Blog
December 2006
Flying Dismounts
I was taught to fall via flying dismount. Because I have a mortal fear of being sued, a disclaimer: there’s still a chance you could get injured, and you should only do this under a qualified instructor’s supervision and if something goes wrong (or bystanders laugh at you), I’m not responsible. Try this at your own risk.
Whew. I feel better. Although I have no idea what people think they would get if they sued me. My grad student loan debt?
Flying dismount–kick your stirrups free and jump off as fast as you can. Start at the halt, then try it at the walk, then trot. If you’re exceptionally balanced, you can try at the canter but there’s even more risk there of, say, landing badly and breaking an ankle. If you aren’t sure, just practice at the halt and walk. These days, I don’t ever do this at the canter–I leave that for super-atheletic teens.
The point of the flying dismount is that you push yourself off the horse with more momentum and, at the walk and trot, you also have forward momentum to deal with. The goal is NOT to stick your landing like a gymnast. It’s to figure out how to use up that momentum safely.
At the halt, this tends to mean sinking even deeper with your knees, and maybe taking a step or two away from the horse. At the walk, this tends to mean taking a step or three forward with the horse, until you can both stop safely. At the trot, you may have to run with the horse. Don’t ask me about the canter; I don’t do it anymore.
And the chances are you won’t be able to stay on your feet anyway–you’ll come down on your bum. That’s fine. Concentrate on keeping your arms in against your body and rolling away from the horse. This is not about your dignity or the state of your wardrobe; this is about learning how to use momentum and training yourself to tuck and roll.
I have heard there are people who learn the flying dismount and then use it to bail off their horse every time they get the least bit worried. DON’T. That’s not the point. If you keep bailing off, eventually you’re going to get hurt. Your horse is going to learn that if he acts up, you’ll get off. And you’re going to learn that you can’t deal with your horse’s misbehavior. That’s a miserable situation all around. In almost all cases, you are safer on the horse than off him (because you can hope to regain control, which you can’t do if you are sitting in the dirt with a wrenched knee because you landed badly in the fall).
I find that this builds rider confidence–I learned I could come off the horse while he was moving forward and I was fine. I also gained some muscle memory–I knew what a good fall (arms tucked, rolling away from the horse) felt like, so when I was having actual, unplanned falls, I was more likely to tuck and roll and not attempt to catch myself.
But despite knowing this, I still managed to get hairline cracks in all my knuckles one fall, when I stuck my arm out like an idiot. So, even when you know how to fall, sometimes… you still get hurt. But I can think back on all the times I came off and didn’t get hurt, and I think the flying dismounts helped there.
And believe me, I had lots of falls. The Super Saint had a round, crack-his-back arch over fences, and until I learned to stick it, I came off after every single fence. Tuck and roll, people, tuck and roll.
Snow, snow, more snow
We got seven inches of snow today. The barn is in the area of town that gets plowed later/less often than the main streets. My two-wheel drive car likes to pretend it’s an ice skate.
Surprisingly, it all turned into a non-issue.
My little car zoomed through the roads like a champ, happier than it’s been in months–probably because the snow provided some traction on that interminable ice.
I saw plenty of big trucks sliding all over–one almost rear-ended me at an intersection–but my little car? Like a day at the beach, with less sand.
I love my car.
The barn owner seemed surprised when I showed up. Darn it. I’d have gone shopping if I’d known I could have used the snow as an excuse–bet no one was in the stores today. (Kidding! Don’t fire me!) The mares were happy I showed up, though. And I got to play with the foals a bit, which is always fun. See? I knew there was a reason I didn’t call in snow-bound (you call in sick; we call in snow-bound).
Ooh: 237 billion cubic feet of snow fell on the city today. The news just said. I’m so glad I’m not responsible for shoveling any of that.
Those Chestnut TB Mares
I love ‘em.
For example, Her Highness. Her Highness is one of the mares I walk a couple times a week. She and I get along great, because we both want attention on our terms and none of that lovey-dovey huggy stuff.
