Cause for Cautious Optimism?

Work: AM heat/PM groom & all 6 exercises, including walking into the ring for the 360o turn-around box.
Report: Still unhappy going to the ring but seemed relieved when he realized we were doing the box. Improvement over last time [Joining] & how the plan is intended to work [Blow, Boredom].

Ramblings for the Day: Twee alert. Greg left for work early, so I did the honors with Rodney’s medication. When I went to catch him, he hid his head under my arm. Clearly he was hoping to get out of having to take the nasty-tasting goo. How can one not go all soft & squishy over a horse like that?

The twee-est thing your horse(s) has(have) ever done?

The Return of King Arthur

Friends from the past (Photo by Deborah Rubin)

Work: day off, for Mondayesque reasons. Chance of late afternoon/evening rally.

Ramblings for the Day: Sometimes decisions get taken out of your hands. As I’ve said elsewhere, one of us sits with Mathilda while she finishes her meal. There are more efficient arrangements, but it’s not unpleasant to sit on a stool in the field, watch the horses, and fuss with Rodney while he waits to clean up her leftovers. During the time Rodney eats, not much happens. Narratively, I was all poised to ponder the value of entertaining myself with a book/crossword puzzle versus the gentler joys of being in the moment: listening to the happy chop of horse jaws, admiring the trees, following the squirrels as they race from tree to tree. However, before I could determine if this constituted boredom or enlightenment, one of our cats decided for me.

Arthur, KotK

His full name is Arthur, King of the Kittens, pronounced with the ringing emphasis of Arthur, King of the Britons, from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. If Arthur could arrange for trumpeters, he would. Last month, I blamed the perky new dog for keeping the cats, particularly Arthur, away from the pasture during morning feed [Barn Dogs]. Since then, Arthur has decided that I could not possibly go on without my daily dose of cat adoration.

Therefore, while I wait, I once again have a lap full of cat. At least until Rodney finishes. At which point, my lap airspace is full of horse snoot. Arthur retreats under the stool but stays within adoration range. One hand to pat the cat. One hand to pat the horse. Two dogs circling in close orbit. Quite the peaceable kingdom.

How does your barn menagerie get along?

Olfaction

[Olfaction is the sense of smell. For your Goggle tidbit today, “The Sense of Smell Institute is the research and education division of The Fragrance Foundation, the non-profit, educational arm of the global fragrance industry.” You’re welcome]

Work: AM heat therapy/PM groom & walk.
Report: group walk around 7/8 of the pasture, 90% relaxed.

Ramblings for the Day: Two firsts for the day. The walk was the quietest he’s been that far from the barn to date. At a halt 3/4 of the way through, he nibbled on the end of his leadrope as he does when he’s nervous [Tics]. Then he pulled the slightest bit ahead of me back to the barn, but overall a definite one for the win column.

Perhaps he was relaxed because he felt springtime fresh. Before the walk, I did something with Rodney that I never did with Previous Horse: cleaned his gelding space. PH was extremely possessive of his boy parts. Even whacked out on tranquilizers, he convinced more than one vet to leave him alone. Rodney didn’t cooperate, but neither did he object.

Unfortunately, I used an oatmeal & baking soda dog shampoo. When the two combined with the ammonia in the residue, the smell bought to mind badly cleaned train lavatories back when the facilities opened straight onto the track. Uggh doesn’t begin to cover it.

What is the worst smell you have ever found or created in a barn?

The Virtues of Sloth

Work: PM heat therapy/EVE grooming planned.
Report: Nicely quiet. Improvement over last time [Caution Feral Horse].

Ramblings for the Day: Do you get points if you do the right thing for the wrong reason? Between regularly scheduled programming, weather, & a house crisis, I did not get to the barn for 3 days last week, outside of morning feed and the occasional carrot check. Mind you, the barn is 200 feet from my front door.

This works for two reasons. One) I have a wonderful, supportive, horse husband who does the evening feed and keeps an eye on the horses. He originated the carrot check idea. Two) we have arranged a low-maintenance barn. The horses live out 24/7 in one pasture with a 100-gallon water trough and a run-in shed. No stalls to clean, no horses to shift, no buckets to fill.

