Blog :: Random Rambles
October 2006
Is dressage fun? And other questions
Occassionaly I check my site statistics to see what search terms people are actually using to find my site. For the paranoid among us: don’t worry. My stats are aggregate and I don’t know who typed in which term.
Lately, I’ve been getting some interesting search terms, including a few questions, so I thought I’d help clear up confusion.
Search Term: halt near x
Dear People Trying to Find this Site’s Credentials:
It doesn’t have any.
Love, the pseudo-anonymous Halt Near x
Search Term: gold buttons coat fashionable
Dear Fashion Conscious:
I am so sorry you found this site in a fashion-related search. For what it’s worth, I think gold anything is a bit tacky. Give me silver or platinum any day. I’m also partial to bronze.
But keep in mind that what I know about fashion would take an entire season of “What Not To Wear” to fix, and at the end of the season the hosts would have to be locked in a dark, padded room for six months to recover. I doubt even the Fab Five could help me.
Love, “What is this ‘fashion’ thing of which you speak?” Halt Near X
Search Term: Is dressage boring compared to jumping?
Dear Jumper Fan,
You have, like, eight to twelve jumps in the arena, right? What do you think you’re doing in the space between all those jumps?
Ok, think of it like this:
The whole time you’re jumping, you have to think about your line, your impulsion, rating the horse, lead changes, getting to the right spot, bending through the turns, etc etc etc. Right? The actual jumps are sort of incidental. Fun–but incidental. Most of the work is spent on getting to/getting away from the jumps–not going over them.
Dressage is just like that, but without the jumps. Of course, if you just thought, “What is this bending thing of which you speak?”, then dressage might not be for you. But if you enjoy the technical aspects of jumping, you might be pleasantly surprised by how much fun dressage really is.
It helps if you’re a bit obsessive/compulsive, though.
Love, the very obsessive Halt Near X
September 2006
The Registry Problem
It’s a fact: in general, a registered horse is worth more than a non-registered horse. The paperwork makes it so.
I can only hope–never having owned a registered horse before–that the paperwork is very fancy with lots of charts, numbers, and acronyms.
And for those of us who can’t afford a fancy, registered horse, may I propose we start a TAHAR registry? Any horse with four legs will qualify, because “that’s a horse, all right.” We can make super-fancy papers with lots of italic and bold font, underlined statements, advanced mathematical calculations, and secret acronyms so we can talk in code to each other. We’ll have the best paperwork in the world!
Plus, to catch up with all those folks importing their horses, we’ll change the requirements for an “imported” vs. home-born horse. For example, while the people in my city are pretty normal, the people in the town forty-five minutes away are pretty foreign. They go on about “fresh air” all the time; I don’t think they really like the scent of gasoline that sort of hangs over the city in winter. Can you imagine?
Clearly, buying a horse from someone in the town is almost like buying a horse from a foreign country. I think it’s safe to say that such a horse was “imported.” Don’t you?
I’ll be honest, though–I don’t own a horse right now anyway. Although I’m sympathetic to the owner of Bitsy Lou, the knock-kneed, pigeon-toed daughter of Wild Jack, that sway-backed, one-eyed stallion that likes to “visit” all the mares in the neighborhood, and I do think Bitsy Lou deserves just as much paperwork as the fancy-schmancy warmblood, at the moment I’d love any horse at all, papers or no papers. I’d even take Wild Jack’s reject son, the one that will never amount to much.
In this country of “Hello? Why does she get that?! I want one of those! Excuse me, Congressman, I’m being discriminated against! Change the laws! Get me one of those!”, I am, well, feeling discriminated against. I don’t see why my lack of a horse to own should preclude me from a registry.
So I propose a second new registry: for Shanks Ponies. There could be smalls, mediums, and larges. I would probably be a large small or a small medium. But I’m pretty short. And there could be “typey” classes, for the long-limbed, lean girls and women, and “stock” classes, for those of us with, well, draft-type “bones” and “muscle.” The registry will even come complete with drama: if one person’s Shanks’ Pony is prone to getting Charley Horses, are they are a “true” pony, or are the Charley Horses evidence of a major fault? Should they be penalized? Do we create separate classes for them so that they won’t be discriminated against and can win their own ribbons? And so on. I’m sure it will take years to iron out all the minor details.
In the meantime, for just $99.99 plus shipping and handling, I’d be happy to create a fancy-schmancy certificate for your TAHAR horse or your personal Shanks’ Pony. For only $49.99 more, I’ll include an Import Certificate of Authenticity on your TAHAR (pending proof that you trailered the horse more than thirty minutes after buying it). And for just $5,000, you’ll receive a free round-trip ticket to the nearest foreign country so that your Shanks’ Pony can be certified as Internationally Competitive.