Over the past year, we’ve come to certain understandings, mostly revolving around who is the Alpha Mare (me, natch). Other understandings: Thou Shalt Not Step on the Alpha Mare’s Foot While She Is Grooming You. Thou Shalt Not Turn Your Butt Towards the Alpha Mare When She Is In The Stall With You. Thou Still Art Not the Alpha Mare, and if You Keep Pretending To Be the Alpha Mare, the Alpha Mare Will Do Something Unspeakable To You, Like Clean Your Udder, So Un-pin Those Ears Right Now, Missy.
And so on. She’s a TB with personality, and I loff her.
So, Sunday, we were walking in the arena. There’s scaffolding in the corner (blocked off so the horses wouldn’t get caught up in it, but clearly visible). It’s been there for a few weeks. But as we walked past it Sunday, she decided to spook. Decided, yes. This was calculated.
She crouched down, preparing to jump forwards or sideways, and then looked at me. She immediately got an “oh, crap” look on her face. We were just heading into the corner, she was on the rail, and I was to the inside.
I’ve never seen her pull backwards during a spook, so I guess that’s not an option for her. She also knows better than to run over the top of people–so even when she spooks, given half a second to think she picks the space without a person standing in it over the space with a person standing in it. Which meant that, having seen me, she realized spooking sideways was… well, an option, but a very bad one. Her only other choice? To jump forward–in the direction of the scaffolding.
For ten or fifteen seconds she crouched, trying to figure out what to do. I talked to her, hoping she’d just step forward, but she had her dignity to think of, after all. Walking forward would be tantamount to admitting there was nothing worth spooking over in the first place.
She compromised by jumping forward and to the side just a little bit. Then stood there with her head hanging down and the most embarrassed expression on her face that I have ever seen.
Poor mare! All that setup, and nowhere to go!
HorseBlogs, One Last Time
Yay! It’s official: the directory of horse blogs is open to the public!
See it at http://horseblogs.halt-near-x.com
If you write a horse-related blog, or if you have favorite blog(s) that you read, please stop by and submit the blog! There’s a very easy form to fill out, and it doesn’t require any personal information (not even an email address!).
And if you’re looking for a blog to read? Check it out! You can browse all the blogs in the database, or narrow them down by discipline/topic. Find bloggers who are posting on the topics that interest you!
Please, please, please help spread the word! Tell other bloggers about this. Tell your readers. The more people who know, the more blogs will get listed. The more blogs that get listed, the more likely readers are to use the directory. And the more readers using the directory, the more likely they are to find your blog. That’s a good thing!
Also, think of this: I posted a notice on one forum, and within 24 hours had over 500 page views on the blog browser. That’s not counting visits to this main part of the site, or my own visits to the blog browser! One link! 500 page views! How cool is that? People want a site like this! And it’s here! Check it out!
Horsey Blogging Community: Offshoot
Patricia (Experiments in Training Equines) and I have been talking a little about what/how re: horsey blogging community. I’m supposed to be emailing her back, but I’m not sure what I’ve got/where it has the potential to go. And since I like to make my confusion public, what better place to work it out than here?
Here’s what I do have: a program that could be used to develop a directory of horse blogs. You can see a tentative/beta version at http://horseblogs.halt-near-x.com.
I don’t think it’s very community minded, if by community we mean it’s going to encourage bloggers to post more on each others’ blogs, or perhaps band together around common goal(s), or check in on some forum-like site, or in any way get to know each other better. All the directory is… is a directory. And my impulse says to make it very general–to allow any horse-related blog to be listed, in the hopes that it would be a useful way to find horse-related blogs, no matter what aspect of horses/riding the bloggers wrote about.
Of course, if we ever did figure out what we mean by ‘community’, the script could easily be adapted to create a directory specific to that community. But for now, maybe it would be useful to have a general directory of any/all horse-related blogs. We have to find each other first, after all. Or something like that.
So… would it be useful?
The script is functional, people. I have the space and bandwidth to run it. All that’s stopping me from making it prettier than it is and perhaps a little more user-friendly is the question of whether it would be useful.
Would you, as a horsey blogger, add your site to a directory like this? Would you, as a horsey blog reader, use a site like this to find new blogs? Thoughts? Opinions? Reservations?