A new way to visit old friends

I learned this morning that Charles Craver has donated his impressive collection of Arabian horse skulls to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Charles bred Davenport Arabian horses for decades, including my aunt's beloved Binni. Actually, he didn't just breed them, he gathered the tribe together and created the Davenport program as it currently exists. He corresponded with "The Greats" in the Arabian breeding community, and developed a way of keeping as much genetic diversity as he could within a closed breeding group. He wrote excellent scholarly articles on important people and horses for Arabian Horse World and other magazines. He's something of a legend within certain circles.

Charles became interested in measuring horse's skeletons and skulls because there are so many myths about Arabians. (They are missing a vertebra. Yeah, lots of horses are born without one -- it's not unique to Arabians. They are missing a pair of ribs. Some horses are born without a pair of ribs. Some dogs are born without a pair of ribs. Some humans are too. It's not that big a deal. But to those who buy in to the Majikal Arabians myth, it's handy to throw these anomalies around as signs of divine speshullness.) Charles particularly wanted to know about how the head connects to the neck and whether a family of Arabians that are known to have high head carriage really do have something physically different about them, or whether they just have the tendency to put their heads up in the air.

He had horses in his barns, but he had no skulls. So Charles did a brave and wonderful thing. After every important horse of his died, he carefully prepared its skull and cataloged it. His collection is really remarkable in that he has pictures and measurements for the living animal to be used as comparison to the skull.

Now that Charles is older, he has sold off most of his herd to other breeders save for a few "pensioners". This week, his skull collection was donated to the Carnegie Museum.

I like to go visit descendants of the horses I knew at my aunt's from time to time. (Last month I hung out with one elderly lady I knew in her youth at the farm.) Now I guess I can go visit the ancestors of the Upland Farm crew. It won't be the same without Charles' commentary though. Than again, I keep reminding myself, things change.

Needing coffee

I took my kids up to Michael's farm last weekend. I met a girl there I had previously only talked to online. She was amazed at the horses and is now an instant fan. Not of me, but of Michael and the way he talks about and treats his horses.

My friend fell in love with this guy, Eldar HD:



















The chick with the extravagant hair is the ever-lovely Neo.

Eldar is a young stud colt, as is Latitude who's standing behind him.

Here are some older studs. (Ignore the file name if you click on the picture. I saved it as "Primitivo", but that's entirely incorrect. He's not even in this picture.) Here are Shiraz, in front, and I believe that's Bright Flame walking behind him. Bright Flame* and his full brother (not pictured) have very similar markings and are turned out in the same paddock. Shiraz, Eldar, and Latitude are all Davenports and are therefore very closely related.














My friend in Georgia, whom Neo and I visited a few years ago, has a bunch of horses who are related to Shiraz's father, a lovely horse named Regency. So there's a connection between the two farms and between other horses you've seen me post in the past.

Here's Neo getting mauled by Almohada, a black mare who insists on getting petted. She's practically strangling herself! Almohada is also a Davenport.














And here's Phebe petting a lovely Arabian who is NOT a Davenport! Wow. Considering that the minority of Michael's horses are Davenports, it's amazing how few pictures I have of the non-Davenports. Anyway, this is Crystal Naiah, a lovely mare with old classic California Arabian bloodlines. This group excels in Endurance competitions as well as in all around sport competitions (dressage, hunter over fences, etc.). And they're cute too.



















Phebe got pretty bored pretty fast, so I gave her the camera. I therefore have many many pictures of the ground and of people's chins. Not so many of the horses. Oh well. I'll have to go back up and get more.

*Edited to add: It's actually not Bright Flame, as pointed out in the comments by Ambar, but his full brother. So yeah, I goofed on the identification.

Recent craigslist ad

SF bay area craigslist > south bay > pets

STUBBORN HORSE.... CHEAP! (san jose east)

---

Reply to: comm-858155452@craigslist.org ^[?]
Date: 2008-09-28, 1:55AM PDT

I have a 4 yr old TB mare who just happens to be the most STUBBORN horse in the world. She's got TONS of potential to be a great gymkhana or roping horse, but she's just got a few quirks- like being "stuck in reverse." Shes saddlebroke, and perfectly rideable, that is, however, if you can actually manage to stay put and then convince her to go FORWARD, not BACKWARD. She'll go backwards all day, just not forward. Go figure. She's a bit hoppy, too. Likes to hop around a lot when you're in the saddle...oh yes, and let's not forget her favorite habit, trying to step on you when youre leading her anywhere. Yep, she's got a few issues. **HOWEVER** The problem is, I just dont have enough time to spend with her...I broke her myself and I'd be able to work out all her kinks if I only had the time....but sadly, I dont. She REALLY doea have the potential to be a GREAT horse for someone who has enough time and experience to work with her-that I am POSITIVE of. I need to find somebody ASAP who is willing to help her learn how to become that aweesome horse we all know she's gonna be. Adoption fee is $800, but at this point thats VERY negotiable...please E-mail me for pics and any inquiries...thanks.
XXXXX@yahoo.com

PostingID: 858155452

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Apologies to Fugly: Wow. You say you trained her yourself? And you can fix all those problems yourself if you only had the time? Huh. "Stuck in reverse" is such a testament to your training abilities too. Go figure. And she can't lead. And she's "hoppy" AND you know she's going to be awesome. Yikes.

There's something fairly offensive about putting this ad up for all the world to see. Or embarrassing? Or, I dunno, idiotic?

Sixes and Sevens

I should blog more.

I should talk about what's on my mind, but I don't want to seem pushy about it.

Look at meeee.

Or don't. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

Lengthy ramblings of a confused person. I'm at sixes and sevens as they say. Sort of all over the place.

