8 Sep 2010 3 comments
When I moved to Houston, my family gave me a GPS.
They were afraid, I suspect, that I’d head out for work one day and end up in Peru. Or Greenland.
Their fears were not totally unjustified. I once got lost in Palmer. Palmer, for those of you who have never been there, has a population of Not Very Many and less streets than letters in its name.
Behold Palmer:
View Larger Map
A person who could get lost in Palmer could get lost anywhere. The GPS was sort of a necessity. I will say, in my defense, that at least when I got off the plane I knew I was in Houston, Texas. When I punched the address for my hotel into my GPS, it thought for a long, long time and then told me it would take a week to drive to the hotel, and I would have to pass through Canada. I was halfway to the hotel before the thing realized we were no longer in Alaska.
I had reason to believe, in other words, that I was not hopelessly incompetent when driving. Getting lost in Palmer, I thought, would be the highlight of my navigational Comedy of Errors.
Wrong. So, so wrong.
When I bought Ro, a friend recommended a particular lumber yard for shavings. She told me how to get there. She drew a map. She showed me what everything on the map meant.
All I had to do, I kid you not, was make two right turns.
Got it, I said.
The next day, I set out for the lumber yard, humming We’re going to the wood works and we’re gonna get shaaaavings… we’re going to the wood works of love!
Stuff like that is reason #682 that I decline to sing in public.
An hour later, I texted my friend: There is no lumber yard on Telge.
There was a pause, and she texted back something to the effect of: No, it’s on 2920. Next to the feed store.
A flurry of texts and phone calls later, and I was at the lumber yard.
I blame the episode on my exhaustion (I was burnt out at work, and barely functional out of work). Certainly my friend had done everything she could for me, sort of driving me there herself. And, actually, I had ridden with her to the feed store before. I have no real excuse for being unable to find the lumber yard.
Today I had to go back to pick up more shavings.
No problem. I was confident of the exit: Spring Cypress/Cypress Rosehill.
I got the exit right. I forgot that the road I wanted was Cypress Rosehill, not Spring Cypress. About the time Spring Cypress ended at Telge, I realized I had made the wrong choice.
Anyone else in the world would have thought Hey! Telge! That’s the street the lumber yard is NOT on, but it intersects with the street the lumber yard IS on! (Reference above, about being lost on Telge on the previous attempt to get to the feed store.)
In the end, this is how I got to the lumber yard:
View Lost in a larger map
Twice now I have failed to find a place that only requires two right turns to reach. Twice!
This is worse than being lost in Palmer. This is worse than the time I got lost walking down Vesuvius (for all those people who think you can’t get lost going down a mountain, a very kind cab driver somewhere in Italy is still probably regaling his fellow cabbies with stories of the Stupidest American Ever; he would be happy to set you straight on that particular misconception).
Really, the only way I could top this incident would be to get lost driving on a straight line.
I might be tempting fate by saying that kind of thing out loud.
Filed: General Topics, Probably Horse Related
3 comments
6 Sep 2010 4 comments
Ro continues to make progress in small steps. Of course, we do our best work mid-week, when no one is around to see us. During our weekly lesson, we lose our collective brains.
Turn right at the trot? No way! Not possible! What is this right lead you speak of, and why would anyone want to be on it?
Apparently we are both left handed. This may explain a lot about us. I must go find out if anyone has ever created a dressage test that only requires the horse to travel to the left. If so, I am moving wherever that is.
Meanwhile, I was in and out of the barn all weekend doing some work, and each time I would come home I would admire my lovely tanned legs. And then I’d take a shower and watch the dirt swirl down the drain. In reality, my legs are no more tan than they were before. I believe barn dust may be as effective at preventing any sort of sun burn as sun tan lotion is. I should figure out a way to market this.
At least this week I’ll get some variation from the dust—it’ll all be mud. Mud, mud, and more mud.
All this mud is apparently courtesy of tropical storm Hermine, which is not hitting Houston in any direct way but is somehow or other responsible for the rain we are getting. At least that’s what some internet site said, and if it’s on the internet, it must be true.
Every time I come home, I find my cat who hates storms huddled up in some smaller and harder to get to places. Today: under the china cabinet. Since there has been no thunder or lightning to speak of, I am not sure if she is preparing for some unspeakable oncoming storm or if she is engaged in that oldest and noblest of feline traditions: Freak Out the Food Lady.
I suppose I’ll find out when a monster storm does (or doesn’t) arrive. With or without thunder and lightning, we are going to get rain. There will continue to be little to report—this will be a light week for Ro, with just lunging in the round pen when I can get to it (no covered arena; everyone will want to use the round pen). And mud. There will be lots and lots of mud.
