Survey Says …

Work: AM heat therapy/PM groom & exercises: crossrails, plank, weave cones, reverse poles, & log.
Report: Lowkey runthrough of all exercises to reintroduce the idea of double sessions. Walked over, on, through everything & groundtied while I adjusted a crossrail.

Ramblings: The American Horse Publications, of which I am an Individual Member, would ask that you take 15 minutes to answer their 2012 Equine Industry Survey through SurveyMonkey. The 50+ questions took me ~13 minutes, mostly due to an overabundance of precision which meant I kept having to write my response under Other. Deadline is May 15, 2012. Do it now before you forget. The more data, the more likelihood magazines and websites will carry articles of interest to the largest number of people.

What is your favorite horse magazine?

Here’s Your Ticket, Pack Your Bags

Work: day off.
Report: I’m gonna be burning down a house. No worries, the conflagration less lyrical, more legal. The bag in question holds my turnout gear.

Cute horse and fire anecdote: We were on a brushfire, which is a small, tame, domestic version of a woodland fire. Usually someone is burning trash and “left it for just a minute.” By the time we arrive, low flames are spreading in an everwidening circle across a pasture, field, or lawn. As long as one has enough folks to head off the growing arc, the flames can just about be spit out.

flapper

So there I was stomping and flapping out the sparks when a call went out for help catching a horse. Now, I’m a mediocre firefighter at best. This isn’t false modesty. Firefighting requires upper body strength, mechanical ability, and teamwork. Three things I’m not known for. Catching a horse? That I can do. So I drifted over to the next field. Half of the field had burned. Engine 266 was moving down the fire line spraying water. A young chestnut stood in the unburned section watching. A halter and leadrope were pressed into my hands. The halter didn’t fit, so I had to jury-rig the rope. The colt (?) stood still while I fiddled. He walked along next to me, his only requirement was that be allowed to face the fire to keep an eye on it. An exceedingly reasonable request.

As we passed through the gate to the next field, the fellow holding the gate dropped the metal chain onto the metal gate, producing a bodacious noise. At which point, the poor fellow came completely unstuck. He handled fire, water, flocks of strangers in weird clothes, even a big red engine invading his field. The noise was too much.

I shudder to think what my finely tuned sporthorses would have made of the whole thing.

How does your horse handle sudden unexpected events?

Previous FF posts: Manic Monday, The Fish/Pond Equation.

Numbers Game

Work: PM therapy/EVE grooming scheduled, even likely.
Report: The day to dive into our new schooling program was not today. Spring advances and retreats. As do I.

Ramblings: The delayed appearance of February’s end of the month ponderings on blogging. In order to keep up with a daily blog, I need to follow the inspiration of day and reestablish my schedule when I can.

Why Numbers Don’t Matter
First of all, which numbers? Daily hits do not take into account the kind folks who have signed up to follow by email. Since the text appears in their inbox, they never have to click over. Therefore, they are not counted in the mesmerizing bar graph that I see at the top of my blog page. In addition, what do I count these folks as? They could be avid fans, waiting with bated breath for the next appearance of my daily adventures (a dog can dream), or they could be friends or family members who listed their email out of sense of duty but who skip right past the resultant inbox-clogging messages. The world may never know.

Plus that silly graph is relative. A big spike could mean a 1000 viewers or it could mean that today you scored 7 instead of the normal 2.

Over in the right corner is an cardinal number that registers the number of new comments or likes. The dull gray background switches to orange when it is nonzero. Imagine my excitement when it read 8. Only to find I had just posted a blog with several references to past blogs and it was registering my own ping-backs.

Then there are actual hits. I try not to pull up the My Stats page too often. My bar graph resembles a mountain range. A few vertical peaks, generally on guest post days, separated by long sloping valleys. The brief excitement of a big bar of blue is quickly offset by the dramatic fall off that follows. Don’t they love me anymore? Did they take one look at the text and vow never to return? In the absence of data, the mind – at least my mind – fills in all manner of horror scenarios.

Self-styled Internet gurus will say that tracking the numbers will give you a sense of what works. First off, there are no Internet gurus. It’s all too new. No one truly has a clue what works and what doesn’t. Second, clicking on a page doesn’t mean that the reader likes what she finds. A steady upswell of hits is the best indication that folks liked your past blogs. Okay, the views by country graphic is cool. I feel so international.

The golden currency is comments. The commenter exists, gets counted, and lets you know, for good or ill. Bloggers love comments and I wallow in despair when a post doesn’t rate one. Don’t they love me anymore? Did they take one look at the text and vow never to return? (You may be sensing a trend here. This has been pointed out before.)

This is hardly unique thinking. Other bloggers have wrestled with overcoming the number fascination: Shelli Johnson, Why I Stopped Looking At The Numbers.

Let’s say I end up on Fresh Pressed and have 10,000 viewers who stay with me. What does that mean? Does it change the way I put on my pants in the morning? Does it make Rodney more ridable? The reader I really want to impress is the person who hands out article assignments at the New Yorker, but I have no idea if he or she looks at Fresh Pressed.