I set up a visit for next weekend at a friend's horse farm about an hour away. Someone I've never met, but whom I've talked to on a guinea pig care message board and with whom I've exchanged long emails is meeting me at my friend's farm. This girl was posting on the guinea pig board about her riding lessons, the descriptions of which were appalling, and a group of us told her to "go find a better instructor." Long story short, the owner of the horse farm I'm visiting gave me a suggestion of a horse trainer in the area for this girl I don't really know. My good deed for the month of May. Or was it April?

It's weird that I've invited her to come along -- I'm fairly protective of horse farm visits -- they seem private to me. The farm owner, M, was a dear though. While I was trying to set this up he pointed out that I *could* visit more than once a year. As in, be social. Drop in with or without your friend.

Stuff like that throws me.

Yeah, I know I could. And I know I would be welcome, and all that, but ... I dunno. I worry that I'd be a hanger-on, wearing out my welcome because I can't read the social cues that say, "Now would be a good time to head home." So I never begin. Which is too bad, because I think M could use the company.

Who knows, maybe Leslie will fall in love with one of his horses. Maybe he gets a sale from this? Maybe a new convert to preservation breeding and Arabian sporthorses?

Horses. A few more of my aunt's horses have died since the last time I wrote about them. Hardly surprising, but I'm like the neglectful older cousin who shows up at Thanksgiving -- all the horses I knew are permanently stuck in their first grade school pictures. The ones with the weird stripey shirts and bad glasses. Frozen in weird shy gawkiness. But actually, they're really getting old some of them. The fine old man I wrote about before, the one I visited in Georgia a few years ago recovered from his liver failure, but has had to have an eye removed due to cancer. Or glaucoma? I don't remember exactly. But I'm not going to update my mental image of him -- he's still an iron grey twelve year old in my head. Jeez. She died in 1991. Some days I'm surprised there are any left at all.

Stuff like that throws me too.

Neo's doing well in home school -- I'm making her read and write a ton. So far we've done Ethan Frome, To Kill A Mockingbird, Shane, and now she's working on Lord of the Flies. Her writing's improving, but she's still not in the habit of finding examples in the text. I think she doesn't take notes.

I'm still on the Middle Schools' autodialer list though. Since I've pulled her enrollment, I've been invited to sell cookie dough for the PTA, attend the Back to School Night, and bring my daughter (!) to Muffins for Moms. Neo really wanted to crash the "Muffins for Moms" event just to stir shit up, but no, I'm not gate-crashing an event I never much liked in the first place.

Saul's doing well at school -- we've started him on Prozac. Finally. Of course now is when my mother starts sending me "THE STORY" from the New York Times Magazine about how awful it is to live with a bipolar child. Ugh. Shake it off. I didn't go to her seventieth birthday, nor did I send my brother glowing remarks about her which he was to have read to the assembled masses. Dear Butcher told me just to rewrite the obituary (three pages) she sent me. See if she'd notice. But I didn't bother. She didn't get flowers either. I can't afford them. So I'm officially on a Do Not Call list from my mother. She doesn't call me now, and I'm not gritting my teeth when the phone rings. It's OK. Still feel bad for my Dad though. Poor guy stuck in crazy land.

Dear Butcher's away in NYC with the girls. My nephew had his Bar Mitzvah. Saul and I stayed home. Apparently a good time was had by all. I sort of thought that maybe I'd "get something done" while Dear Butcher was away. But it's been hot and mostly I slept. Today I raked the entire back yard, scraping up the brown straw that stands in for a lawn in my back yard and made an enormous compost pile. Sort of a stupid chore, but one I've been meaning to do. But it's not what I *wanted* to get done while I had time to work on the house, but it's what I chose to do, so it must have been what I wanted to get done at some level.

Anyway, while I was raking, I kept thinking about The Last of The Mohicans (movie) and The Last of the Mohicans (book). I tried reading the book when I heard the movie was coming out -- Daniel Day-Lewis was quite an attraction even in the trailers -- and I realized pretty quickly that the book does live up to every awful thing Mark Twain ever said about it. Yet it's beloved but boring as hell. The movie on the other hand.... ::fans self:: Wow. There's a bit of a story. Good visuals. Good characters. Good romance. How in the WORLD did someone get from Hawkeye (wise-crackin old man) and Alice to Nathaniel (shirtless hunk) and Cora? It's like the difference between The Thirty-Nine Steps and The Thirty-Nine Steps.

Anyway. It got stuck in my head, the movie I mean. When I came inside to make dinner for Saul, I discovered (after much scrolling through excessively long menus -- I hate you Comcast) that The Last of the Mohicans was a free movie on On Demand. I love you Comcast!

Ugh. My neighbors are being loud. I want to either throw something at them or go hide somewhere under a blanket. Snarl.

Anyway. Thoughts on the recent viewing. Great romance. Still love that part. Action? I dunno. I think Michael Mann sort of overdid parts of it -- the battle scenes aren't quite as I remembered them I guess. Dialog? Not so much -- sometimes Nathaniel seems folksy and sometimes he seems modern. But what absolutely works one hundred percent is Nathaniel's brooding devotion to Cora. Perfect. Faint-worthy.

But I must be all out of sorts. Or something. Because now it's like a seed in my teeth. I'm disappointed in how much I liked it? Or annoyed that it's not based on a book that I can go linger over? There aren't any scenes at all that I can replay in my head. Nathaniel runs. Right at Cora. Nathaniel runs again. Nathaniel looks at Cora: "What are you looking at?" Long Pause "You." Uh, guys? This isn't working for me.

And don't remind me of the dialog under the waterfall. I'm not going there.

OK, maybe I am.