Filed: General Topics, Probably Horse Related
4 comments
25 Aug 2010 4 comments
For some reference, the barn we are in has stalls with attached runs. The stalls have wood walls, but the stall doors and the runs are pipe. I padded (duct tape over pool noodles) a couple parts of Ro’s run.
First, the top rail of her stall door. The pipe is rough and she was rubbing her chest raw against it. Easy fix:
It looks good, right?
Here’s the problem. I firmly believe home improvement type things should be Somebody Else’s Problem. I am awesome with words. Hammer and nails? Not so much. So when I padded the rail, I was standing on the outside of the stall and my non-engineering brain did not quite catch on to the inevitable issue caused by working on that side of the door:
That’s right. I padded the outside of the rail, not the inside. My pool noodle was not nearly as wide as I thought it was. Despite my error, it’s working just fine—the rubs on her chest have disappeared. I probably could have skipped the pool noodle and just taped over the rail.
I can’t take credit for the idea. You can see the colored tape in the distance where some other people have already done similar things to their stalls. Some of them have also taped up one of the vertical support rails, but Ro isn’t rubbing on that so I haven’t bothered.
The other part of the stall that needed padding are the ends of the pipes where the run meets the stall:
The pipe ends aren’t capped, which you can see from the bottom rail. You can see my temporary fix on the middle rail; I still need to get to the home improvement store and find some more durable caps. But first I need to remember to measure the diameter of the pipes.
Filed: General Topics, Probably Horse Related
4 comments
25 Aug 2010 3 comments
I am off from work this week.
To my coworkers’ utter confusion, I am remaining in town. I mean, who wouldn’t want to stay in hot and humid Houston in August when they could get away?
Actually, I hadn’t thought this through. I see where they are coming from now.
What I was thinking was “hey, cool, boot camp!”
I’m getting extra lessons on a schoolmaster so that I stop flapping around like a monkey in canter transitions. Ro is getting extra work sessions so (hopefully) she will start to realize she is a horse and not a giraffe.
Since she’s working hard, I thought I’d be nice and also give her some extra hand grazing time. I’ve been letting her run free on the property for a little while each day, since her idea of “run free” is to graze in place for an hour.
Today? Not so much.
She saw an opportunity and started ping-ponging around the property. In deference to the heat, she stayed at the trot. She made it clear, however, that she had no intention of being caught.
You know how they say people can run faster than horses over short distances, because people only have two legs to coordinate? The people running those tests clearly never tried to catch a horse that doesn’t want to be caught.
If I were being brutally honest, I’d admit that it was the slowest chase in history, with Ro only trotting as far as she had to go to snatch some grass while I caught up (at a walk). And I’d admit that it only lasted about ten minutes before she decided even trotting in the heat was too much work. But that would be a rather sad chase indeed, so imagine something spectacular, would you?
After I caught her and the horse she coaxed to trot along with her, cooled them out, and put them up, I went into her stall to explain the consequences of her actions.
“You’re grounded,” I said. “Hand grazing only from now on. On a lead rope. And only for as long as I want to stand in the sun, which is much less time than I was willing to sit in the shade and watch.”
“So we’ll do it again tomorrow?” she asked.
“No, grounded. No more. Ever again.”
“Tomorrow?”
“No!”
And then I realized I was trying to reason with a horse.
I blame the heat. The sun. Whatever mental defect caused me to stay in Houston in August instead of going someplace cool, like the Sahara.
Filed: Horses I Have Known, Ro, General Topics, Probably Horse Related
3 comments
22 Aug 2010 5 comments
- Make sure your horse’s ground manners are generally good. She should halt immediately when you say “Whoa! WHOA! Good gir—no, don’t move! Don’t mov—good girl. Stand there. Just stand. No, WHOA!”
- Pick a strategic location to start her training. Avoid the barn aisle outside her buddy’s stall or a place in sight of the feed room/hay shed.
- Place your brushes, saddle, bridle, and everything else you need to tack up nearby.
- Lead her to the location where you want her to ground tie. Halt her and tell her she’s a good girl and feed her a treat.
- Move away a step or two to grab a brush. Remove horse from back pocket and return her to the location where you want her to ground tie.
- Repeat Step 5.
- Repeat Step 5.
- Move away a step or two to grab your saddle. Fetch horse from the far end of the barn aisle and return her to the location where you want her to ground tie.
- Repeat Step 8, this time fetching horse from the hay shed.
- Give up, tie horse, and finish tacking up. Go ride.
- Repeat above process after your ride, in reverse.
- Turn horse out. Watch her immediately bury her head in the grass/hay and not move for the next half hour. Success!
Filed: Progress of Sorts, Training the Horse
5 comments
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