Welcome Home

Yesterday, I got back from a five-day work-slash-vacation trip [AHP 0,1,2]. The reactions were varied:

I know Hubby missed me because I know how much miss him. Nothing cutesy about it. Our farm routine is optimized for two people. Therefore when one of us goes away, the other has signed up for several long days. The return conversation runs along theses lines: I’m glad you’re home … I’ve missed you … I’m exhausted … I’m going to bed.

Rodney didn’t remember exactly who I was. He jumped a bit when I patted him. However, once I showed an interest in loving on him, he was willing to be my best friend. R is a trifle indiscriminate in his affections.

Mathilda is equally indiscriminate. She doesn’t care which of her minions grazes her, cleans her stall, fetches her hay, serves her meals, walks her to the water trough, and on, and on.

Since Lady [Barn Dogs] is irrationally terrified of Hubby and irrationally attached to me, one would think that my departure would be traumatic and my return would be joyous. Unfortunately, she’s such a neurotic little soul it’s hard to see a difference. Little? Yes. She may weigh 80 pounds, but at heart she’s a teacup Chihuahua.

Of course, the weekend was hardest on one of the cats. Not nearly enough time was spent on the Adoration of Arthur [Return]. An oversight that I am being forced to rectify.

Purrrrrrrrrr.

Do your beasts miss you?

Bucket List – Accomplished

To counteract the thread of greed that runs through my Bucket List, herein a list of things that would be on my bucket list if I hadn’t already done them.

(What to call it? Filled bucket has stall-cleaning overtones. The anti-bucket lists in the ether where all things that people had no intention of ever doing. For example, Maria Ciampa’s Small Seat or Stoop List [as in overturned bucket]. Gotta say, I’m with her on the Brazilian. (I made a note of this post back in March. It has since been removed. Given my comment, you can imagine the contents.))

I am grateful for having…

+ Ridden at the National Horse Show, also, Washington International, Penn National, and Devon. Before you fall over in impressed faint, I rode in the side-saddle classes. Qualifying meant sending in a check. Side-saddle is a way for normal mortals to fly at these rarefied altitudes. I’m not bitter about the fact that I rode in the National the first year it moved from New York City to New Jersey. Really. Not bitter at all.

+ Won all my classes at a show. A small, one-day show. In one of the jumper classes, I was the only one who knew the correct procedure. I’ll take it.

+ Ridden abroad. I’ve done this twice. Once exercising an Italian racehorse and one on a French tourist ride. On the French ride, everyone expected me as the experienced rider to be thundering about. I can run amok on crazy horses any time. I meandered about slowly, enjoying the ride and watching the countryside.

+ Seen the Budweiser Clydesdales in person. One time, a rookie driver snarled the team and you could just about hear the horses think, ‘What is this clown doing?’ As you might imagine, tacking up the horses takes forever. Yet they stand quite still, pleased to the tips of their feathers* that they are Budweiser Clydesdales.

+ Seen the changing of the Queen’s Life Guard in London, (also here). You can have the dudes in furry hats, I went to see the horses. All mounts were beautifully trained & turned-out. The older campaigners stood like statues. A few younger ones kept their feet immobile but would indulge in the occasional head toss from sheer exuberance.

+ Ridden a jumping schoolmaster. She was so reliable, I remember coming out of a corner for a fence on the diagonal and knowing, with iron certainty, exactly where she was planning to put her feet 6 strides away. I was there to count the jump numbers and point out which one came next. I never made the mistake of thinking that our success made me a brilliant rider. It was all her.

+ Attended the biggies: many, many Rolexes (Rolexi?) [Peregrinatio], the Atlanta Olympics, the Rome World Equestrian Games, & the Lexington WEG.

(*Yes, feathers. The fluffy part of their long white socks.)

Whats on your accomplished bucket list?

Magazines & Me

American Horse Publications Day 2

My first article in an equine magazine was a show report for The Chronicle of the Horse in the late 80s. My most recent was a short interview on equine jobs for USDF Connection. I’ve learned a bunch over the years, not all of it concerning the content.

We differ by discipline. Dressage riders have theories. An interview with a dressage expert is simplicity itself. Ask a question. Press go. Try not to run out of tape. Jumper riders are more right-brain based. What did you think of the course. “It was good.” How did the course suit your horse? “He went well.” Eventers fall in the middle of the continuum. Paso Finos are all about the sound. Those clever little hooves are moving way too fast for human eyes to follow, so aficionados listen to the rhythm, “the judge may even look slightly away or down to concentrate on the sound of the hoof beats’ rhythm going over the sounding board”. [FAQ]

We can’t speak. Few of us speak in full sentences. We stop. We rephrase. We wander off on a tangent. Even the blessed few who speak in a straight line can’t get through a sentence without, you know, verbal tics. Tape yourself a few times. Thou shalt be appalled. I learned to speak more clearly just so I didn’t shudder as I transcribed tapes.