He's yelling so loud you can't hear what he's saying other than that he's going to leave her so she can die because he might be able to save her if the marauding Indians decide not to kill her outright, even though they've been trying to kill her THE ENTIRE MOVIE specifically targeting her in not one, but TWO battle scenes. Yes, if they decide suddenly not to kill her then, once he's jumped through this waterfall and once his gunpowder has dried (Does jumping THROUGH a waterfall help this?), then he might have a chance to save her which he doesn't have now, so stay alive until I come back, here's a romantic farewell for you -- I'll find a way to find you no matter what.

If I were twenty, I might be melting. I was pretty stupid at twenty. At forty, I sincerely want to stomp on his instep and assuredly grab a hold of him as he thunders past. I prefer to live too, you know. I remember seeing this in the the theater and trying to figure out what scene had been cut because the damn thing made no sense. Still doesn't.

Oh look, now I'm all whipped up over a scene I don't much care for. That's helpful.

Here, what I meant to say when I started this thing about Hawkeye/Nathaniel is that I'm reminded of a rather painful conversation Dear Butcher and I had the other night about early romances. I had this long on-again/off-again relationship with Woody just before I went to the circus and met Dear Butcher on my first night. Dear Butcher started off as a rebound fling after Woody. (Obviously he's not that anymore, but still. That's gotta be some sort of a diss. Isn't it?)

Woody looked A LOT like Daniel Day-Lewis. Even when Daniel Day-Lewis was all twisted up in "My Left Foot" he reminded me of Woody. If you could imagine Daniel Day-Lewis playing Hugh Grant, with the slightly raised single eyebrow, cocked head, and sentences that always end in questions? That would be Woody. Tall. Thin with oddly broad shoulders. High forehead. Long fingers. Nervous mannerisms. Piercing eyes. Lovely hair. And totally unable to commit to moving out of his parent's house, getting out from under the thumb of a ridiculous boss, and really, when it comes down to it, loving me.

But boy did I love him. Wow. Infatuation much? Yikes.

I left for the circus in 1989, came back in 1990. My aunt died in 1991, and by 1993 was living with Dear Butcher in Boston. We married in 1994, moved to CA in 1995 and had Neo in 1995.








The Last of the Mohicans 1992
Age of Innocence 1993
Four Weddings and a Funeral 1994
Sense and Sensibility 1995 (Although Alan Rickman did steal some thunder there. "The air is filled with spices" indeed.)

Each one of these films, I sort of, I dunno, felt like I was cheating on Dear Butcher when I watched them? Kind of? I keep thinking that they must have been made in the late eighties, when I was dating Woody, but no. They weren't. Don't delude yourself. But really, come on now. Liking the looks of a famous actor and enjoying the movies he's in; that's not bad. (Oh wait, there's two actors. Shut up.) Dear Butcher has his crushes too.

Agh. I'm at sixes and sevens.

I meant to talk about this weird conversation. Dear Butcher asked me (brave of him) what it was about earlier relationships that cause me remember them in detail, or with what seems like a higher intensity. I think he even asked if I ever talked about him that way. I replied in a rather off-handed way, "I don't do that sort of love any more." Or something like that -- I don't remember exactly what I said, but I'll bet Dear Butcher does. It was pretty callous. And mean once it was out of my mouth. And then I had to hurriedly explain myself, as what I had said was so awful.

I used to create fantasies about people and let myself get all washed away. I hung around Woody for years, having long (three hour) conversations with him in his car after work. We made out. We went clothes shopping together. We worked the same shift at the same store. And then he announced that he had asked another girl to go out with him, and he hoped that I would be happy for him. I so wanted him to be happy. I told him I was. And still we had three hour conversations. I knew his work schedule -- he had to have been spending more time with me than he was with her. We spent the weekends together going to crafts fairs. He brought me over to her apartment one time to listen to her Billie Holiday records when he found out that I liked Billie Holiday. (Gee. Did I let that slip?) And she wanted him to be happy, so she invited me to sit on the couch next to him while she sat on the chair.

And then she broke up with him and I held his bony shoulders while he cried on my bed. Later that year we made out while my dad was near death in the hospital. My memories of Woody always include being half-undressed on the warm side of an iced-over windshield. And then we broke up again. This went on forever. The man liked Winnie the Pooh for goodness sake. I think he wanted to be Christopher Robin and hide in a tree somewhere. And I would be his ever faithful Maid Marian. Or Rabbit, or some such thing. Just as soon as he noticed me long enough to realize that I was in love with him. But it wasn't love? I think? Maybe it was possessiveness? Or desperation? I think he was too desperate for constant companionship to leave me behind and go get a girlfriend, and he was too scared of possible rejection to commit to me as a lover. I was no better. I let him ooze around in his discomforts because he was so endearing while he was damaged and so euphoric when he told himself he was strong. One day we would be euphoric together. I just knew it.

But finally, ultimately. It was enough. He broke it off with me after I told him that his ex-girlfriend was a jerk for showing up to my house on Valentine's Day when she knew I was cooking him dinner. He said I wasn't supportive enough of his needs. God, that killed me. Now, I'd just laugh in his face or cut him down to size with my quick little tongue. But at the time, I crumpled.

So after the fascination with the abusive guy, and after the sweetest infatuation with the wimpiest guy ever, I don't do that kind of love anymore. Not in real life. Which is too bad for Dear Butcher, because he deserves it. But I can't crack that goo-pot open. Too much. Too much like drowning, I think. Beautiful while you look up at the sky from underneath the water, but deadly.

Somehow, I don't remember how, I explained this to Dear Butcher. It was awkward, but those sorts of conversations are in real life. That I relied on him and I loved him, but I wasn't ever going to wax rhapsodic about him and this was a good thing.

