’t want to be in charge of anyone. This is why I am a freelance writer and not an air traffic controller.

On horseback, I have always been a laissez-faire rider. Dressage instructors and dressage horses want to interact every stride [Square Peg]. It is alien to my nature. I am much closer to the foxhunter mentality of pointing one’s horse across a field, saying “Go thataway.”, and letting them get on with it. This works in jump-offs and with strong-willed horses. It does not work with the aforementioned dressage, nor with horses who require hoof-holding.

Nor does benign neglect work with driving. A driving horse with blinkers cannot see the cart. This is good because it means he will not think the cart is gaining on him to have him for lunch. This is bad because it’s up to the driver to keep the cart from crashing into the fence. If I got sloppy, the horse was not going to save my sorry self and finish jumping the combination on his own initiative. Turns have to be planned for both into and out of. In a ring, there is always another turn coming up.

The entire time, I felt a terrible sense of responsibility. I had to be focused at every moment. Steadiness and consistency have never been my hallmarks. Enthusiasm and energy, yes. Even-tempered application to a task, not so much. I was exhausted.

Other signs you are having trouble in a cart:
When you try to get the horse to move off by goosing the cart with your seat.
When you cut the circle too sharply and the poor horse ends up on a diagonal between the shafts
When you aren’t quite aimed at the center of the outgate and you find yourself trying to shimmy the cart sideways. Carts are not known for performing lateral movements.

The things this woman talks me into!
Saddleseat Posts
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Gratuitous Kitten Pic

Blurry but too cute to pass up.

Progress is Relative

Mathilda got an excellent review from the blacksmith. She held all four feet up to be trimmed, although it took two goes at the right hind. This is the foot that bears all her weight. I still had to help steady her for the right front but either she’s stronger or we are getting more of a system. Or both. Plus she was able to bend her left leg, the injured leg, enough to put it on the trimming stand. She couldn’t do that last time he tried. Technically, all he said was that she was “better”, but I think that’s excellent.

Progress by definition is comparative. If you knew Mathilda before April 14 [How] and saw her now, you’d be appalled. I frequently am. If you’d see her in early May when all the weight had dropped off and saw her now, you’d be thrilled. I certainly am. Although my blacksmith was too much of a gentleman to say, I’m convinced that early on he thought he had seen her for the last time. I’m not sure I would have bet against him.

Mathilda has hit a viable, if labor-intensive, status quo. There is no immediately apparent reason that she could not tick along being treated as Queen of the Universe for the next five years. This thought both pleases me and fills me with quiet horror.

What progress do you have to report?

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Breaking News: horse shopping
Local, 7 year old, OTTB, bay, gelding …
Generic but nothing objectionable so far.
… Came off the track a year ago. Has done light dressage, hopped over little jumps, lots of trail riding …
Sounding better. Sensible mind.
… Mutual aquaintence knows horse. Will be able to give us the scoop ….
Liking this.
…video…
Hates dressage, but so do I.
….
Hmm, three horses. We will need to finish fencing the side field.
… light cribber.
Phooey. Phooey. Phooey.
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Gratuitous Kitten Pic

10 Tips for Daily Blogging

Post # 316 since December 22, 2011. Haven’t missed a day yet.

1 No one cares what you did. I write a horse blog. Suppose I wrote, “I went to the barn. My horse was good.” Even my mother would get tired of reading. Interesting data can be killed with bad writing. “I climbed Everest. It was high. I was cold.” Snore.

As bloggers our job is to add value. Tell the story in an amusing way. Tie your events to a larger pattern. Add insightful commentary. I’m not claiming I achieve this, but such is the intention.

2 Aim for one screen of text. You want to encourage return customers. Chances are if you’ve gone beyond that you need to edit anyway. Spatial dispensation for the superfluous kitten picture.

3 Accept that you will not hit it out of the park every day. Sometimes just getting it done is enough.

4 Consider how the first paragraph will look when you post a link on Facebook.

5 Use everything. My friends find text from my emails reappearing on posts.

6 Be professional.

7 Don’t be too professional. You’re not getting paid. An ungoverned blog will suck up an infinity of time.

8 Don’t look back. Aside from obvious typos, resist the urge to fiddle with past posts. This is another bottomless pit. Move on.

9 Pictures rock. Pictures are a pain. One photo is at least as much work as 1,000 words: taking, loading, cropping, uploading, captioning, placing, and so on. Learn the copyright issues involved. Or for an easy fix, learn to take your own photos.

10 Assume the worst. Your boss will see it. Your kids will see it. The one person you dread will see it and interpret it in the worst possible light. On one hand, this leads to self-censorship. On the other hand, it forces you to stick with what is real, accurate, and provable, thereby avoiding speculation or blame. Voila, better writing.

Bonus Tip: Resist the temptation to post a picture of your cat. Feline photos will take over your life.

Previous posts on the subject of blogging.
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Gratuitous Kitten Pic