Numbers don’t guarantee happiness. I wish I could write a post half as funny as Hyperbole and a Half’s Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving. That post alone has 2471 comments. H&1/2 has numbers that would cause rage and jealousy in any blogger prone to those low emotions. The popularity of her blog has gotten her a book deal. Yet she doesn’t not appear to be a happy person, Adventures in Depression.

Would winning the blogging lottery change my life? Not according to John Candy in Cool Runnings: “Derice, a gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you’re not enough without it, you’ll never be enough with it.”

Why Numbers Matter
The conviction that I will write for myself sounds all high-minded and artistic. It’s also field fertilizer. By definition, anyone who posts wants to be read. Otherwise, we’d be keeping private journals tucked in bedside table drawers or filed on hard-drives. We want to reach out.

Dr. Beverly Hofstadter would say that we, “Suffer from an external locus of identity.” We define ourselves by the way others accept us. I say this is not a bad thing or a good thing. It is simply a human thing. We do not live in vacuums. Emotionally, we are not far from the days when social acceptance meant a place closer to the fire, and ostracism meant a place on the edge, in the dark, where there is less food and more lions.

Synthesis
Many arguments against obsessing over numbers and the knowledge that none of those arguments will stop me from checking my hit count, envying folks with double digit comments, or fiddling with my tags to make them sexier.

Bloggers: what is your number fetish?

Where To?

Work: PM therapy/EVE rain.
Report: Jumps & exercises relocated around the field, per plan. Now I just have to get my a. in g. early enough to fit in two sessions each day. Daylight Saving Time should help. [BTW, DST is run by the DOT, of all people.]

Ramblings for the Day: Self-help gurus and other professional befrienders are all about writing down & sharing one’s goals. My overall goal remains as it was before Rodney ever set hoof on the property: win the USEA Training Level American Eventing Championships [see post August 2010]. To which I would add, a USDF Bronze Medal and Adult Jumpers at the National Horse Show at the Kentucky Horse Park. No point in dreaming small.

My intermediate steps:
1) Saunter quietly & relaxedly around the pasture on a leadrope.
2) As above, under saddle. This is the miracle step. I think if we can get this far, the rest will fall gradually into place. Mind you there will still be fireworks, backsliding, and hysteria from both parties. He’ll still be a TB and I’ll still be me. 2b) Start jogging & hillwork in hand.
3) Be able to do ringwork. Switch fitness work to undersaddle.
4) Do enough ringwork to take lessons at home.
5) Ship to lessons, xc schools, schooling shows. Day shows are local hunter/jumper & unrecognized dressage.
6) Bigger shows, weekend competitions. Even a Baby Novice proof-of-concept outing requires a weekend.
7) Go to the AEC, win the AEC. Look back in awe & wonderment.
Right now, I would be thrilled beyond words to throw on a saddle for a mosey around the field. I think that would even hold me – at least for a while.

Despite my gloom & doom this winter, I still see room for progress. I want to see what he is like on meds, during the warm weather, with consistent groundwork. If the situation has not changed come October, the wallowing will be epic.

What are your equine goals?

Guest Post: Art Imitates Life by Jennifer Walker

Work: day off.

Jennifer Walker is on a virtual book tour promoting her new book, Bubba to the Rescue. During her VBT, Jennifer is appearing at various sites around the Internet [full schedule under Upcoming Events]. Just as much work. Fewer airports. Welcome Jennifer:

They say art imitates life, and in the case of my art (horsey fiction for the tween set), that is certainly true. While I greatly admire the people who can come up with a completely new world that is nothing like the world we live in, I just don’t seem to be wired that way. I suppose I COULD do it if I really wanted to, but I see so much inspiration in the world around me, I have enough stories eating away at me without having the drive to create a new land.

My first book, Bubba Goes National, was born in an Internet chat room. The chat room was part of an Arabian horse discussion board, and I had decided I would write a book. There aren’t many tween horsey books specifically about Arabians, nor are there many about saddle seat riding, so it seemed like a good niche.

I was the kind of kid whose parents didn’t have a lot of money for fancy horse trainers and trucks and trailers and the whole bit, and even as an adult I’ve never had even close to the kind of money you really need to do the show circuit right. Therefore, I wanted my main character to be a little like me…but with even more drive and more opportunities. She’s a better rider than I am, too! I talked about it with my friends in the chat room that day, and the story of a girl who lives with her widowed father and earns her riding lessons by working for her trainer was born. As the title suggests, she ends up making it all the way to Arabian Youth Nationals.

Once Bubba Goes National was finally published, it was time to write a sequel. I talked to my husband and my friend/mentor Michy (they help me with all of my story ideas) and tossed some ideas around. I don’t want to give too much away about the story, but bits of it came from stories I’d seen on the news or in online horse discussion boards. For book three, which is not quite finished, I was inspired by a local girl with cerebral palsy who not only rides horses but earned a National Top Ten in dressage. Impressive!

All of my characters have a little bit of someone I know in them. While Leslie’s dad isn’t very much like my own father, he does like to tease her, just like mine. I’ve mentioned how there’s a bit of me in Leslie. Helen’s personality and the way she works is inspired by a trainer I used to work for, although of course she’s changed quite a bit and looks completely different.