So all this is to say that I'm thinking about fantasies. That fantasy of the guy who stares into your eyes for much longer than is comfortable and is intriguing rather than frightening. The fantasy of the guy who is strong enough to protect you and who proves it by jumping through waterfalls to survive only by the force of his own will. The fantasy of the action that would piss you off or terrify you in real life but which is endearing and romantic in a story. The fantasy of a clean house that never needs cleaning, or having the unerring need to demonstrate your love for someone by keeping the ranch running straight and true. The fantasy of the conversation that sounds poetic and heartfelt in a story but feels harsh and awkward in real life. The fantasy of a slow walk with a good friend through a sunny field filled with warm horses where the wind is gentle and there is no conversation other than the exact one you want to be having at that very moment.

Been otherwise occupied

Sorry to have been away for so long. Son stuff. Family stuff. Garden stuff. Stuff Stuff.

Did you know that the people who continue to mourn Barbaro's death are, um, INSANE?????

His fifth birthday was this week. Did you have a cake? Light a candle? Hmmmm? No? Shame on you.

OH!! Grand news!! We have news from heaven. Yep. It's on the website. Barbaro and his dear dead horsey friend have *bred* in heaven and have given birth to *twins*! No, really. I swear I'm not making this up. (OK, someone is, but it's not me.)

Go read for yourself. Equine Heaven

(By the way, do not try to tell these folks that they are delusional or writing really good fanfic. Noooo. They saw the pictures of Barbaro with the angelic orbs over his head as he walked to the starting gate on that fateful day. I've wanted to point out in the past that the angels weren't doing a super terrific job on that day, but just seems so mean.)

Edited to add 2:25 pm: Oh POOH! They changed the website sot hat the birth announcement is gone. But really, there was a birth announcement on there regarding the birth of Heavenly Filly and Heavenly Colt born this week from a dead horse fathered by a dead stallion, all in horsie heaven. I'll have to see if the way-back machine can be of any help.

A beautiful thing

This blog, Saving Argus, has only been up since November of last year. Between last night and this morning, I've read the whole thing. I don't really have good enough words of praise for it.

Argus is a 16 year old Thoroughbred gelding who spent his entire life in a small (way too small) muddy paddock eating bread and iceberg lettuce. The blog is written by the woman who took him in and has had to introduce him to open space, being led by a halter, food, and kindness. And she writes about it all in a moving way, but without resorting to "fluffy bunny" cuteness which so often goes hand-in-hand with internet tales of horse rescue.

Eeep!

Church of Barbaro.

Let the crazies unite!

My subconscious is beating me over the head

I just woke up from a bizarre dream.

Well, not just. It rattled my stomach so badly that I had to go throw up first and then had to lie down on the couch for an hour to get the vertigo to go away.

I had a dream about eventing. Jumping brush fences, ditches, and lamb creeps. Every lurch of the pony, every thought of "Oh SHIT that's a big fence. Gonna die gonna die gonna diegonnadie right NOW!" was accompanied by the fence coming right at me, feeling the horse trying to evade left, evade right and then power down with a determined focus to that leap. Ears forward, chest thumping, legs driving, no evasion, no wiggles. Power Power Power Uuuup and land.

My stomach can't take the swooping any more.

Eventing? Oh sorry. Let me explain.

I only ever did it at training level, but eventing is where the horse and rider compete on the flat in dressage the first day, then cross-country over wide high natural obstacles (which do NOT fall apart if you hit them) at speed, and the final day the horse and rider compete in stadium jumping over mostly very high jumps with tight corners in an enclosed space. Three different disciplines to show that the horse is trained 3 ways.



Here's a good page with examples of different types of X-C fences: A description of Cross Country facilities.

Ditches scared the hell out of me -- which scared the hell out of the horse. Great. You can be asked to jump OFF a ditch or up onto a "step up". (Same structure, just approached from the other direction.)

When you jump a ditch, you basically are asking your horse to jump off a cliff with you and having him land on the other side. Jumping a step-up is obviously a bit easier, as he knows where he's supposed to land.

But the worst for me, for some reason were what they call "lamb creeps". It's sort of like jumping over a low shed roof. You can find examples on the page I just linked there -- pheasant feeders are basically the same thing. It's hard to judge their height, and the horse doesn't get a good sense that they're wide. It looks like a straight vertical fence until you're on top of it.

You just have to trust that when you give the horse the gas that he's going to take that signal and jump WIDE. Not UP. (That conversation obviously gets easier with training. But it's also just a trust thing.)

Anyway, I had this dream where I'm on a horse I haven't ridden for a while. I'm in the middle of a course, and I can't remember ever walking the course. Every time I approach a fence, the horse just almost wiggles. He probably doesn't even change his footfalls, but his weight is shifting while he's thundering at top speed to see if maybe he can avoid jumping this fence. Ugh. NOT what you want on a cross-county course. Go. Go. Go. Go. Do What I Say. Go.

Ditch to water. falling falling oh shit, land already. Step up to brush fence. wiggle. GO! Turn to the left, a wide galloping arc. Build your speed. Make up for the jumps. Gallop. Straight. Holy Christ a lamb creep. Wait. What's past it? Am I jumping an in and out? A corner? Damn. Are there TWO fences? Jump it as a corner and hope you can get the width to jump the far one.

Mid air. I'm sailing over the lamb creep, which was set up at right angles to a single low heavy rail, I look ahead and realize that the horse hasn't jumped wide enough. If I had jumped him farther away from the point, we could have jumped it as two fences. Jump into the box, jump out of the box. But I tried to get him to jump two fences as one in the corner, and we're going to crash.

I wake up just as his front legs connect with solid wood.

Ugh.

Apparently something in my subconscious would like to sit me down and have a little chat. Because it's pounding on the inside of my head as I sleep. I could have done without the motion sickness though.

Bagheera was happy to sit on my tummy though and purr himself into ecstacy.

Way to go, Mystic

Atta boy!

