Blog :: Horses and Riding
January 2008
Poor, Misdirected Searchers
I’d like to take a post to salute all the poor, misdirected folks who found this blog in 2007 via unlikely keywords.
Like the person who was looking for “stuffed monster pattern.” I am sure this is not what you were looking for.
To the person who wanted to know “what is a wrenched knee,” I hope you didn’t try wrapping your knee with a standing wrap in the hopes that would make it all better. That sort of treatment is reserved for the hypochondriac wannabes—like me—who know they are not nearly as broken as they’d like to pretend they are.
“secret names.” Funny thing, I’ve started dreaming about naming horses again. Except this time it’s ponies. But I won’t tell you any of the names because, guess what? They’re still secret.
“collected halt.” I hate to break it to you, but at the halt there’s nothing to collect. On account of how the horse isn’t moving.
“doofus.” Yes I am, sometimes. I enjoy it. Thanks for stopping by.
“horse blog code” and several related variations. Is that like the DaVinci code? If I write a book about it that has facts as holey as swiss cheese, can I, too, become an author too famous to answer letters or emails from people wanting to know just who translated his Latin, anyway, and has he ever heard of contextual readings? No? Well what good is a horse blog code, then, anyway?
“i don’t sew but want to make a quilt.” I imagine that’s going to be a bit difficult for you.
“how to make a lumpshade with ribbons.” I want to know how the heck “lumpshade” led you to my blog.
“you tube gaited horses.” Shouldn’t you be searching the You Tube site?
“young grasshopper.” The thought that someone was probably trying to find the source of this quote makes me very sad. Isn’t this something everyone is supposed to know in their bones? Next they are going to want an explanation for where “Wax on. Wax off.” came from, and that will be tragic.
“looking for rider to sponsor.” What?! Wait! Come back! Sponsor me!
But probably the scariest thing was the number of “teach a horse to piaffe” type searches that end up here. People, please stop trying to teach yourself upper-level dressage from the internet. Find a trainer who has experience at these things and learn from them. You’re scaring me.
(But not as much as the “x”-related searches I get. Good grief. It’s a good thing I’m over 21; you’d have to be, to read my stats some days. There are sick, sick people out there.)
And so it begins again: foaling cameras
I finally broke down and bought myself a PC because I need a way to test sites in IE without having to go to a friend’s house or borrow someone’s laptop. My Mac is starting to show its age, too, which means I need to think about a new laptop down the line. Maybe next Christmas.
At any rate, an unexpected benefit: I can access the foaling cams (Mare Stare, We Foal, etc).
I watched a little last year because I had access to someone else’s PC (my Mac will not display the cams). I saw the good and bad and almost refreshingly normal. By chance, I caught Suerte foaling. I did not actually see Sassy’s unfortunate experience, but I did read at least some of the discussions in its aftermath.
I will say that as much as I appreciate the mare owners who put up cameras, I don’t think I could ever do it.
I’m too reserved and too conscious of my privacy, I think, to ever be comfortable having a cam up. With the blog, at least I can edit what information goes out and decide how much I want to share. The cams are a little too much of a fishbowl for me and, it seems to me, open too much space for misinterpretation. But I feel the same way about YouTube videos. And pictures (notice how many pictures I’ve posted on this blog? Exactly!). Sometimes, I’m surprised I blog at all.
But not everyone shares my overdeveloped sense of privacy, for which I’m grateful, because it means when I am working late into the night on this or that project I can stare at mares who have apparently no intention of ever having their foal, but who seem to know exactly when I am contemplating shutting down the cam, because the invariably drop and roll. Fun!
Registries Revisited, Part I
I’ve always thought of registration papers as having three main values:
- They prove that a horse belongs to X breed, or at least is X type.
- They provide a way to track performance and lineage.
- They allow the horse to compete in breed shows.
In other words, every breed has their ideal breed characteristics. Even allowing for the fact that the differences within a breed may be greater than the differences between one breed and another, the idea is that the average horse of breed X should fit breed X’s characteristics. If not, there’s something wrong with the breed registry as far as I’m concerned, because it’s lost track of what type of horse it’s supposed to be producing. There’s value, to me, in knowing that the horse I’m looking at is X breed, because that provides with me with some framework for my expectations. The individual horse may fall outside the framework, but knowing the breed gives me a place to start.