August 2006
Typical Dressage Test
Who says I can’t ride dressage?
- A enter working trot, haunches left.
- X transition to a walk, take six steps, halt parked out behind.
- Proceed working trot, haunches right.
- C spook left.
- E oval left, 18.7 meters by 22 meters.
- Between K and A pick up the counter canter, trot, and pick up the correct lead.
- A break canter.
- F resume canter.
- B oval left 23 m by 19 m.
- Between the centerline and B, have horse collapse on his front end into a shuffling trot. Pretend this"transition” was intentional.
- C shuffling walk.
- C-H more shuffling walk, with a jog step or two.
- H-(squiggly line)-the general vicinity of X-(squiggly line)-F free walk, long rein. Show a marked difference in stride, including four jog steps, six jig steps, an extended walk, a collected walk, and a Western peanut-rolling amble through the country side.
- F-A bolt forward.
- A transition downwards into a high-stepping carriage-horse sort of trot.
- E circle right twenty meters, displaying canter-trot transitions every fifth step.
- Between the centerline and B, halt. Proceed collected trot.
- A down centerline, shoulder-fore.
- X halt square, fall off in shock.
Ad Terminology
I’ve finally figured out the terminology in horse sales ads:
- Bombproof! Our thirteen-year-old rides him everywhere!
- Our thirteen-year-old has been riding since age two and wins classes against pro riders.
- Bred to _____
- Looks good on paper but lacks competitiveness.
- Champion!
- Six years ago, at a local show.
- Color like you wouldn’t believe!
- One white spot on belly. Added $5,000 to his price.
- Could Excel In Anything
- No idea where his talents lie.
- Fancy Mover
- So much chrome, you won’t notice he paddles.
- Knows his job and loves to work.
- As long as his job description reads “eat more hay.”
- Loss of job/spouse/home forces sale. Would not part with him otherwise!
- I will call you every night for updates.
- Lots of Chrome!
- One white coronet. Made you look!
- Must sell as I have too many horses and cannot develop this one to his full potential.
- He’s the worst in the barn and I have better prospects on which to focus.
- No vices! Loads/clips like a dream—perfect for the farrier!
- After sedation.
- Perfect Junior/Amateur Horse!
- A few quirks, nothing serious. You have a trainer, right?
- Price Reduced
- Turns out no one wants to pay an extra $5,000 for one white spot on his belly.
- Price Will Increase With Training
- I’m keeping track of every penny spent.
- Will Take You To The Top
- Of your local show circuit.
And my personal favorite:
- This Year’s Champion in Everything! Wins Everything!
- I just bought a horse that can beat this one with her eyes closed. See you in the show ring!
Unethical Tack Store Owners
To clear up any confusion, I’m not suggesting that some tack store owners are unethical. They all are.
I mean, surely it’s unethical to place rows and rows of saddle pads where horse-less lesson riders will see them and think, “Well, I can’t have a horse right now, but that blue/pink/green/funky patterned one will look great on the schoolie I’m riding now.” It’s worse than dealers standing on street corners offering junkies a quick fix.
Or what about their habit of carrying only a limited stock of blankets? Don’t talk to me about space restrictions; this is clearly a carefully-considered plot. Owner buys Black Beauty a $300 winter blanket in their barn colors. Three days later, Black Beauty tears the blanket up in the pasture, by means that no detective agency will ever be able to discover, and owner returns to the tack store… to find out that, so sorry, there aren’t any more blankets in Black Beauty’s size in the owner’s colors. However, there’s this lovely blanket in a clashing color…. A busted blanket is a genuine emergency, so the owner has no choice. Clashing blanket it is, along with a new halter/lead rope to match clashing blanket. And possibly some polo wraps and a saddle pad or two. Before you know it, the owner’s barn colors have changed. All because the tack store owner didn’t stock their blanket size in the right color. Unethical, I’m telling you.
Or the used-car-salesmanship abilities of the tack store owners–those can’t be legal. I own a pair of sherberty polo wraps now that no thinking person would voluntarily buy. But the tack store owner saw me looking at saddle covers. The next thing I knew, I was walking out of the store with a very nice patterend saddle cover and the sherberty polo wraps to match one of the cover’s accent colors. The details of that transaction are still fuzzy, despite years of attempted hypnotherapy, and I’ve been advised to accept that the sherbert wraps are part of my life (the saddle carrier may be as well, but there are some boxes in the attic I am afraid to open) and that I should be grateful they are good quality and didn’t break down the moment I drove out of the tack store parking lot.
You can’t convince me the tactics tack store owners are ethical. I know better, and I have the wraps to prove it.