Mystic has been recognized for his accomplishments in Cowboy Mounted Shooting, as the second Arabian to become a certified Champion Mounted Shooting horse. You have to scroll down to see a picture of him zooming around the pattern with his owner, Aida.

I once co-owned Mystic for all of about five minutes. He was a great little guy. (He's STILL a great little guy, I just haven't seen him in person for about 15 years.)

You can't tell from that photo, but he has the same insanely thick forelock that his dad did. Mystic likes to toss his head until the forelock completely covers his face and peer out through the brambles. He's full up to the brim with attitude. Very much of a "Get OUT of my way. I have a job to do." But Aida's children have ridden him bareback for most of their lives.

I don't own him. I never visit him. But I still get that swelling of pride whenever his name or picture pops up on the web.

Here's Aida's Local Cowboy Mounted Shooting club, the Massachusetts Six Shooters, if you're curious what that is.

Edited to add: If you go to the Photos page of the MA Six Shooters website, there's a video posted of Mystic competing. Blurry, but fun.

For SxKitten and her daughter

I keep saying, "Don't grip with your knees." And what in the world does THAT mean?

OK, after much Youtube surfing, here are two comparisons for you. (I have to admit, it was surprisingly hard to find the sort of video I wanted, with a young beginner posting the trot, soles of the rider's boots flashing in the sun, and lower legs swinging everywhere. The one I found is almost on target.)

When you sit on a horse, your legs are open, and your first impulse is to pinch with the knees to get your legs back together. No. Don't do that. It creates saddle sores for one thing, and for another it pops you OUT of the saddle and makes your lower leg fling itself all over the place.

The girl in the first video has her stirrups too short, but watch it for a sec. Watch her knees, calves, and stirrups. Don't watch the whole thing, just the first minute or so until she starts cantering over jumps.



OK. Check out the posting. She's holding on with her knees and standing UP in the stirrups when she posts the trot. I know this because her ankles are jiggling all over the place and her stirrup irons swing out (when she's standing) and back to the horse's side (when she's released pressure on them). To make matters worse, she's wearing spurs. Agh. So every stride her knees grip, her feet swing out and her horse gets spurred. Noisy leg and unstable seat.

The shorter your stirrups are, obviously the less contact you have with the horse until you're in jockey mode where your knees are in your chest and your butt never hits the saddle at all.

If you lengthen your leg and open your hips, you can learn how to grip the horse with your entire leg. Think of sitting on a barrel. If you wrap your legs around the barrel and grip the UNDERSIDE then you're sucked down onto the barrel. Grip with your knees and it's like gripping a bar of soap in the shower. Whoops! Off you go.

Then when you get to jumping, you can lift slowly and securely out of the saddle using the strength of your legs, not by standing up in the stirrups. If you go over jumps with your knees pinched to the horse, your lower leg swings back and away from the horse's side. And you've got no stability as the horse leaves the ground. Quite dangerous.

In this video, watch the horse acting up at the beginning. Ignore his actions for a minute and watch the rider. Especially her lower leg. I'll comment again after you've seen it.

She gets left behind his movement only once in all that leaping around. And her lower leg doesn't budge. Sometimes she's in the saddle trying to move him forward through the rearing, sometimes she's hovering just above the saddle trying to keep her center of gravity over his, but her feet and lower leg stay still. It's quite a testament to her ability that she can do this.

And then there's this girl. Watch the whole video to see the same horses after she's worked with them. As the horses act up, watch her upper body stay straight and tall. Watch her lower leg stay pretty quiet. Especially with the bucking dun, you can see how her HIPS are the fulcrum here, not her knees. What an excellent rider she is.



Long and low, lengthen into the horse's movements and you'll be a lot safer up there. And you'll get fewer saddle sores. That's why God made BOOTS for your CALVES not knee guards for your pinchy-thingies!

Good luck!

Body Language

Do horses "enjoy" what they are doing? Do racehorses LOVE to run? Do polo ponies want to play chukkas?

Hard to say. But I'd wager that this horse really does like cutting cattle. Courtesy of a commenter on Fugly Horse of the Day:

Fathers and Sons

This is a particularly famous image in the Arabian world. A older stallion to the left, Ferzon, touching noses with his very accomplished son, Gai Parada to the right. Once you start scrutinizing details of the face, you can start to see differences between them; it's not an exact mirror image. But it is a graceful image.


Some years later the son from the picture above, Gai Parada, was photographed meeting his son, Gai Radiant. (Gai Radiant is on the left. Grey horses are born dark and "grey out" over time until they are white. So the less white horse is going to be a younger horse, even if you don't recognize Gai Parada from above.)

Same pose, same stallion in two pictures. Interesting that the second one isn't as successful as the first. There's another picture on the Gainey website of Gai Parada and Gai Seance which I think is more successful, but still not as spot on as Ferzon and Gai Parada.

Anyway, it's an iconic pose, one that was recognizable before Ferzon touched noses with his son. But that example is particularly magical. Ferzon's throatlatch in particular has that tension and a particular curve which stallions show off just as their self-control is about to break. He's reaching forward, but he's trying very hard to be a gentleman, but he's posing for this young buck. Very tense. Very elegant.

Gai Parada on the other hand seems to be calmer. In both poses he's just lovely. Gai Radiant isn't working for me at all though. He neck looks posed, as if he's been asked to take that snakey neck, ears forward position so many times in the show ring that he does it no matter what is put in front of him. Too bad. He's actually a decent horse, except for this picture. Gai Parada still hows some attitude of curiosity here. (BTW, the other thing that I find less successful in this picture is the drape of the leadlines going to the handler out of frame. I don't like the straight lines cutting sharply across the water like that. In the original, the background blurs them out better.)

OK, what started this critique?

Um,

an example of this classic pose which was not quite as successful.