From there, if you know pedigree, you can start tracking performance and sometimes conformation expectations. This line is known to excel at jumping; that line is known to excel at dressage; this line produces superior cutting horses; that line has a history of champion halter horses. Or good feet, weak loins, a great shoulder, or wild eyes. Breeding is always a gamble, and what looks good on paper can be a dud—or what looks dull as dust on paper can turn out to be an international-class star—but, again, in general proven and documented pedigree and performance provides the closest thing we have to a crystal ball into the horse’s likely future.
The breed show aspect I’ve never been involved with, other than knowing there is a lot of money in breed shows.
For people who are set on showing breed shows the registration papers are required, whereas for people who are geared more towards open shows the papers become an indicator of talent but the lack of papers on a horse wouldn’t necessarily preclude it from consideration. And even there—if I am looking at two horses who are pretty similar in conformation and ability, I will buy the registered horse because, even if I don’t plan to resell, it will be easier to market the registered horse down the line.
Now, in all honesty, when I go horse shopping I am not going to have a very high spending limit, and most of the horses I will end up looking at will probably be grade horses and/or breeds that, on paper, are not ideal for what I want to do. I will be looking for the exception to the breed standards, and conformation and movement of the horse in front of me is going to end up mattering a whole lot more than whether or not the horse is registered. I will not buy (or not buy) a horse because it is (or isn’t) registered.
But if registry and/or pedigree information is available? I’ll certainly use it as a starting point for deciding which horses to look at first. Not because it guarantees anything—but because it helps stack the odds a little more in my (and the horse’s) favor.
Context is Everything
I don’t think much about riding attire. Sure, breeches are a bit goofy, and helmets, however practical, are never going to be a popular fashion statement… but who cares? The only time we wear this stuff is when we’re around other horse people, who are used to goofy.
Except, of course, for that one show when I was, oh, maybe sixteen, and my trainer asked me to run to the store and grab some stuff.
I went to the store.
I picked up the stuff.
I handed it to the cashier, who looked at my leather boots with the spurs still on and the crop sticking out of one of them, my breeches, my jacket with the gloves probably hanging out of the pockets, my still-buttoned ratcatcher, and, oh yes, my hair up in my helmet all hunterishly.
See, I never took my helmet off until the end of the day, because I wasn’t very good at putting my hair up in the first place. It was better to leave it in than tempt fate and not be able to get it up in time again. Who knows why my jacket and spurs were still on. The crop was in my boot because that was a handy place for it, and, honestly, tall boots are so awful to drive in anyway I never realize it was there.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
The worst of it was the way the cashier kept glancing back and forth between my outfit and the stuff I’d handed her:
Witch hazel.
Cotton balls.
Peppermints.
Baby oil.
Vasoline.
This is a perfectly reasonable shopping list, in the right context. Unfortunately, dressed in full show gear in the middle of Big Box Store is not it.
December 2007
Early Resolutions
I never bother to make resolutions, because I know I’m not going to keep them. I finally realized I do this all wrong. What I should be doing is making resolutions that I know will come true. This way I can be successful without even trying. It’s the ultimate fulfillment of the American dream.
Therefor, I resolve:
- To ride at some point during the year.
- To read at least one horse-related book.
- To watch at least one movie with a horse in it.
- To draw at least one stick-figure horse just to prove I can’t even draw a stick figure horse.
- To watch a horse show or two.
- To make some homemade horse treats. Buying a bag of carrots and snapping them in half counts as “homemade”, right?
Ok, I think that’s enough. I’m all out of practice with resolutions, even ones I know will come true. I hate to strain something.
My cat, meanwhile, has resolved never to come out from under the heated blanket I got for Christmas. She thinks she’s died and gone to heaven.
If I were making real resolutions, I think they’d go something like this:
- Find a barn (when I move to Texas) that does both formal/show-oriented lessons and trail riding (and not the nose-to-tail touristy thing, either).
- Attend an auction. I can’t quite explain why, but I feel it’s something I should do. I don’t expect it to be easy.
- Try a cross-country jump or two. I always wanted to be an eventer, deep down in places I don’t like to talk about.
Whew. That’s done. Now I have an entire year to forget about these resolutions I’m not making.