In the past, I have claimed an aversion to stalls on a philosophical basis [Think Like a Horse]. I do think being stalled is unnatural for a horse. In this case, theory dovetails nicely with inclination. I don’t like doing stalls. I’m slow at them and tend to overbed, making the next day that much harder. So I don’t do them. Therefore, due to laziness on my part, my horses benefit from living closer to their natural state.

How long does your horse go before reverting to Wild Stallion of the Plains?

Foto Friday: Signalment, Chestnuts, & Trichoglyphs

[Terms for the title & captions taken from a post on Horse Identification by Ed Kane, PhD, on the site dvm360.com.]

Work: day off. Sewage tank issues. The joys of country living.
Report: exhausted. Why is it so tiring to watch other people work? And to write checks?

Ramblings for the Day:

Chestnut
Signalment/Markings
Trichoglyphs/Swirls
Linda Tellington-Jones propounds a theory that swirls in a horse’s hair can predict the personality of the horse. Rodney is a two-swirl horse. I’m not saying I buy into the theory, but the description is eerily accurate. Let’s hope it is also predictive:

“Two swirls adjoining, either one above the other, or side by side — these can be above, between, or below the eyes and are sometimes set at an angle to each other: Horses with this tend to be more emotional and over-reactive than average. They tend to become upset without apparent reason, and at unexpected moments. When such horses blow up, the best way to handle them is to back off and allow them to settle. Punishing them doesn’t help; in fact it usually only aggravates the behavior more and can even bring on more resistance. However, Linda says, a horse like this can be a great horse; she has had some of her best show horses with this configuration, but generally, horses with this pattern are not ideal for inexperienced riders”

My LTJ books have gone missing, so I cannot confirm if this a quote or a paraphrase. Taken from a post on Horse’s Personality from the National Barrel Horse Association Florida district 1 site. I would modify the above, ‘without reason apparent TO HUMANS’. Whatever a horse does makes sense to the horse.

What unique markers does your horse have?

Failing On Your Way To Success

Work: day off. Rain. Mostly.

Ramblings: There is nothing new. Only restatements of what we already know. I confess, I’m a soft touch for an Ironman story. The winners are super-fit professionals with more focus than I will ever have. Admirable, but with as much relevance to my life as the NBA Draft. At the end of the hour, the TV coverage of the Ironman World Championship in Kona HW picks up the amateurs. Folks chugging in to make the time limit for 17 hours of continuous exercise. Still not relevant to anything I’m planning to jump off the couch to do, but such wonderful stories: a smoker who lost 50 pounds, a grandfather running for the first time with his marathoner granddaughter, a man dedicating the race to a cancer-surviving family member, and so on. No wonder I was a sucker for You Are an Ironman: How Six Weekend Warriors Chased Their Dream of Finishing the World’s Toughest Triathlon by Jacques Steinberg [Viking 2011] despite the hardback price.

In trolling for the date of the next telecast, I found a 2010 post from Tony Austin’s swimming blog, SCAQBlog. At the end of a post about a now-defunct ticket preference program, he says, “I look at them [a photo of his Ironman bib and jersey number] from time to time to remember what it took to allow me to get where I am today despite tremendous deficits. I credit that race and Julie Moss for convincing me that failure is temporary and that you can even ‘fail’ your way to success. I kid you not.”

Try, try again. Winners never quit. Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all before. But this word choice got past my defenses. FAIL has such a note of finality. You fail a class. You fail a blood test. These are not things you recover from with a perky attitude. I berate myself as a failure often. Yet, here is this guy saying that one can fail and still succeed. Intriguing.

BTW, it’s not surprising that a restatement would get through to me, since getting excited about the shades of meaning between one word and another is what folks pay me for.

No, I haven’t given a review of the book. Either the title has you foaming at the mouth to contact your book pusher of choice or you’re wondering WTF.

Your favorite non-equine sports book?