As soon as I saw it, I knew they were going for the Father and Son pose. But.

Uh.

Guys?



Has anyone ever talked to you about backgrounds? Ever? Or, um, the wisdom of handling two stallions nose to nose by yourself when you're about two feet tall?

Yeah. This one doesn't work for me.

Especially since they're cremellos. Yegh. I really don't like pink skinned eyes.

OK, not meaning to snark on the horses, just on the bizarre thought process that led the photographer to have the handler crouch down. "Don't worry! No one will see your bright shiny knees if you stay very close to the ground!"

A Picture Never Lies

Unless you're accomplished at Photoshop.

Over at Fugly Horse of the Day there's been an ongoing discussion of the ridiculous pictures people put up on the web to advertise their horses. (Hint: Don't make your breeding stallion look mangy, poorly conformed or bad tempered. Bad advertising. Also, don't put together a website of your breeding operation with unicorns, wispy clouds, and fairies in the background.)

One of the commentators on FHOTD put up a demonstration of her photoshop skills. Yes, there are "tells" all over the pictures, and she points out what they are, but hey, I'm impressed with the conversation/demonstration nonetheless. Here's her page. And here are the before and after photos. Woah. Check out her page for the rollover comparison.

BEFORE:











AFTER:













Makes this older picture of my dear old friend, shot in the days before the web and Photoshop took over horse advertising, all the more impressive. He was about 19 years old in this one. What a good boy.

Uri, Randi, and the Fairies

Hey Joyce.

The fairies are back. The ones with the gamin faces and the silver wings. They hold their little slender arms out, their sleeves and scarves and bits of flowing fabric catching the breeze. Remember how you tipped you head to the side and chuckled at them? How very silly they were, the paper cutouts? Remember? I do.

I remember when you went up to Lily Dale to meet the mediums. I remember how offended you were that all the spirit guides were some gross stereotype of what whites thought American Indians looked or acted like. Chief Bear Paw and Squaw of the Rolling Hills. The Indians who knew the truth of the world because only they were connected with the trees and the bears and the earth, unlike us, the Anglo-Saxons stumbling though life in our clumping boots.

You wanted to know the Spiritualists so that you could write them into your book. But you came away being thoroughly disgusted with their obvious tactics of trickery and deceit. "How can people be so gullible? Can they not SEE that the envelope reading is a ridiculous fake? The men in particular don't even try to make it look real. Their mouths move as they read the messages. To help them memorize it all I guess."

Remember how we talked about Phario's blind eye? And how if we wanted to we could make up a story as to why he was terrified of trailers? And that maybe he had injured his eye in a trailer accident? And we could set ourselves up as "animal psychics"? I do. I remember sitting at your antique farm table, cradling an iced coffee in my sweaty hand, the red glass pushing its lumpy smoothness into my left palm. It was never sweet, your coffee. It was milky and bitter. Like a Cadbury bar left too long in a desk drawer until the surface blooms white and the texture goes to sand.

Remember how we spent that afternoon drafting Phario's reading? Yeah. That was a good time. Why didn't we write that down?

Joyce, where ever you are now, you should know that animal psychics are all the rage, only now they call them animal communicators. And the American Indians, by way of Gawani Pony Boy, have taken over parts of the horse training industry. Don't bother to teach your horse manners, just commune with him as the ancient and knowing American Indians did. Then you'll achieve a true relationship with your personal spirit guide. Your horse.

But anyway, for all that I laugh at the charlatans, and hate the tricksters, I do somehow love part of all that craziness. As did you, I know. We're all attracted to the depth of a crystal and the purity of a flame.

I don't really completely believe in ghosts. They're too tangible and recognizable somehow. They're too easy to create out of a slip of paper, a camera and a willing audience. But I do somehow believe in spirits. Bad of me, I know. I think we can chalk it up to a deeply Christian upbringing. I can't quite imagine a death without an afterlife. How could something so rich and powerful just end? Pffft. A flame blown out. Doesn't seem possible that there's no smoke lingering in the air.

Hey, but I needed to tell you.

Those bells I heard when I was trying to sort through your stuff? It was nothing major or dramatic, just the small unbroken ringing of an alarm clock miles away when I sat at your computer that hot afternoon in May, hoping that searching all your files would deliver unto me a written record of what the hell you intended me to DO with all those horses you left behind. Yeah, that bell. Is that the sound of fairies laughing? Crying? Or just a touch on the shoulder? I'm guessing you know.

But I needed to tell you that the fairies, or the bell, or the memory of a bell and a chunky red glass of iced coffee, they're all fluttering in the wisps of my hair that won't stay back, won't stay tamed, and keep getting tangled in the hinge of my eyeglasses and tickling the edge of my upper lip.

Call me when you get a minute. I need to tell you something.

This makes me cry

But I'm not sure if it's tears of anger, of sadness and sympathy, or of pure surprise and shock.

Courtesy of Fugly Horse of the Day,



Two and a half years old, overbitted, terrified just standing still, being slapped and yelled at. Jeez. Not even three years OLD? Let the darned thing Grow UP!

There's a horse so screwed up that it would most likely be a blessing if it were to go to the meat market now before it gets more "training". Rearing is impossible to train out of a horse -- and a rearing horse is a dangerous and deadly horse. Judging by the way he's landing, I'm guessing his back is already screwed up by wrenching and falling so frequently. And if you hadn't thrown a long shank craptastic bit in his mouth and held on to the reins so tight (which PREVENTS him from walking forward, you dumbass) and then started yelling at him, he would have reared. Never. Horses don't DO that the first try out.

If you slam the brakes on from the front, and you gun the engine from the back, there's no place to go but up. And hey, now you've abused the horse right into being deadly. And lamed his stifle and maybe ruptured his gut.

He was a cute boy too.