The writing advice is wrong. Write what you don’t know. The first time I wrote about the Rolex Kentucky 3-Day Event for the then-AHSA, I had hash out what was true from what I thought was true. Much of the latter wasn’t. When I interviewed a pest control expert on mosquito breeding habits for The Horse, I didn’t know enough to make a mistake.

A horse job doesn’t necessarily help your riding life. There have been outside benefits. From one interview, I met a trainer who went on to help me make the switch from eventing to jumpers with Previous Horse. From another interview, I found out about a rental farm when I finally got to have my horses in my own backyard.

As for actually helping me on horseback, not so much. They say read as much as you ride. The implication being to read more. I need to read less. I’ve written about the transition from Intermediare to Grand Prix in dressage as one of the biggest steps on the ladder. I have yet to fight my way out of First Level. I can analyze a jumper course that I couldn’t begin to ride. I can point out the terrain questions on a three-star cross-country & panic over Baby Novice log. Less theory, more saddle time.

How has your day job informed your riding? If riding is part of your day job, how have the other duties (lessons, marketing, updating owners), influenced your riding?

Previous AHP posts
Day 0 Permanence
Day 1 Foto Friday: The Old Grey Mare

Permanence

American Horse Publications Day 0

Tomorrow is the first day of the American Horse Publications 2012 seminar, Ride into History. Therefore, May’s end-of-the month pondering on blogging will be on the meaning of permanence. Which lasts longer, my magazine articles or my blog posts?

Magazine Articles
Personal: I did these first, so of course, I think they are superior. Plus, I’ve been paid more often to write for magazines than for webpages, a second compelling reason to favor the former.

Older: The form is established. Magazines come and go no one suddenly changes the alphabet.

Tangible: I can pick up an issue, open to the page, and see it. There it is. Right there.

Fixed: No one is reaching into my bookshelves and erasing all the pages. Short of fire or eventual paper deterioration, the magazines I have written for will sit on the shelves over my right shoulder until judgment day.

Replaceable: When the horse magazine SPUR went belly-up, the issues remained. If I lose my copy, a library, bookstore, or collector will have a replacement.

Effective Life Span: each issue is only seen by those who subscribed, paid, or found it left in a doctor’s waiting room. Yes, articles in old issues can be found, but how often does anyone other than the author bother?

Blog
Personal: (I wobble between 2&3.)
“I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”
Douglas Adams, Salmon of Doubt from Good Reads

New: Who knows were the form will be in 5 years? We could be getting our LOLCat fix from hologramatic renderings and using our computers for fish tanks.

Intangible: If it’s not written down, it doesn’t exist. Therefore my blog doesn’t exist. Sure, I can print an entry but even I am not compulsive enough to print the comments, the links, the Facebook likes associated with each post. If I did, they would be stored linearly, rather than as an intersecting heap. The nature of the beast would be altered.

Blogs go away: Services go out of business. People change their minds. Blogs get removed for terms-of-service violations.

Blogs don’t go away: Early email advice applies double to blogs: Never mail (post) anything you wouldn’t want to see the next morning on a billboard on your way to work. Once it’s out there, it has the potential to swirl in the ether forever. I have commented on the appropriateness of a post only to realize that it was written 5 years earlier.

Worldwide. Self-replicating. Ever-expanding: There is a reason it’s called Going Viral.

Connectivity: A blog post can reference earlier blog posts, magazine articles in PDF, or books sales for those fortunate enough to have same. Older work no longer goes off to die in musty, dark corners.

Final Thought
Of course, the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs carved in stone will outlive us all.

How do you vote? Which is more permanent: limited but tangible print or omni-present but intangible electrons?

Previous end-of-month posts
Living Virtually [April 30]
Blogging Influences [March 31]
Numbers Game [March 9 for February 29]
Life As a First Draft [Jan 31]

Bucket List

Avventura was nice enough to like a post about Rodney’s exercises [Blow Winds]. One of her standing pages is a bucket list. Since I have already gone over my competitive goals [Where To?], here is my non-competitive equine bucket list:

+ Compete abroad. Not so much as a competition goal, but more as a slice of life in a foreign country. Of course, I’d want to win a ribbon. What a cool souvenir. Book idea. Pictures of ribbons from around the world, the past, & major competitions. I’d buy it.

+ See the Western States Trail Ride, i.e. the Tevis Cup.

+ Take a mule ride into the Grand Canyon.

+See a Spanish Riding School performance in Vienna, although I have been lucky enough to see two performances in the US & one practice session in Vienna. Each time I know more about riding and am more impressed with what they do. If you ever get the chance, it’s worth a bit of a drive. How often does one get excited about something & have it be better than what one expected?

+ Ride a trained Lipizzaner, a kind, understanding one.

+ See horses on an airplane during a nice safe flight in which the horses ate the snacks & enjoyed the inflight movie.

+ Ride a dressage schoolmaster to see what all the fuss is about.

+ Attend the All American Quarter Horse Congress. I’m told the trade show makes the one at Rolex look like a backyard swap meet.

Since it is far too easy to get carried away, Butter Side Down offers a reality check on My Equestrian Bucket List.

What’s on your list?