People love to ask writers where our ideas come from. Inspiration is all around us. The day before I wrote this post, I got two ideas that are completely outside of my normal genre–one is a sci-fi thriller set in the future that came out of a blues song I heard (rectify that one!), and the other is a mystery based on a story I heard from a friend of a friend two years ago…but something my husband said reminded me of the story and a whole twist on the tale just jumped into my brain.

If you want to write but can never seem to come up with a story, start with something small. Look around your house or walk down the street or sit at a sidewalk cafe. Watch the people, study the objects. See what story you can come up with for just one of those people or things. When all else fails, hit up one of those ultra creative types in your life to use as a sounding board.

Where do you find inspiration?

Be sure to give your answer. At the end of the book tour, one commenter from this post, chosen at random, will get a free download of Jennifer’s short story Leslie and the Lion RS

Needful Extravagance

Work: day off, inadvertent.
Report: rinsed off his microwavable hot pads before reading the directions that say air dry 24 hours before using. Ah well, the blacksmith just left. Previous Horse had a rule that he got the day off after shoeing. Rodney isn’t shod and wasn’t going to work, but the spirit of the law lives on.

Ramblings: Wore the wrong pairs of shoes to the barn and had them pulled off by the mud, one after the other. I had an armload of hay that I didn’t want to drop in said mud, and my socks were already goners. So I squished up the hill in my socks, delivered the hay, came back, yanked the boots out of the mud, retired to a dry patch, and rearranged my footwear.

It got me thinking about having the right tools for the job. I was wearing unlaced work boots instead of my wonderful Wellies. Okay, they shouldn’t have been unlaced, but the point remains: they are ankle- rather than knee-height, leather rather than rubber, and possess convenient holes around the laces where a 1/2 inch more mud would have oozed in. I am as fond of my Red Wing boots as I am of the Hunter Wellies but as work boots rather than barn boots. I bought them when I was working on my feet all day, walking on concrete aisles. Not a job for sneakers or hiking boots. At the prompting of the store clerk (and may I say how rare and awesome it is to encounter knowledgeable clerks), I bought the full boot for ankle support rather than the shoe version. I thought they would be too hot in a southern summer. They are hot. Also comfortable, sturdy, and supportive. My knees stopped hurting.

In both cases, the boots are expensive. Many times more than similar-shaped versions at a category-killer store. But they last. And while they last, I can get on with my job or my barn work without worrying about my feet. If false economy ends up costing you money, then needful extravagance ends up saving you money.

A modern urban philosopher made the same point:
“Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

“But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.”

Captain Samuel Vimes in Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett [Victor Gollancz 1993], quoted from Good Reads.

Nor am I the only blogger to quote Sir Terry on the subject of economy: Finance Dad, Things that you shouldn’t buy cheap. My previous Pratchetting: The Weather Outside Is Frightful (for us)

What was your most recent needful extravagance?

Putting Myself Out There … On Horseback.

Work: EVE heat & groom.
Report: second day of our new two-person stretch, see Saturday. Felt movement in the target area while his head was down. Less when he raised it.

Ramblings for the Day: My generous Guest Poster from Wednesday, Writing from the Right Side of the Stall, wrote about the similarities between online dating, online job hunting, and her varying luck with both, here.

The first group of sites is about creating relationships. The second group of sites is about finding someone to pay you money. There is a third online area that combines relationships and monetary exchange. I refer, of course, to horse shopping.

In shopping for Rodney, I looked, in person, at 50 horses. I rode 24 of those. [Many of the other 26 fell into the you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me category, but that is material for another post.] I kept no count of the tens? hundreds? we heard about by email, saw pictures of, or watched on video.

As with online dates or online job searching, many options could be ruled out immediately as being the wrong age, of incompatible skills/interests, or located in Canada. Others may sound good until you get hold of the visuals. One horse was an adorable draft-cross who made the earth tremble when he cantered. Not enough engine to cart my hyperventilating self around a preliminary cross-country. Another was athletic enough to already be going prelim, and hauling like a freight train on the arms of the professional rider aboard. To much engine, thank you very much. You can’t buy a horse online, but you can rule one out.

Online horse shopping had the side effect of getting me on Facebook. Rodney’s seller had videos of him on a jumper course. Although the video itself was on YouTube, the best way to get at the correct link was through a comment on her wall. So on I went. One of the first posts on my wall was a friend expressing amazement that I had staggered thus far into the 21st Century. What else but a horse would have caused me to do so?

Like job hunts, and – in my day – dating, horse shopping turns out to be all about contacts. The good ones go by word of mouth. We found that the horses who get as far as classified ads or sales barns are ones who did not get snapped up as soon as they stuck their snoot out the door. Usually there is a reason that the horse did not sell, either from basic failings, price delusion, or, in a few outstanding cases, both. [Really? Seriously? You want how much? For that?]

I love having the horses at home. As I’ve said before, I would make a terrible boarder. But it does cut into the horse networking opportunities.

Any luck with online horse shopping? Or dating? Or job search?

Previous horse shopping post: Truck Shopping