Shit, I hate finding stuff like this.

Go ride a bike, but get off the damned horse.

Edited to add: They pulled the video. But it has been up for a year and shows two yahoos terrifying a horse over and over again by yelling at it. Every time they get on it, the horse flips himself over. The final indignity is when the horse flips himself up and over and then comes down straddling a fence. Rather than breaking the fence apart and rescuing the horse from rupturing a gut, the ignorant owners continue to yell at the horse and beat on it until it lifts itself up off the fence and canters away with a definitively injured rear stifle. Ugh.

Evacuating from fires

I haven't seen this number reported on CNN or on the AP wires, but I've been reading a newsgroup listing of horse owners. One regular on the list evacuated her horses to "the fairgrounds" (in San Diego? I've lost track of where exactly she is, but can go check again.)

She's reported that the last inventory of horses on that property was 2530.

Not including dogs, cats, etc.

Jeez.

CNN keeps reported "Thousands of animals on Del Mar racetrack", but then they keep going back to all the dogs in crates. More than a thousand horses is just an insane number.

One million people, twenty five hundred horses, thousands of dogs and cats. Can barely get my head around it.

What Are We Hiding Part Deux

When selling a horse, is this what we REALLY want to put out there? Hmmmm?

[name edited] proudly offers "BANDIT" standing at Stud. Stud fee 2007 $600 Reg $350 Grade LFG Live cover only. 100% Homozygous for Tobiano! Last year's foals are beautiful...2 black and white, 2 tri colours! DVD available...email me! Pictures available. This stallion is beautiful, athletic and agile. Poetry in Motion!

And um, I would want to breed to this horse, um, why exactly? So far all I can tell is that his pasture has lots of grass in it. This is like those car ads which say, "Need a little body work" and when you go visit the car Bondo is flaking off in great sheets.

I'm not saying by any stretch of the imagination that the horse is badly put together, or an eyesore, or hard to train, or any such thing. I'm only saying that since he apparently eats very slowly, the grass is preventing me from *seeing* the horse in the picture. Which is usually the point of the picture. No? Am I confused?

Has happened before.

Because this is right up my alley

A friend sent me a link to this blog: Fugly Horse of the Day.

(Already the blogger is getting "You So Mean" comments from that every so popular person, Anonymous. Idjut.) Some of her (his?) commentary about "over at the knee" or "back at the knee" may go over my average non-horsie reader's head, but some of her other posts are priceless.

My Favorite three posts (as a sample):

From Fugly Horses Jumping Badly, "When the horse has his eyes shut because he can't bear to watch, you know you are in trouble. That is all I am going to say."






From Whoever Bred This Horse: You Need A New Hobby, "Where do I even begin? It's easier to list the parts of him that are ok."





And, my favorite of all:

From a post on why spotted horses are not automatically wonderful beasts: "Wow. Get a load of that head. That is one heck of a honking roman nose/pig eye combo, even for this kind of horse.....

This girl appears to be a barrel race rider and the overall effect is that of a guy named Possum who has hotwired someone's Porsche, painted it camouflage and installed a horn that plays the theme from "The Dukes of Hazzard."

OK, so that last part was mean. I think the girl with the bright pink border doesn't realize the image she is projecting, she just loves her pony. And she should.

The point is though that someone made the decision to Create these odd looking things. Perhaps they shouldn't have? Perhaps not all horses, not all mustangs, not all PMU foals , not every backyard pony needs to procreate? Especially when we have outlawed slaughter houses.

(Note: If you want a PMU foal, a byproduct of the Premarin manufacturing industry, then go ahead. I think that's fine. But for the love of all that's holy, Don't Breed The Thing. Even if it has spots.)

(Second note: A PMU rescue is about $800 in adoption fees. At auction, selling at meat market prices a draft-cross yearling is about, what, about $300? I forget how much a yearlingish draft-cross weighs, but I think I remember hearing that meat prices were 50 to 60 cents per pound? Fuzzy on the details, but jeez, we've got horses clogging the system already before you throw on the PMUs And Their Own Offspring. "Rescue." Yeah.)

Funny how the snark crosses boundaries of interest. This one's got a more technical component, I guess, but it's not as if this commentary hasn't been floating around the horse industry for generations.

In other news, I'm heading to NYC for a week with my son. Neo's in Boston having a great time, so that leaves Dear Butcher home with the youngest to take care of camp, the business, the pets, the house, and, eh, everything else. Wish him luck.

7/3/07 Edited to add:

Why did Blogger scramble this post while autosaving? A sentence over here...a clause over there...thanks. That was fun.

That Karma's A Bitch.

Just to illustrate the theory that you cannot get five horse people into a room without a fight breaking out, I have been taking part in a particularly STOOPID email spat over the past few days. Oh, but now it's turned into such a beautifully ironic and nasty muck that I can barely stand it. I've hurt myself sitting on my hands, stuffing all my fingers up into my jaw, preventing myself from saying something particularly delicious by way of an "I told you so."

Let me bring you up to date.

At the beginning of the week, a hue and cry arose on a Preservation Horse Breeders email list, which I mostly ignored, about the desperate need to send money to go get one particular horse who was about to go to auction. Oh yeah, there were a few others too, but this one, he is so cute! These requests flare up from time to time, but mostly the people who are interested in that bloodline get the information, either buy the horse, or find someone else who will take him, and everyone moves on.

Well, someone got all passionate about this horse, excuse me, this "Rescue." Man, I hate that word. We were asked for donations to cover gas for the person who was going to get him. No wait, what we should really do is set up a Rescue Fund so that anytime a horse of our bloodlines needs rescuing then the money will be available, right? A respected leader amongst the breeders said, "You know, we've talked about this from time to time but could never make all the details work out. Let's talk about it. Everyone's opinions are welcome."

Immediately, breeders from all over the country start saying, "Well, I dunno about Rescue. I mean, I'll give money to help with transportation, but I'm not busting in on someone's farm to 'rescue the herd'. Seen that gone all wrong waaaay too many times." And others are saying, "If we solicit donations, shouldn't we be a charitable organization? How would we figure out who to give the money to?" and on and on.

Off list I privately emailed the person who was the most agitated about rescuing this one horse. I essentially said, "You are going to have to think long and hard about your generic fund idea, especially if all you are going to do is transport the horse from one home into another temporary home. That's not a rescue, and it's unclear who owns the horse, what the foster person is supposed to do with the horse, and you know what, I had to disperse my aunt's 73 horses off her property after she died, and I hurt a lot of people's feelings when I insisted that they take their very own horses back. People on this list. I saw it all go down after my aunt died, and you had better be very careful about what you are starting."

And then I ended the letter with : "Good luck to you on this. I won't talk about this on the open list. Please do not forward this email. "

Yesterday morning I find in my inbox a reply to my letter, in which she rather self-righteously points out that all horses can benefit from being trained and promoted if they are to be placed. (Duh.) The reply includes excerpts from the letter. The reply is also sent to the entire Open List. (Wait a minute...) The reply ends with this gem:

I won't talk about this on the open list.
What open list?

Jesus Christ, lord in heaven. Are you that stupid?

So I send an email to the Open List, paraphrasing most of what I had written, leaving out the parts about the hurt feelings, and pointing out that it wasn't a communication meant for the open list, and pointing out that I had asked this person to keep it private.

Without ever apologizing, Ardent Rescuer writes to the list:

It was a mistake, but if you didn't want the rest of the group involved in the information within the email, maybe you shouldn't have sent the email period.

Oh thank you, goody two shoes. Are we REALLY back to the kindergarten argument of if you can't say anything nice? A dear friend wrote this hilarious rejoinder:

Well, I'll definitely make a note to myself to never tell you anything
I wouldn't want broadcast.
Thanks for the heads-up.
Too bad you didn't warn Suisan.

OK, so that made me laugh hard enough so that I dropped it. (Although I couldn't help myself from doing a google search on Arabians and her name. She don't have a website that I could find. Great promotion there, hun. OK, that was bad of me.)

Today I checked the almighty inbox to find three consecutive posts from Ardent Rescuer, the first two responding to posts very early on in the week. In the first she points out that if someone (not me, another list member) were to have an opinion on rescue such as that one, then her head must be up her ass and she must have a "brain the size of a pea", and the second goes on to point out that this person she suddenly hates isn't nearly as rational and easy to work with as either Jane or Mary.

And then the third is a contrite statement that the prior two were meant as private communications, not meant for the list at all, and she can only apologize for the public awfulness, and that it's important to know that those opinions only reflected her "feelings about rescue", not about that particular person at all, since she has never actually met that person.


Oh. My. God.

This is killing me. As I said above, my fingers are jammed so far inside my mouth to prevent typing out a reply that I think I hurt myself.

I have about a million options of various snarky things I can write to the list at this point. (Private seems useless.)

How's about:

Dear List.

In this time of email communication, it is important that we all understand how email actually works. See that line on top of the email? It says "TO:" Whatever address is IN that line is the address to which this email will be delivered. Then there is the ever confusing "CC:" line. Those people get the email too. I know. This is very confusing. We'll work on it together.

Or maybe:

Gee, Ardent Rescuer. How come she gets an apology but I don't?

Or the ever popular:

Boy, that karma's a bitch, huh?

Or perhaps:

As you once so righteously informed me and this very list, "If you didn't want the rest of the group involved in the information within the email, maybe you shouldn't have sent the email period." Good point.

Or perhaps:

Maybe it's your FEEEELINGs which have landed you in this hot water, eh? After all, I thought all opinions were welcomed, or at least that's what the leader of the breed organization said. Apparently not those you disagree with. Those belong to the pea-brained among us, right? Good to know.

(Man, this IS cathartic. Better than writing the emails to the lists, come to think of it.)

Here's another:

Ardent Rescuer, while driving around the country rescuing horses in whom NO ONE has expressed interest, it might behoove you to check your medication. Something seems amiss and I wouldn't want you to drive unsafely.

Or:

Remind me never to put you in charge of any committee or fund. Your professionalism is a wonder.

Or:

Those emails tonight made me Laugh! Ooo damn, you are a funny bitch. Thanks for lightening up on all the drama about "lost bloodlines" and "emergency auctions." Real kneeslappers there! Got any cute pictures of your horsies?

Aaaah. Now I can finally go to sleep. Thanks for listening.

Some People get odd ideas.

Like these guys


They have a training vehicle you can drive your horse in, well, you're sort of behind it? Go watch the videos, it's the only way to describe it.

Apparently when you interact with the horses, flaws come into being. Because we all know how very mechanical horses are, and how very much any animal would preferred to be hooked up to a Winnebago and driven around a track.

And how much does one of the monorail systems COST? Surely there are a few hundred teenagers hanging around who are willing to trot out your horses in hand? They way they've done for centuries? It's a great workout! (Not to mention the very taboo subject of illegal immigrants who work at racetracks. Is this company saying that they'll all magically disappear one day and you'll be left with only a trainer, a ton of money, and wonderful machines?)

It's a combine for horses.

The mind boggles.

(And um. Uhh. On what planet is there an economic need for highly trained racing camels? OK. They race them in UAE, but uh, the purse size? Isn't it illegal to bet? I dunno enough about competitive dromedary athletic competitions, but I can't see how this will end up replacing little teeny boys waaaay up on the top of camels.)

There's a part of me which wonders if this is all an elaborate spoof, but, um, that car looks fairly solid.